There are many aspects to designing and developing a call center operation, including selecting the location, telephone equipment, networking equipment, and software. This combination of technologies and the complexity of integrating all elements effectively and economically present a challenge to the call center development team.
Building a call center internally may be feasible only for very large enterprises—smaller companies should consider outsourcing their call centers to organizations that specialize in providing these services and already have the latest technologies installed and operating, with trained staff. These organizations can often provide excellent customer-oriented services, relieving smaller organizations of the financial, managerial, and human resources issues involved in an internal, corporate call center. Calculating the overall budget for the project will determine whether to build and manage a call center internally or to outsource some or all of the operations to keep costs down and focus on customer retention. Building a call center can run to several million dollars in capital equipment alone, not to mention the cost of hiring staff and managing the day-to-day operations.
With the Internet and potentially rapid response opportunities, new ways for customers to reach companies—e-mail, Web chat, and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)—have been added to the traditional forms of communication. To prepare for these multiple communications media and to efficiently serve customers, companies need to capture information from across the enterprise and consolidate customer-related data into a central database. In most cases, customer data resides in many systems, such as order history, fulfillment, shipping, and billing. The number of sources of data can reduce the ability of CSRs to handle requests and can also contribute to errors and duplication. For corporations to handle these multiple customer contact channels effectively, integrating the varied systems is essential. Its call center facility requires carefully selected technology tools.
A complete analysis of the technology and human relations components of a call center reveals a number of planning and selection challenges for the project team charged with development, management, and maintenance of the call center operation. It also highlights the major issues to be addressed for the start-up and on-going management of the center. This analysis will involve the following major activities:
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Call management and handling
Location and size
A first step in implementing a call center is to decide on the location of the facility. Whether it is a small department in a local facility or a large, enterprisewide center, this step is important to corporate growth and the bottom line, so it must be planned carefully. The high cost of real estate in populous areas is driving many call center operations to locate in rural areas. This is especially true throughout North America, where call centers are concentrated in several regions of the United States, as well as in Canada. With the communication and computer technology available today, it is very easy to locate call centers in any area where high-speed, high-quality communication resources are available, and many organizations have made this choice.
The size of the call center refers not only to square footage but also to the number of CSRs required, telephony and LAN equipment, client desktops, and other switching and computer hardware. Because call centers usually grow in size, it is a sound planning practice to choose a site with room for expansion.
Technologies
As noted previously in this chapter, there is a wide range of technologies available to the call center development team, as well as many sources of excellent advice—consultants, vendors, and users with experience in call center implementation. The core technologies of a call center involve many underlying components, including the following:
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Networking hardware
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Automated call distribution (ACD) facilities
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PBX phone switch
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Software
Integrating all the components of the enterprise is time-consuming and expensive. It is important to determine which systems and applications need to be integrated with the call center operation, including
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Legacy systems
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Disparate relational databases
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Internet technologies
For ease of integration, it is important to select specific tools that will enable the interconnection of telephony equipment and software components.
Staffing and training
Hiring skilled staff is more important than ever in a call center operation, where the impact of effective, responsive customer communication can be critical to a company's customer relationship management (CRM) strategy. Modern call centers are much more complex than earlier facilities and require well-trained personnel. Customers are more demanding; they expect immediate response and intelligent help.
It is important to train CSRs, often for specific roles, and to give them call center responsibilities that reflect their areas of expertise. For instance, some are better on the phone and others are better at handling e-mail. To streamline the distribution of contacts and the effective use of trained staff, choose tools with workflow process support and skills-based routing. The latter feature enables the system to take a call regarding a specific product or application and then automatically route it to a representative with the appropriate skills to handle the request.
Once CSRs have been hired and properly trained, retaining them is just as important as retaining customers. Customer service representatives need to be kept up to speed on support methods, products, and processes. Keep knowledge bases up-to-date so that agents can satisfy customers in the best manner. Advanced training, recognition, and competitive salaries are essential in retaining an effective, productive, call center workforce.
Communication channels
The variety of different customer channels available for contacting a call center means that incoming calls need to be answered in a timely manner. Response processes and call management features that enable the appropriate agent to assist the caller require a definition of workflow processes and SLAs (service-level agreements) with customers. Call centers that have automated workflow and skills-based routing can effectively route the incoming calls and ensure that the calls are being responded to appropriately by trained CSRs. Integrating with the Internet is critical, because this capability provides more avenues for assisting customers with chat, self-help, and live agents.
Monitoring and measuring performance
Monitoring tools and reporting features are essential for measuring response times and the number of calls received; these data help ensure that corporate goals are being met and can also be used to increase productivity. The process of keeping a call center running smoothly is an ongoing task that needs to be reviewed and revised from time to time to address problem areas and to help improve customer relations.
Call management and handling: websites
Corporate Websites are an important adjunct to call centers. More and better information on Websites assists customers; they benefit from on-line knowledge bases and FAQs and can often resolve issues without contacting a call center, thereby easing the load on the call center. However, when Internet-savvy customers need to interact with the call center, they may prefer to use e-mail, and they tend to ask more complex questions, which require call center representatives to be better skilled.
Integrated call centers
Call centers are changing as a result of the influence of the Internet and its integration into the call center. Integrated call centers decrease customer waiting time, offer alternate access to an organization, improve customer access, and improve call routing. Numerous studies and surveys have demonstrated that companies benefit from satisfied customers, who come back for more business. In spite of the high costs of a call center, most organizations with either a large number of customers or a frequent requirement to communicate with even a small number of customers need this facility to successfully compete in the 21st-century business environment.
Vendor solutions
A number of vendors have proven success in assisting organizations to develop, implement, and integrate call centers into their corporate customer management structures. Appendix A provides a selected list of these vendors with contact and product or service information. The technology tools offered by these vendors range in price from very expensive licensed solutions, in the range of $200,000 to $300,000, to relatively inexpensive hosted models, averaging $600 to $1,000 per call center position (seat).
Selection
Among these tools, it is important to select those that fit the organization's needs and integrate well with existing telephony equipment and current applications. The tools should be compatible with PBX equipment and dispersed data sources from data warehouses, shipping, and customer accounts. Also, the tools selected need to have the capability to handle multiple customer-access channels, such as telephone, Web self-help, e-mail, fax, and Internet chat.
Integration
Integrating all these components is time-consuming and expensive; however, it is necessary to the development of an effective call center that is fully responsive to customer interactions. The list of systems and applications that need to be integrated might include the following items:
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Data warehousing systems
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Legacy systems
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Disparate relational databases
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Internet technologies
It is important to select vendor tools that are capable of integrating telephony equipment and software components with all of these systems and applications.
A 10-point call center development process
The following 10 guidelines provide a logical, step-by-step process for developing and managing a call center operation.
Select a location for the call center where there is an educated workforce
Determine the size of the facility and the number of service representatives. Real estate and labor are two key cost factors in any call center operation.
Select the underlying technology components
These will include: PBX, voice mail, automated call distribution, computer telephony integration, and network equipment, such as routers, servers, and desktop PCs.
Decide which channels to support in the call center
Channels will include e-mail, chat, phone, Web forms, text chat, VoIP.
Select software solutions that meet requirements and will integrate with existing systems
Typically, these systems will be those that contain customer information-data warehousing systems, accounting systems, and contact information.
Integrate systems when feasible
Call centers must be able to handle multiple customer channels. Integrated systems help customer representatives answer questions more quickly by having more customer information available to them. Integrating with the Internet is critical, as it provides more avenues for assisting customers with chat, self-help, and live agents.
Determine SLAs and business processes
Implement best practices-workflow and e-mail routing-for skills-based routing capability. Establish hours of operation and standard procedures for handling calls.
Hire and retain staff
Establish a hiring and training budget. Hire skilled individuals and provide training, retraining, motivation, and rewards. Identify required skills and set appropriate goals to keep representatives trained.
Finalize the budget
Make presentations to management regarding budgets and benefits. Factor in all costs, including training, hiring, hardware costs, deployment, and integration.
Establish measurement and performance processes
Software for monitoring service levels and performance is the key to measuring call center results. Survey customers to ensure satisfaction. Evaluate response times. Utilize reporting tools and continue to improve service.
Establish on-going policies for training and updating CSRs
The CSR is the lifeblood of the call center and it is important that these employees be kept up-to-date on the tools used in the center and that their job functions be kept interesting and challenging.
How to use this book
This book contains practical information on setting up and running a call center based on the 10-point development process just described, including guidelines for hiring and retaining staff along with a series of case studies that demonstrate how successful call centers operate. It will be a useful reference and guide to information systems personnel, customer service supervisors and CSRs, call center managers, sales and marketing personnel, as well as members of senior management in any organization who wish to understand the significance of a well-organized, well-managed call center operation.
Summary of topics covered
Chapter 2 provides background and a detailed analysis of the technologies required for an effective call center operation, how to evaluate and select the right technologies, and how to implement them. Chapter 3 offers guidelines for the organization and management of a typical call center, based on the experience of established, successful call center operations. Chapter 4 provides an analysis of the equally important human factors, including staff selection and training, that are so important in meeting call center operating and service-level objectives.
Chapter 5 is an important chapter for learning and understanding how successful call center operations have been implemented using a range of vendor resources and management techniques. In this chapter, a number of case studies are presented in a format that will enable the reader to assess the environment in which each call center was established, the challenges encountered by the development team, and how these challenges were successfully overcome to arrive at a successful, productive call center operation.
In Chapter 6, the significance of the call center in enhancing an organization's corporate CRM (customer relationship management) strategy is described in detail with examples of how the call center can become a major "hub" in this strategy.
Appendix A contains a selection of call center vendor resources, with brief descriptions of products and services as well as contact information. Appendix B is an extensive and comprehensive glossary of call center and CRM terms and definitions. Appendix C provides the reader with a selection of references used in the preparation of this book, as well as a bibliography of other texts relating to call centers and CRM.
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