Setting Up of An Efficient Call Center



Posted: Thursday, October 16, 2008

by
http://www.ansafone.com

In today's world of ever-growing amount of products and services with improved communication abilities, companies have a need to be able to interface with the people having questions about the variety of products and services they offer. This need led to the development of call centers. A call center is a facility, which allows both inbound and outbound calls. If it is a support call center it will normally have inbound calls, but in case of a sales call center, it may allow outbound calls as well. The way it works is simple- when you dial a UAN (Universal Access Number) number, your call is redirected to one of many call agents present at the call center. If all agents are busy, then your might be queued- as soon as an agent becomes free you are connected to him/her.

Any entrepreneur getting into the call center business should be aware that he is entering a commodity like business. For this, it is imperative to have required infrastructure in place, the core team to propel the business and around 10 or more fully trained and capable call agents. The focus should be based on high-end quality and the experienced people to drive this intense business. Accent neutralization and training in various situations should be necessary, because the business is in real time and there is no getting back after a call is messed up.

The necessary requirements for setting of a call center are as follows:

  1. Get the toll-free number and a multi-channel interface- It will not be very difficult, as any telecommunication provider will provide you a toll-free number and a telephone number through which you can receive multiple calls simultaneously.


  1. Get a broadband internet connection-You need to purchase either a SDSL connection or a lease line providing you connectivity from one end to another.


  1. Get hold of an IPPABX (Internet Protocol Private Automatic Branch Exchange) - These devices provide routing and distribution facilities at each end. Normally IPPABX provides you the facility to connect directly to a telephone line to start receiving calls, but if not, then you might have to get hold of a VOIP gateway, which actually converts the telephone calls to the IP format.


  1. Installation of all necessary documents to agent's computer- You cannot provide support to your customer unless all customer data is available to the call agents. For that, you have to develop CRM software (Customer Relationship Management), which provides all the necessary information to deal with a customer. Good CRM software will also allow the employer to keep a record of the performance of the agents and recording of calls.


Again, there are two main parts to a call center are ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) and IVR (Intelligence Voice Recognition).

ACD-ACD handles how calls are routed to call center agents- typically it will tell the system to which group of people direct the call to based on certain information.

IVR-It allows you to collect information from callers to use to direct calls, so that a caller can select whether they are an existing customer querying the status of an order or a new customer wishing to place one.

Whether you are dealing the outside customers or just making your internal system more efficient, certainly call center will be a great help to your organization.

This Article has been viewed 46 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)
» left by Walter Rhett
 3 years 94 days ago.
40 fans.
While I know nothing of call centers, I like artices that are "how-tos" that also define concepts and products/techniques and make tat acessible and understandable. Youur articles does this.
» left by Anonymous
 3 years 80 days ago.
This article is exellent.
» left by Rashmi
from India 3 years 80 days ago.
This article is very informative and has easy to follow steps for setting up a call centre. I hope it will be very useful for those who are planing of setting a call center.
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