Call Center

The recent tremendous growth of call centers has attempted to provide a solution to the problem of the increase in telephone communications and information overload. The setting up and operation of these call centers has, generally, been very successful. But they have also caused a considerable number of problems and complaints.

It is hard to imagine how major businesses would operate without the use of call centers and considerable research is being done to find ways of improving them. A company which has hundreds of thousands of customers who have accounts with the company would, in today`s environment, be unable to meet the needs of their customers without the use of call centers. But this is where some of the problems are to be found.

Complicated call centre exchanges which give an infinite number of buttons to press to find the correct department are one of the most irritating situations about which callers complain. One simple way of overcoming this problem would be to have individual telephone numbers for each of the main departments. This would mean extra expense for the company having to pay more for line rental. But, by reducing the number of customer complaints it would seem to be well worth the expense.

Another serious customer complaint, and one which the company operating the call center does little about, concerns telephone answering staff not having all the information available to answer customer queries. This is due to lack of training on the part of the company and the call center operator. With the large turnover of staff and little job satisfaction for the telephone operator the problem may seem difficult to overcome. It could, however be improved on quiet easily by constant monitoring of calls plus building training programs to deal with the most common problems. It is noticeable, however that many more call centers are warning customers that their call `maybe` monitored for training purposes. A lot of companies locate their call centres outside their own country, which can again cause problems for the caller. Whilst these overseas call centers do an excellent job and, in general, prove to be very efficient, there is, on occasion, difficulty with the language. Local accents, poor telephone connections and misunderstood questions all contribute to poor service. Overall, however, the number of customer complaints when judged against the number of calls answered are relatively low. For the company who uses call centers they are an excellent investment and provide a service the company could not supply without adding considerable extra cost. They are also able to offer far more services by telephone than they could by dealing with calls `in house`. Despite the problems mentioned earlier, these centers have improved communication between customer and supplier tremendously. Almost every department of large companies has set up call centers to answer queries, take orders, transfer information and offer special promotions to enhance more business. Call centers have helped to speed up business and have also managed to cut down the amount of paperwork which used to be required before the onset of these call centers. Most of these services are due to the use and improvement of computer systems and software. But that is another subject entirely. Let us acknowledge that call centers have become an accepted part of life today and, without them business would be considerably poorer.

Finally it is worth considering the benefits which call centers have implemented and how much more inconvenient life would be without them. 

It`s called progress, let`s enjoy it!