A call centers is an office where a company's inbound calls are received or outbound calls are made. Call centers are more and more popular in today's society, where countless companies have centralized customer service and support functions. Call centers employ many staff in customer service, sales, and support functions.
Call centers are often large offices staffed with representatives who either make or receive phone calls. Depending on the size of the call centers, a single office could have anywhere from a few dozen to hundreds of telephone staff. Depending on the needs of the company, call centers can make either incoming or outgoing calls.
A number of call centers focus on answering inbound calls, such as a bank that gives out a toll-free number for customers needing assistance. In this example, call centers representatives can give account balances and take loan applications over the phone. Other call centers focus on outbound calls, such as a survey company, where representatives make outbound calls to ask people to answer survey questions over the phone.
A call centers is a physical place where customer and other telephone calls are handled by an organisation, usually with some amount of computer automation. Typically, a call centers has the ability to handle a considerable volume of calls at the same time, to screen calls and forward those to someone qualified to handle them, and to log calls. Call centers are used by mail-order catalog organizations, telemarketing companies, computer product help desks, and any large organization that uses the telephone to sell or service products and services.
Call centers can provide a number of advantages to companies. By centralizing telephone-based service and support in one location, companies can easily adjust staffing to match call volume. Call centers can be located almost anywhere, allowing companies to take advantage of time zones and cheaper labor rates in different states and countries. As well centralize the technology needs of companies, allowing major telecommunications setups to be installed in a small handful of call centers instead of a number of smaller offices, making upgrades and training easier.
A call centers job is customer service work that is done on a remote basis using telephone and/or computer equipment. The two types of call centers jobs are inbound, in which calls are received, and outbound, in which calls are made. A call centers job may be home-based, but many call centers have an on site location with hundreds of employees.
Businesses such as cable and Internet providers, credit card companies, airlines and many others often outsource customer service work to call centers as their employees don’t usually have the time to spend on extensive customer issues. Call centers exist world-wide, but India is a popular choice for many companies as call centers in India are known to provide high quality work at a low cost. By 2004, the information technology (IT) sector, which enables the technology used in call centers, increased in India by an amazing 54%.
