Modern Call Center Solutions - Keeping in Touch is the Key

Call center solutions solve a range of age-old problems. As far back as ancient times, the success of a business has always depended on how well that business can communicate with clients and meet their needs. It is necessary to be available, in touch, easy to reach, and pleasant to deal with. From the point of view of the customer who needs to purchase a product, or is having trouble with a product or service he has already purchased, help must be readily available. From the point of view of a business competing within a certain market or industry, it is necessary to be recognized, and to constantly maintain or increase one's market share. At the bottom of all these needs is communication, and that is exactly what the call center is there to provide.

This may sound simple, but it isn't. Communication is no longer just a matter of answering the phone. For a start, there are several different modes of communication - phone, fax, email - and clients use them all. In response to this, there are several solutions that make it easier to compile and integrate communication from all these different sources. Computer telephony integration, or CTI, is important to every major call center. This is just one example of a solution that a large call center is able to provide, while smaller, in-house centers may find it harder to keep up to date.

Because of the sheer number of calls and other communication coming into a call center on any given day, it is important that the calls be managed and distributed for maximum efficiency. In and of itself, answering calls in a timely fashion is vital. Being put on hold for lengthy periods of time is a common pet peeve for many customers; in fact, it has been proven that businesses lose clientele because of this. Everybody's time is valuable, and clients resent it when technology appears to make things more difficult rather than easier. Moreover, if a customer calls in order to get a solution to a problem, he or she wants to speak someone qualified to solve that problem - as quickly as possible. Nowadays, various solutions exist that allow calls to be answered quickly and distributed effectively. These include interactive voice responses, which make it easy for a call that is answered automatically to be managed correctly.

Call centers are also a major source of outreach for many organizations, and there are many technological solutions that allow outgoing calls to be made much more efficiently than in the past. With manual dialing or elementary automatic dialing, much of the call center agent's time was wasted. The agent would continually call numbers that were not answered, out of service, or busy; he or she would reach a live voice less than 50% of the time. In fact, in the past, agents would typically spend only twenty minutes of every hour interacting with clients or potential clients. Developing a solution to this problem, and the inefficiency that accompanied it, was paramount - and sure enough, today's predictive dialers allow the agent to spend about fifty minutes of each hour interacting with clients. This is a far more efficient use of time. Predictive dialers transfer the call to an agent only when a live voice responds. They also keep track of which agents are available at a given time, in order to correctly distrubute the calls that come into the call center.

All in all, call centers today are equipped to provide a wide range of effective solutions to age old communication problems, as well as the increasing communication demands of today. There is one possible catch, however - larger call centers are far more able to provide these solutions and services. Smaller centers, or in-house call centers in smaller companies, may not be able to keep up. Keep in mind that it is not only their own client base that they need to 'keep up' with - as the demand for good communication increases, each company is competing with every other company's level of communication, service and self-promotion, as well. For this reason, many companies are turning to larger centers to outsource communicaiton services, knowing that in this way they will be able to access a full range of call center solutions.

Prodialing strives to provide concise information concerning the high tech arena of callcenters, including call center solutions, predictive dialers, IVR and much, much more. See our website at ProDialing.com (http://www.prodialing.com).

---

The Nine Principles of Customer Service for the Travel Industry©

If you want to learn how to get your clients... Read More

To Complain and Win! - My Personal Recipe

Prime directive: Make sure your claim is reasonable! Otherwise, forget... Read More

4 Customer Service Mistakes Companies Should Avoid Making

1) Being placed on hold endlessly. Don't you just love... Read More

Handling Customer Complaints

Even the best business will receive an occasional customer complaint.... Read More

How To Build a Profitable Business

It's never too soon to start saying thanks to your... Read More

Losing Angry Customers

This article offers five ways to help you deal with... Read More

Customer First Customer Service

The world of customer service is rapidly changing. Thirty years... Read More

Communicating Value

Abstract: People buy for their reasons, not yours. This article... Read More

Customer Service and The Human Experience

Historically, customer service was delivered over the phone or in... Read More

Customer Service: Why Bears Make Bad Customers

Every business owner should have a picture of his or... Read More

When a Customer Has Done Everything to Get Your Goat

You try to make your customers happy. You sincerely WANT... Read More

How Not to Get Stiffed, Improving Your Collection Procedures

Some businesses have slow paying customers or past due balances... Read More

Provide Exceptional Value - Grow Your Business

The primary objective of a business is to get and... Read More

More Customers - Watch those Little Things

Two situations, two perfectly acceptable experiences, but in one case,... Read More

Customer Service Tips for Mail Order Businesses

Can we be too good to our customers?... Read More

Creating the Right ?Viral Reputation?

Unless you are brand new to business, or have been... Read More

From Disgruntled to Champion - How to Turn an Unhappy Client Into Your Best Customer

It's a salesperson's worst nightmare- the phone call that comes... Read More

The History of CRM -- Moving Beyond the Customer Database

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one of those magnificent concepts... Read More

At the Carwash; The Customer really is always Right

You have no doubt heard the saying that the customer... Read More

Businesses Need to Rehumanise

Big companies and corporations have lost the human touch. The... Read More

Get Customers to Stop Calling You--12 Easy Ways to Save Money with Online Customer Support

Despite rumors to the contrary, the Web is not dead.... Read More

Does Your Customer Talk Back To You?

What is your customer saying about you? Do you really... Read More

Sending Mixed Signals Can Send Your Clients Away

I call it the "wave and roll."You walk up to... Read More

Over Deliver - The Key to Customer Satisfaction

Client satisfaction starts with meeting or beating the contractual obligations... Read More

Under Promise & Over Perform: The Art of Managing Customer Expectations

I'll always feel warmly about Conrad's restaurant, in Glendale, California.On... Read More

Passing the After-Sales Test

Some time ago a major UK food retailer decided to... Read More

Be A Resource

What is one of the greatest ways to add value... Read More

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

However, in the world of business, this cliché may not... Read More

Add Value - And Kill Mediocrity in Customer Service

There are two kinds of customer service we all experience... Read More

11 Ways to Get What You Want - Be a Clever Customer!

We all want great service, whether we are buying our... Read More

Clients... and 38 ways to communicate with them

As Alan Weiss (guru to the savvy consultant) says: "It... Read More

Your Career Plan--Think Like A CEO

You've been going 6-to-late; exhausted by running the supersonic treadmill... Read More

Quality vs. Quantity

There is a battle in Call Centers. The teams are... Read More