{"id":18954,"date":"2020-11-16T16:02:23","date_gmt":"2020-11-16T16:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.potential.com\/?p=18954"},"modified":"2025-01-20T12:04:57","modified_gmt":"2025-01-20T12:04:57","slug":"call-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.potential.com\/articles\/call-center\/","title":{"rendered":"What is a Call Center? Here’s what you need to know (Updated) – Potential.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"What<\/p>\n

Millions of companies around the world rely on a call center operation to answer customer calls or to sell to customers.<\/p>\n

After the COVID-19 outbreak reduced our face to face interactions, Call Centers and Contact Centers became even more important. Customer calls have risen during the pandemic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also, Call Centers provide many job opportunities and will continue to do so in the future.<\/p>\n

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American companies employ roughly 2.9 million customer-service workers, up 30% from a decade earlier.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.<\/p>\n

In this practical article, you can learn about what is a Call Center, what are the main components in a Call Center, and also pick up some essential call center tips and call center software<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So are you ready?<\/p>\n

All professionals use the telephone as a way to communicate and engage with their customers, partners, colleagues and more so having good phone skills is everyone’s business.<\/p>\n

Anyone that wants to be, or is involved in Call Center setup<\/a> or operations for their companies would benefit from this What is a call center article.<\/p>\n

Inside sales, customer care professionals, call center agents and contact center team leaders, sales managers and individuals looking for a call center job should know what is a call center, what are the operations in it, and also know some of the best practices related to it.<\/p>\n

So let’s explore what is a call center.<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

What is a Call Center and how does it differ from a contact center?<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

A call center is a department or business that accepts inbound calls – such as inquiries or support calls and outbound calls – ie. marketing or survey calls<\/p>\n

Call centers were initially designed to handle voice calls coming in or being made out of the center.\u202f\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, as technology evolved, and people had more opportunities to interact with organizations, the call centers had to evolve too. Now they address all customer interactions including email, social media, web chat and the like. These call centers became known as contact centers as they needed to account for all customer engagements.\u202f\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Since customers would be contacting the contact center through any channel, these centers need to have a complete view of the customer across the various touchpoints in what is called a 360-degree view of the customer.\u202f\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Call centers became a very popular way to serve customers especially with the development of the interactive voice response (IVR) systems<\/a> – those automated prompts on the call that ask you to press 1 for this and 2 for that etc..<\/p>\n