Inbound Call Center
The Ever Changing Inbound Call Center
Inbound call centers deal exclusively with inbound telephone calls from company customers. Often companies have both outbound and inbound call centers in order to best meet their business and customer needs. Since call centers rely so heavily on telephony, as well as their customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, the recent advances in Voice over IP (VoIP) technology have dramatically changed call center capabilities.
The Inbound Call Center and VoIP
Traditionally, inbound call centers have had to operate their voice (telephone system) and data (CRM, ERP and data network) networks separately. The reason for this is that voice networks utilized a circuit switched data transport method, while data networks utilized a packet-based transport method.
With the advent of VoIP (a technology that converts analog voice packets to digital packets for transport across an Ethernet based internetwork using the Internet Protocol) and IP-based phone systems, it’s now possible to integrate an inbound call center voice and data network in a converged manner. This convergence is made possible by the existence of a common technology layer between the VoIP and data network; namely the Internet Protocol (IP).
Now, rather than run two separate networks that are unable to “talk” to one another, an inbound call center can leverage VoIP technology to integrate their voice and data. This allows for many benefits that increase call center agent productivity, performance, and efficiency.
The Benefits of VoIP for an Inbound Call Center
For many inbound call center operators, much of the discussion about the benefits of VoIP is about the cost savings that can be realized due to the low per-minute service charges. Of course, saving money is an attractive idea, but there are many more benefits inbound call center can take advantage of by using VoIP:
Create a distributed “virtual” inbound call center allowing call center agents to work from home while still having access to internal systems
Further realize savings by eliminating the costs associated with the upkeep of separate voice and data networks
Increase operational efficiency by eliminating repetitive and complex tasks through systems automation and integration
Increase sales revenues and profits through event and or action based screen pop ups that present scripts, product information, and up-sells to call center agents during communications with customers
Improve customer loyalty and satisfaction through access to real time information
Provide customers with web-based interactions such as web callback, web chat, and web collaboration
Route customer phone calls based on center agents skills and availability thereby enhancing the customer experience
Migrating an inbound call center to VoIP
Making the switch to VoIP for inbound call centers lies outside the scope of this document, because it represents a major monetary and operational investment. As each inbound call center is unique, so too are their needs, and therefore the migration path for each inbound call center will vary. Fortunately, there are numerous vendors and specialized resellers that deal in the products and services for migrating inbound call centers to VoIP.
For more information on the migration to VoIP and the inbound call center, contact Fonality.
