Monday, April 15, 2013

Top 5 Must Have / Essential features to start a Call Center

We have been interacting with 1000's of SME's in the industry and quite often the customers are unaware of what features are a must have in a Call Center solution and also what each of it means. This article in our blog post tries to explain the Top 5 Must Have Features in a Call Center solution without which no technology/software can claim that they have a solution for your call center.

Top 5 Must Haves:

  1. ACD (Automatic Call Distribution)/Queue Management: In Simple terms ACD  is a feature which ensures that any Inbound or Outbound call is connected to the Right Idle/Free Agent. It is a very important and basic feature which connects the customer Faster and also ensures that all agents get approximately equal amount of work distribution - Could be number of calls in a sales organization, could be talk time in a support organization. Queue Management allows you to manage your call flow into the contact center efficiently. Click Here for more. 
  2. CTI ( Computer Telephony Integration): CTI connects the ACD to the client CMS/CRM. The primary function of a CTI is to give the screen pop of the caller information ( in case they are an existing customer) or give a Add customer page in case of a unidentified caller number. This saves the agent from wasting time looking up customer information and it acts as a major productivity tool for  the Call Center. Also, it ensures customer is not aggravated from repeating information to the agent since the POP shows this info.
  3. Live Monitoring Systems/Dashboards: The primary/ basic setup in a contact center is there is a team which handles calls and there is a Team Lead/Supervisor who manages & monitors them. Live Monitoring is a basic feature which provides necessary tools to the contact center supervisor in monitoring agents status ( whether they are free, on a break or busy talking to a customer) and if necessary allows the supervisor to use Call Barge in Features like  Snoop the call - To listen to the call without being heard or do a Call Whisper - where you can tell the agent on what to talk or Barge In - where in you get into a conference with the agent and customer.
  4. Dialers/API Integrations: Though the traditional view point is dialer is something which is used in a sales centric Call Center, modern day implementations include auto call backs to Unanswered calls, Auto dialer for converting leads coming from Aggregators like Just Dial etc. Though Dialers are a must, the system is still not so easy to integrate without API's or a strong IVR platform. Though traditional contact center players do provide integrations, Check if your Contact Center technology provider works with API's for IVR and Dialer Integrations ( We at http://cloudagent.in do provide these).
  5. Audio recordings: This is the most sought after feature by almost all Contact Centers. They are a must in many Contact Centers where regulatory norms prescribe 100% recordings and storage of over an year. Based on your Organizational Information Retention Policies, You might need to store longer than this. However, almost 90% of contact centers use audio recordings for agent performance reviews than anything else.
Next time when someone approaches you and says they are providing a call center solution, do check if they provide these basic features. Though a good reporting structure is a good to have ( probably 6th most important feature), you can run ops with out reporting but not without the above 5 features. Hence , this is our choice of the Top 5 Must Haves in a Call Center.

About Us:
We at http://cloudagent.in provide our customers all these features to our customers. If interested ,you can reach us at sales@cloudagent.in or call us on our toll free at 1800 200 0820.

12 comments:

  1. Yeah, the most effective of them is “process simplification or make it easy”. That's why people prefer inbound call center services because they are proficient in their work and can easily tackle clients for small or medium sized business. Recently we are facing a rush hour due to Miami auto show, but as professionals we manage rush time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for this fascinating blog post. I will appear for your weblog regularly right now. I'm thinking about this topic considering that many years and you could have good info.
    CCS's Inbound Call Center Services

    ReplyDelete
  3. Again, brilliant weblog ! You put genuinely uncommonly obliging information. Keep it up. free business calls

    ReplyDelete
  4. In this guide, I will show small business owners how easy it is to set up their own customer service call center and benefit from the professional level of service typically reserved for more established organizations. call center dashboards

    ReplyDelete
  5. Pretty good post.wanted to say that I have really enjoyed reading your blog posts. Any way I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you post again soon


    financial advisors Bangalore
    financial planners in Bangalore
    registered financial advisor
    financial advisor Bangalore
    property investment advice
    best financial advisors in bangalore
    online financial planning

    ReplyDelete
  6. thank you so much for this very usefull information. It's just a very effectively written article. It will likely be useful to anyone who makes use of it

    International School in bangalore
    Best International school in bangalore
    Best IB Schools in Bangalore
    Top international school in bangalore
    IB School in Bangalore
    International School in Bangalore

    ReplyDelete
  7. Its my great pleasure to visit your blog and to enjoy your great posts here. I like it a lot. I can feel that you paid much attention for those articles, as all of them make sense and are very useful
    LDPE dealers in Chennai
    LDPE plastics materials dealers in Chennai
    LDPE wholesalers in Chennai
    HDPE dealers in Chennai
    Reliance HDPE plastics materials dealers in Chennai
    HDPE plastics materials dealers in Chennai

    ReplyDelete
  8. I'd like a person's location. It really is better than notice everybody explain in words inside the life blood as well as legibility about this topic required region are often easily discovered. call centers santo domingo

    ReplyDelete
  9. You may inform them right away about your adventures and how much fun you are having. Going abroad and discovering that your phone directory is kept on the local SIM you left in your accommodation is the most aggravating thing ever! IoT SIM Card

    ReplyDelete