What is a Contact Centre?

A Contact Center (also referred to as a customer interaction center or e-contact center) is a central point in an enterprise from which all customer contacts are managed. It typically includes one or more online Call Centres but may include other types of customer contact as well, including e-mail newsletters, postal mail catalogs, Web site enquiries, Web Chats and the collection of information from customers during in-store purchasing.

A Contact Centre is generally part of an Enterprise’s overall Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and is typically a modern Unified Communications Solution with specialised software that enables contact information to be routed to appropriate resources, contacts to be tracked and full customer interaction history to be gathered and managed. A Contact Centre is considered to be an important element in multichannel marketing.

In a world of instant gratification, first contact resolution in a contact center is becoming paramount. Simple communications between your Call Centre agents and the
rest of your organisation enables you to make this a reality.

Companies that communicate effectively both outside and within the organisation to
create a cohesive strategy have significant advantages over companies with disjointed
communications. When the left hand does not know what the right is doing, those
involved face embarrassment as well as low customer satisfaction and lost business
opportunities.

Contact Centres are the channel most companies use to communicate with customers, so these centres must effectively communicate with experts in other parts of the company as well as with customers, even more so than other business units. In cases where additional information is needed, the sooner agents can produce answers, the faster customers are satisfied and the more likely they will continue to do business with the company.
In a recent article in Contact Center World, entitled “Call Center Frustrations May Cause Consumers to Shop Elsewhere” it was noted that 68% of customers hang up if they have trouble hearing a call centre agent. This includes a bad connection, poor voice quality, faulty speech recognition software, an agent mumbling or having an accent that is difficult to understand.

The report was based on a survey of 3,925 consumers in the United States, U.K, Germany and France, and makes a good point about the level of investment a call centre requires to really deliver.

Call centres are implemented to serve people and are generally the focal point of contact a customer has with an business. Companies often don’t invest sufficiently in the right technology and people to deliver the service that would satisfy their customers, let alone please them.

Customers contact call centres for assistance, so they key is to not leave them dissatisfied when they make may be their only call. An inbound call centre is an opportunity for a business to really impress its customer base and deliver exceptional customer service, which is what is required to ensure repeat business.