What is a Call Center?

• Giving support to the existing clients of the organisation.
• Attending enquires the organisation receives.
• Prospecting new clients & market them the company services OR products.
  

The Mode's of communication in the Call Center can be:

• Telephone (Voice)
  
• Email (Web)

• Inbound Call Center: Inbound call center's are the ones which only receive telephone calls or e-mail from clients.
  Eg: Customer support for an Organisation selling Credit Cards.
  
  
• Outbound Call Center: Out bound call center's are the ones which only make telephone calls or send e-mail to clients.
  Eg: Tele marketing for an Organisation selling Credit Cards.

Note: A Call Center can be a mix of the above 2 types also.

In today's competitive environment it is sensible to retain existing clients & get repetitive business from them as compared to making new clients.

Customer support activity helps to maintain satisfaction levels of existing clients , keep in regular touch with them & generate repeat business .
It also helps get feedback from the existing client base to improvise the products or services of the organisation.

Thus with the changing & increasing competition Call Center's play a vital role in the organisations future growth.

This can be further explained with an example:
An organisation " X " Core Business is Selling Credit Cards.
" X " out sources its Customer Support activity to anothe Organisation "Y ".
Thus " X " is known as the Client and
" Y " is known as the Call Center Company.
The Customer Support Activity which "Y" is carrying out for "X" is known as a Project.

Thus at one point of time more than One Projects may be running in a Call Center Company for Clients in having different core Businesses .

• General Category:
  Projects falling in this category are non technical in nature.
  Working on these projects require good communication skills .
  Projects in this category can be inbound as well as outbound.
  Eg : Tele marketing activity to sell Insurance products.
  
  
• Technical Category :
  Projects falling in this category are technical in nature.
  Working on these projects require good communication skills as well as basic technical knowledge.
  Projects in this category can be inbound as well as outbound.
  Eg : Customer Support activity for an Internet Service Provider(ISP)
  

The reasons for this outsourcing are:

• Cost Effectiveness:
  India has a large resource pool of skilled & hardworking people.
  This pool of skilled manpower resource is available at lesser rates as compared to the countries like USA , UK, etc.
  Eg : A Customer support agent in US will have to be paid a minimum of 2000 $ per month (i.e Rs 100000.00) whereas the same agent in India will have to be paid a maximum of Rs 10,000.00(i.e 200 $) per month.
  Thus it is a huge amount of saving for the organisation.
  
  
• Technology Developments:
  Thanks to Internet & technology developments , voice & data transfer between two countries has become very cheap & simple .
  Eg: A customer calls up a toll free no of an Organisation in USA, which is actually diverted to India & a Customer Support Agent sitting in a Call Center in India attends the call.
  The customer feels he is speaking to someone in USA but the fact is he is speaking to a person from India. That is the wonder technology does.

As per a survey, Customer Interaction Services including call centers in India employed about 8,600 people as on July 30, 2000. This segment will create employment for 2,70,000 people by year 2008.

• You should have excellent communication skills.
  
• You should be a graduate. In some cases under graduates are also considered.
  
• You should be familiar with basic working of a PC.
  
• You should have good analytical skills.
  
• You should have patience.
  
• You should be capable to handle stress.
  
• You should be a team player.
  
• You should be open to working in night shifts.
  

• Exposure to servicing international clients .
  
• Learn to handle stress & pressure.
  
• Learn to work as a team.
  
• Exposure to high end technology.
  
• Excellent working environment.
  
• Future Career prospects in other Customer Service Indutries(i.e Hospitality, Airlines ,etc).
  
• Good remuneration package.

The losses:

• Working in night shifts may upset normal biological cycle till one gets used to it.
  
• Working in night shifts may leave very little scope for enjoying social & family life.
  
• There is a possibility of the job becoming monotonous.

In this case gains are surely more than the losses & the losses can be reduced to a great extent.

Actions taken by Call Center Companies to reduce the losses:

You do not have to work at night always. The night shifts are well planned so that the entire load does not fall on a bunch of people.

In order to prevent the job from becoming monotonous, companies do job rotation by which an individual is moved to a different project OR given additional responsibilities.