
What Makes Contact Centers Different from Call Centers?
In this digital age, customers are looking for instant resolution of their issues and brands that fail to provide a good customer service, lose customers.
Fremont, CA: ‘Contact Centers’ and ‘Call Centers’ are both for customer service as the two involve phone channels. Those are the only two functions both these solutions have in common. While call centers often have a negative reputation, contact centers are a relatively new solution and considered better. A contact center is a customer communications management hub and it provides customer service across multiple channels such as phone, social media, email, and live chat. With the help of contact center software, customer-facing teams handle conversations coming in from all channels on a single platform. On the other hand, a call center is a customer conversations hub which exclusively uses phone channels. A typical call center system handles outbound and inbound phone calls.
Call centers only use phone channel which happens in real-time eating up the agent’s entire bandwidth. To handle peak volume hours, proper staffing is required; however, running a large team is very expensive. On the other hand, contact centers use digital channels such as email, phone, live chat, and social media. Using different channels helps deliver faster solutions and better customer experiences. An agent can handle three or more chat conversations parallelly, and different channels help distribute the load across the team in a better way.
Brands are always looking to predict problems that customer might have and take proactive approach to solve the issue before it escalates. Since contact centers operate in the digital space, they have a proactive approach as compared to a call center. Agents can track signs of frustration such as rage or dead clicks on the website, and they can reach out to customers to offer timely assistance.
A call center only focuses on phone channels, which means that the agents are not aware of the entire customer journey, and even the call center software does not help in this regard. On the contrary, contact centre software has a repository of data aggregated from various channels. By integrating the contact center software with the CRM, the agents get a unified view of the customers. The agents also get a 360-degree view of the customers as all the support channels are plugged into one platform. Agents can also attach a feedback form to identify if the customer had a good experience.
Looking at several factors, contact centers seem better than call centers. However, the selection of a contact center and a call center depends on the businesses' scale, activity, and goals.
See Also:
Top Contact Center Consulting Service Companies
Top Contact Center Solution Companies
Featured Vendors
EDITOR'S PICK
Essential Technology Elements Necessary To Enable...
By Leni Kaufman, VP & CIO, Newport News Shipbuilding
Comparative Data Among Physician Peers
By George Evans, CIO, Singing River Health System
Monitoring Technologies Without Human Intervention
By John Kamin, EVP and CIO, Old National Bancorp
Unlocking the Value of Connected Cars
By Elliot Garbus, VP-IoT Solutions Group & GM-Automotive...
Digital Innovation Giving Rise to New Capabilities
By Gregory Morrison, SVP & CIO, Cox Enterprises
Staying Connected to Organizational Priorities is Vital...
By Alberto Ruocco, CIO, American Electric Power
Comprehensible Distribution of Training and Information...
By Sam Lamonica, CIO & VP Information Systems, Rosendin...
The Current Focus is On Comprehensive Solutions
By Sergey Cherkasov, CIO, PhosAgro
Big Data Analytics and Its Impact on the Supply Chain
By Pascal Becotte, MD-Global Supply Chain Practice for the...
Technology's Impact on Field Services
By Stephen Caulfield, Executive Director, Global Field...
Carmax, the Automobile Business with IT at the Core
By Shamim Mohammad, SVP & CIO, CarMax
The CIO's role in rethinking the scope of EPM for...
By Ronald Seymore, Managing Director, Enterprise Performance...
Driving Insurance Agent Productivity with Mobile and Big...
By Brad Bodell, SVP and CIO, CNO Financial Group, Inc.
Transformative Impact On The IT Landscape
By Jim Whitehurst, CEO, Red Hat
Get Ready for an IT Renaissance: Brought to You by Big...
By Clark Golestani, EVP and CIO, Merck
Four Initiatives Driving ECM Innovation
By Scott Craig, Vice President of Product Marketing, Lexmark...
Technology to Leverage and Enable
By Dave Kipe, SVP, Global Operations, Scholastic Inc.
By Meerah Rajavel, CIO, Forcepoint
AI is the New UI-AI + UX + DesignOps
By Amit Bahree, Executive, Global Technology and Innovation,...
Evolving Role of the CIO - Enabling Business Execution...
By Greg Tacchetti, CIO, State Auto Insurance
Read Also
