What is a contact center? During the last weeks we have been highlighting the importance and evolution of call centers and contact centers and all their benefits when it comes to managing the relationship and interaction with customers.
In this post we want to go back to the beginning and explain the main points to understand what we are talking about when we talk about the contact center, its role when it comes to acting as links between the company and customers and how it helps to provide them with an adequate experience to get them to acquire our product. or service.
Do you want to know more? Keep reading!
What is a contact center?
First of all, it is necessary to define what a contact center is. Also known ascustomer interaction center, a contact center is that department or area of a company that is responsible for managing not only telephone calls between the company and customers, but also any type of contact through the different communication channels: chats, social networks, SMS messaging or email, among others.
And what is its main function? A contact center is responsible for managing all movements, procedures and customer queries that take place daily in a company, in addition to other aspects such as:
- Customer support
- Advertising
- Sales
- Quality Management
- Inbound and outbound strategies
In short, the main objective of a contact center is to get the maximum benefit from a company through a customer service that must be impeccable. This is only possible by generating a good brand image for a company, and it is necessary, every day, for agents to have three fundamental ideas “burnt in”:
- Customer experience
- Reduce expenses
- Maximize productivity
Contact center: which is the difference with a call center?
We believe that this point is also necessary because it is very common for many people to be unclear about the difference between a call center and a contact center, associating both concepts with the idea of a “call center for customers to purchase a product or service”.
Thus, a call center is, as its name suggests, a telephone call center that handles incoming and outgoing customer call traffic through a single channel: the telephone network.
A contact center, however, can also act as a call center but its work extends to other channels (thanks, mainly, to technological advances and the rise of digitization and new technologies).
Now, for the work of the agents to be agile and efficient, it is necessary that “the machine” works. That is, being able to have fluid communication with customers and provide them with a fluid and uninterrupted experience. To achieve this, we summarize it in one sentence: omnichannel call center software.
Contact center: what software should I choose?
Currently, and increasingly, we are aware of different contact center software options on the market. In this universe, choosing the most suitable for the different interests of a company can be a real obstacle course.
As we have already explained in this post, we can say that a good contact center software must have, yes or yes, five functionalities to provide good customer satisfaction. To find out if you have them or not, you must answer these five questions:
- How many communication channels does it support? If the future idea is to offer more channels (instant messaging is on the rise) you will need software that allows you to easily integrate them.
- Is it able to distribute calls and route them intelligently?
- Does it allow the integration of a CRM to manage your database?
- Can you measure quality and performance?
- Do you have multiple types of dialing for outbound actions?
Discover how our software EVOLUTION can help you
Whether you are an SME or a large company (public or private), you manage telemarketing operation projects or customer relationship services, our contact center software EVOLUTION is the perfect tool to respond, in real time and in a productive way, to all of your customer’s needs.
You want to know more? Request a demo of our omnichannel contact center software here!
