Difference of Call Center & Contact Center

What is a Call Center?

A call center is a department that handles incoming and outgoing phone calls from both new and existing customers. In a call center, communication takes place only over the phone, and the focus is on managing calls. A call center also stores call records (in line with legal requirements) and keeps call recordings secure. Calls are not used only for technical support: call center departments also handle tasks such as answering process inquiries, cold calling, and market research.

The Features of Call Centers

Telemarketing

Telemarketing is the marketing of goods or services to customers or potential customers through direct communication by telephone, internet, or fax. Today, thanks to advances in technology, telemarketing is no longer limited to phone calls; it also includes video conference calls. However, direct mail and face-to-face meetings are not part of telemarketing. Telemarketing can be Business to Consumer (B2C) or Business to Business (B2B).

Telemarketing and telesales are often confused. Telesales aims only to sell, while telemarketing is not just about making sales. The purposes of telemarketing are to:

• Maintain and grow an existing customer base
• Communicate with potential customers and make appointments
• Inform customers about campaigns
• Stay in constant contact with customers
• Collect feedback through customer satisfaction surveys
• Segment customers based on their purchasing behavior or feedback

Customer Support

Customer support is the department of a company that helps customers use its products and services. It aims to help customers who need special assistance by focusing on problems and solutions. Customers contact customer support when there is a technical problem with the company’s products or services, or when they have difficulty using them. That’s why the customer support of technology companies is also commonly called “technical service.”

Customer support can take place through multiple channels, including face-to-face, phone, email, and live chat. With advances in technology, easier communication, remote monitoring of the resolution process, and remote management of software systems, customer support through call centers has steadily grown in use and efficiency.

Measuring Team Performance

Every day, call centers contact customers in many ways and receive feedback on many issues. Companies measure team performance by analyzing this feedback. To do so, they evaluate many different areas, such as customer satisfaction, resolution effectiveness, call quality, satisfaction with the department the call was transferred to, service level, average handle time, and abandonment rate.

Surveys conducted after calls, or forms sent to customers, produce scores that are classified by topic and question. By combining all of this data, an overall result is obtained, and team performance is measured against it.

Cloud-Based Call Centers

A cloud call center is a web-accessible platform for managing customer calls and interactions. Cloud call centers emerged because, with developing technology, customers can now communicate through more than one channel, such as email, live chat, social media, and text messages. It therefore became necessary to combine and manage many different channels from a single place. We can say that a cloud call center combines a traditional call center with a voice and digital environment.

A cloud call center is call center technology hosted on a provider’s network and offered to businesses on a remote subscription model. In other words, it combines a traditional call center with a voice and digital environment. A cloud call center integrates with many different software tools and adapts to every industry.

What is a Contact Center?

Today, there are many ways to communicate other than calling. A contact center provides technical support via in-app chat (live support) or video. When the customer requests it, or for any other reason, live support can direct the customer to a representative, for example by phone. Order status updates can be sent via SMS or app notifications. Email marketing can be carried out, customer profiles can be matched by email address, and customers can follow their dealings with the company by email (for example, e-invoices and shipment tracking). Customers can also be routed directly to a representative to talk by phone. A contact center manages these and many other interactions. In other words, it manages the communication channels provided over the internet.

The Features of Contact Center

ACD (Automatic Call Distribution)

ACD stands for Automatic Call Distribution. ACD is a telecommunications technology that routes incoming calls to specific departments or agents within an organization. When there are many incoming calls or an agent is busy, it automatically sorts and forwards them. It also routes incoming calls according to many factors set by the company, such as working hours, call traffic, the customer’s past interactions, and behavioral data, and matches customers with representatives.

As the name suggests, ACD first appeared as a way to manage calls. However, with the development of technology, it is no longer used only for routing phone calls. ACD systems can route customer inquiries received via email, messaging, web chat, social media, and other digital channels, enabling increasingly complex multichannel management. In other words, ACD has become an integral part of contact centers.

Integrations

Each new communication channel added to a contact center makes it more complex. To handle this, companies use integrations. Integrations connect different systems and channels and manage this complex communication network and information system. They aim to improve both the customer and agent experience, improve internal processes, automate business processes, organize customer data, and grow the business. That is why companies need to consider the integration options of the software they choose. The most popular integrations for contact center software are CRM and BI systems, which integrate easily with the contact center and provide customized solutions when needed.

Advanced Reporting System

An advanced reporting system is software that offers a range of features. It turns data into documents by applying conditional formatting tailored to the specific needs of companies and managers. In other words, advanced reporting creates customized reports that fit a business’s needs, and you can use these reports for a variety of purposes.

These include identifying specific demographics, grouping data, creating custom calculations, and comparing sales or performance with competitors. Reporting systems also make information easier to understand by analyzing data, creating tables, converting them into charts, and summarizing and visualizing information. Without an advanced reporting system, it is very difficult to analyze your data comprehensively, taking all of it into account without missing anything. That is why an advanced reporting system is so important.

The Differences of Call Center and Contact Center

To focus on the differences between a call center and a contact center: a call center, as the name suggests, focuses on calls. A call center is phone-based, so it serves customers through a single channel, which is why it is considered traditional. It handles incoming and outgoing calls and manages the phone channel. Because it focuses only on phone calls, it pays attention to metrics such as Average Speed of Answer (ASA) and Average Handle Time (AHT). A contact center, however, manages many communication channels in addition to calls, such as messaging, apps, text, email, social media, video conferencing, and live support. As a result, contact centers manage and serve many channels at the same time.

A contact center, on the other hand, is better adapted to today’s conditions, especially because, with the development of technology, it integrates with SaaS systems. In other words, compared to a call center, it provides a centralized system for staying in touch with more customers and managing a multichannel strategy. Because a contact center can serve multiple communication channels at the same time, it can manage multiple customer conversations, which increases productivity and reduces the need for more agents. As a result, costs are lower. Contact centers generally pay attention to metrics such as Average Time in Queue, Average Abandonment Rate, and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT).

Conclusion

In summary, it is important to know the differences between the call center and contact center concepts. The call center came first, which is why it is considered traditional. It works only with phone and voice communication and is responsible for managing calls or forwarding them to the relevant person or department. The contact center, on the other hand, emerged with the development of technology and continues to evolve and become more complex. It covers all channels, including emerging communication channels. Contact centers are also compatible with other software and offer many kinds of integrations (like our product, Hipcall). Both types of centers can be used for marketing and sales. They share common goals, but their areas of use are different.

If you want to learn more about call centers and related topics, take a look at our other blog posts.

Resource:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_center_telephony