Part I
From the Ground Up: An Overview of the Call Center
In this part . . .
We answer the question “What is a call center?” and explore what makes a good (or bad) call center. If you just want to know how call centers work, are thinking about working in one, or have ever had any aspirations to start a call center of your own, this is the part for you.
In this part, we introduce a business model for building a call center and relate that model to the larger corporate mission and goals. We examine the organizational structure, exploring the roles you need to fill to ensure that the center performs according to its business model and goals. We also discuss the logistics of building a call center and some key factors to consider if you’re thinking about outsourcing your call center.
Chapter 1
A First Look at Call Centers
In This Chapter
Understanding what call centers are
Following the evolution of call centers
Knowing how call centers operate
Differentiating the good and bad aspects of the industry
For years, Réal’s mom has been asking him, “What is it you do, again?” Well, here it is, Mom: He works in a call center. In fact, he works in a lot of call centers. Okay, okay — you don’t know what a call center is. Well, this chapter explains it all.
Defining Call Centers
Here’s a basic definition of a call center: When you call, say, an airline, cable-television company, or bank, the person you deal with at the other end of the phone is a call center agent (or perhaps representative, consultant, or associate), and the office or department that this person works in is a call center. Sometimes, a call center consists of just one or two people sitting beside a phone, answering customer calls. Often, it’s a very large room that has a lot of people neatly organized in rows, sitting beside their phones, answering customer calls. To the customer, the call center is the voice of the company. If you’re angry, you often get mad at the person at the other end of the phone. After all, you’re talking to the company, right?
To the company, the call center is many things: cost center, profit center, key source of revenue, key source of frustration, strategic weapon, strategic disadvantage, source of marketing research, and source of marketing paralysis. The role of the call center varies from company to company, depending on how closely the call center works with the parent or client organization to support the company’s goals and the ability of the call center itself.
Inbound, outbound, or blended
Call centers communicate with their customers in several ways, depending on the type of call center. Call centers fall into three main categories:
Inbound: In an inbound call center, customers initiate the calls. Customers may make these calls to buy airline tickets, to get technical assistance with their personal computers, to get answers to questions about their utility bills, to get emergency assistance when their cars won’t start, to get advice from a nurse about minor medical issues, to buy insurance for their cars, or to talk to a company representative about any number of other situations.
Outbound: In an outbound call center, agents of the company initiate calls to customers. Your first reaction might be “Telemarketing, right?” Well, yes, a company may call customers in its telemarketing campaign, but companies have a lot of other good reasons to call their customers. Companies may call because the customer hasn’t paid a bill or because a product that the customer wanted has become available; they may call to follow up on a problem that the customer was having or to find out what product or service enhancements the customer wants to see.
Blended: Some call centers are blended operations, in which agents handle both inbound and outbound calls.
As we outline in Chapter 8, blending, done well, can make call center operations very cost efficient and can improve customer service as well. Contact or call center: What’s in a name?
The explosion in popularity of the Internet and wireless technologies has changed the way people communicate. People still use the phone (although it’s frequently a cellphone these days), but they also communicate with friends, Romans, and Walmart by using e-mail, online chats, Web forums, and instant messaging. Call centers have responded to this change. In fact, they’re increasingly being called contact centers to reflect the fact that they handle more than just phone calls. These facilities are centers for customer contacts in whatever ways customers want to communicate: letters, faxes, Web chats, e-mails, and so on.
Another term that you may have heard is virtual call center, in which a group of agents work from their homes instead of being situated at workstations in a building operated by the organization. Some centers are a blend of at-home agents and on-site agents. Working from home is a fantastic arrangement for many employees: The hours are often flexible, and the job has no dress code or commute. Virtual call centers can lower a company’s costs because they allow the company to optimize scheduling and spend less on real estate. (We explain scheduling in Chapter 8.)
Bottom line, each customer has to decide how he wants to communicate with the company, and the company has to respond appropriately through its contact center.
As with inbound and outbound call centers (refer to the preceding section), some companies choose to separate the handling of customer contacts by medium — a group for inbound calls, a group for outbound calls, a group for e-mail, and so on. Some call centers, especially those in smaller operations, have opted to create universal agents who handle all contact types. Call centers create universal contact agents for the same reasons that they blend inbound and outbound call-handling agents: efficiency and service.
This book is called Call Centers For Dummies, but we could just as easily have named it Contact Centers For Dummies. Throughout the book, we refer to call handling and call centers, partly because we grew up in call centers (well, not literally) and partly because phone calls still represent the bulk of commun... 
