"Customers are not new, relations are as old as a buyer and a seller and so is not management".
The concepts of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) have been there since the concept of buying and selling came into being. CRM is broad term used by companies to manage their relationships with their customer. Operational CRM is within CRM is automation or support of customer processes that include a company’s indirect sales or service representative. Call center is a kind of CRM service provider that a company operates internally or by outsourcing it.
Call centers consist of IT infrastructure with telephone and Customer Service Representative (CSR) providing information to the customer about airlines, banking, hotels, technology etc. It typically constitutes a set of resources (typically personnel, computers and telecommunication equipment), which enable the delivery of services via the telephone. The working environment of a large call center could be envisioned as an endless room with numerous open-space cubicles, in which people with earphones sit in front of computer terminals, providing tele-services to unseen customers.
Recently with the advancement of technology call center has become predecessor of new service center known as contact center. Contact center has capability and service features that every call center has, but not vice versa. Basically contact centers are extensions of the call center with multimedia capabilities. These includes the remote service center where the traditional or Internet Telephony service is enhanced by some additional multi-media customer-contact channels, commonly Interactive Voice Response (IVR) or Voice Response Unit (VRU), e-mail, fax or web interface(possibly chat). Voice Response Units (VRU) is the industrial versions of answering machines, including the possibilities of interactions. VRU helps in routing the call to callers to the appropriate CSR by identifying their service and needs or in some case the caller may not interact to CSR and they may be served with information by IVR only (note:this reduce the CSR hiring cost).Call center are centralized offices where large numbers of workers can be managed and controlled by a relatively small number of managers and support staff. They are often supported by computer technology that manages, measures and monitors the performance and activities of the workers.
Krishna Sapkota
http://www.bitthing.com
