What is a Call Center
What is a Call Center
A call center is a department that handles inbound, outbound, and/or blended calls from current and potential customers. Most call centers are located within an organization and in certain cases they are outsourced to other companies that specialize in handling calls. Call centers are based on one communication channel, i.e. the telephone.
A Contact Center is a call center that provides integration with additional channels, like website chat, social media applications, email. In this case, we describe this as an omnichannel support thus omnichannel contact centers. This centers can assist with customer support on whichever channel their customers use. Also, a contact center may include several call centers.
Typical call center requirements
Typical call center requirements
Hosted, on cloud vs on Premise | Integration with Existing PBX, Network, Trunks | Nature of business | Voice only |
Call Broadcast | Toll free | SMS Broadcast | Multi-tenant |
Remote extensions | Licenses – perpetual or on-premise | Branches and their distribution | Dialers |
Queuing | IVR Interactive Voice Response | Reports | Analytics |
CRM integration | Call recording | Social media integration | AI integration Speech-to-text |
Types of Call Centers
Types of Call Centers
Who needs a Call Center - Best use cases
Who needs a Call Center - Best use cases
1. FMCG & Manufacturing
1. FMCG & Manufacturing
- Manufacturers and retailers have high customer numbers.
- They require to collect orders, sell to potential customers, collect debts and also manage customer support service for their returns and repairs.
3. Financial institution - Banks, Microfinance and Saccos
3. Financial institution - Banks, Microfinance and Saccos
- Like most industries, Finance sector requires call centers to communicate with thousands of customers daily.
- Call centers are very sensitive in this industry to protect customers from fraud features like call recording are vital
Here the Call center ideal features would be:
- IVR
- Multitenant for different branches
- Remote agent for work-from-home scenarios
- Integration to CRM for telesales
- Advanced reporting and analytics
- Omni-channel Integration to Social Media
2. Mobile/ Software application based companies (ECommerce)
2. Mobile/ Software application based companies (ECommerce)
With the influx of ecommerce businesses these companies face customer challenges which include:
- High volume of customer inquiries
- High customer expectations
- Need for efficient customer service and quick response across multiple channels
- Social media integration
- AI speech to text integration
- Scalability features, etc
4. Service industry
4. Service industry
For hotels, university intakes, hospital emergency services, logistics companies and other consultancies can receive high call volumes due to adverts on media or popularity during high season
To guarantee communication and service delivery they will require a dedicated calling system
Ideal features include:
- Call recording
- IVR
- Call and/or SMS broadcast
- Automatic dialers, etc
Our Brands
We are licensed installers and partners of call center brands in Kenya and Africa. Click on the brands below to learn more.
