Call-centers are inevitable part of successful business process.
They aggregates customer and business partner communication channels,
enable close customer relationship, increase customer satisfaction
(competitive advantage), efficient tool for marketing activities
and decreases "digital divide" - the divide between people using
new technologies and those who are not using them
Typical applications for inbound call-centers (telecom oriented
view) are:
• General info mediation service
• Directory Assistance
• Helpdesk (trouble-ticketing service)
• Customer Care
• Call intervention
Applications for outbound call-centers are
• Marketing and selling campaigns
• Market research
• E-business support
Outsourcing business model
• Service provider (telecom. operator) with necessary infrastructure
• Remote agents placed in enterprises and connected to main
call-center
Features
• Incoming, outgoing, transferred calls, support for inbound
and outbound call-center applications
• Local operators (PC terminal, local headset)
• Remote operators (PC terminal, telephone line for headset)
– teleworking, distant (regional, local) units
– outsourcing and telecom hosting business models
• Integration with external databases and applications
– billing systems, Trouble ticketing, Customer Care, Directory
Assistance
– Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Multiservice call-center
– distribution of calls to different queues
• Multiservice operators
– each operator could be a member of more than one queue
• Advanced call distribution (ACD)
– distribution of calls to different agents
– Virtual Call Center concept
– multicriterial operation (routing based on A-, B-number,
operator skills, queues length, priorities)
• Call Center Agent
– Log-on/log-off to different queue (server), pause features
– GUI interface for database access
– Conversation recording
• Call Center Supervision
– Agent activities
– Supervising queue lengths
– Detail call center statistics (Call Detailed Records)
Technological Advantages
• Simple and efficient deployment of new services
– data driven architecture
– open interfaces
• Scalability
– from 1 to1000 operators
– signaling converter (single SS7 Point Code for 4000/16000
speech channels)
• High throughput (up to 75 calls/second)
• Geographical distribution of Call Center resources
• "Natural" interaction with Internet
– IP telephony, Internet enabled call-centers
• Smooth changeover and/or bridging to broadband services
(overlay principle)
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