Call Centre Vs. Contact Centre

Call Centre

A call centre or call center is a centralised office used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone. A call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers. Outgoing calls for telemarketing, clientele, product services, and debt collection are also made.

A call centre is often operated through an open workspace for call centre agents, with work stations that include a computer for each agent, a telephone set/headset connected to a telecom switch, and one or more supervisor stations. It can be independently operated or networked with additional centres,often linked to a corporate computer network.

Examples include utility companies, mail order catalogue retailers, and customer support for computer hardware and software. Most major businesses use call centres to interact with their customers. Some businesses even service internal functions through call centres. Examples of this include help desks, retail financial support, and sales support. A contact center, also known as a customer interaction center is a central point of any organization from which customer contacts are managed. Through contact centers, valuable information about a company are routed to appropriate people, contacts to be tracked and data to be gathered. It is generally a part of company’s customer relationship management (CRM). Today, customers contact companies by calling, emailing, chatting online, visiting websites, faxing and even instant messaging.