Contact Center

What Is a Call Center? An In-Depth Guide

Reading Time: 22 minutes

Introduction

What is a call center and what do call centers do? Whether you own a business and are looking for tips to improve your overall customer experience, or you just want to get a better idea of the inner workings of the customer service world, this comprehensive guide will give you everything you need to know about a call center’s functions and how they benefit both the business and the call center customers.

Key Takeaways

Call center definition: Call centers are customer service operations that provide phone communications with customers. These communications usually involve activities like sales or customer support.
Call center tech: Call centers use a wide range of technologies to ensure smoother service and efficiency, including, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, call routing, and even AI integrations.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Call centers use KPIs to measure success, tracking metrics such as Average Handle Time (AHT), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores, First Call Resolution (FCR) rates, and others to ensure that business is conducted efficiently and the customer experience remains excellent.

Call centers are a staple customer service resource for businesses large and small—and demand is growing.

In the US alone, there are hundreds of thousands of call center jobs. When you take into account that in 2020 around 60% of consumers stated that they contacted customer service within a month of their purchase, it’s apparent that the traditional call center isn’t going anywhere.

But what is a call center? And how can you find the right one for your business?

Now what is a call center, really?

A traditional call center focuses primarily on voice calls.

While some call centers may offer some multi-channel customer support, the organization of a call center usually involves individual agents, sitting in a row, and taking calls.

Call centers are a traditional way to fulfill customer expectations.

When a customer picks up the phone to contact your business with a problem or a question, there will be someone on the other end to speak for your brand, provide solutions, and give them the resources they need.

Alternatively, calls can also be handled by interactive voice response (IVR) systems that enable customers to get answers to common questions or concerns on their own, without the help of an agent.

This can be most helpful when customers have simple questions such as in-store hours, checking a balance on their account, reserving a table for dinner, making or updating an appointment, or more.

Of course, sometimes call center customers need to speak to a human agent to answer more specific, detailed questions, resolve a concern, or address specialized needs.

When they do, having warm, customer-obsessed call center associates is the perfect way to provide an exceptional customer experience and develop long-term brand loyalty and retention.

How do call centers work?

How a call center works depends on several different factors, from the type of call center in question to the business goals of the company using the call center.

Many different companies, spanning a variety of industries, use call centers to further their goals, whether that be tackling large volumes of customer calls, conducting outreach, market research, or any number of other functions.

The most common types of call centers usually fall into one of three categories: inbound call centers, outbound call centers, and blended call centers, each of which has its own style of operating.

Inbound Call Centers

An inbound call center handles large volumes of incoming calls, typically customers needing support or prospective customers looking for information.

But what do call centers do with so many incoming calls?

These calls first need to be screened to determine who the caller is, their history with the company, and what they might need.

There are several ways of screening calls, including:

ANI & Caller ID: Automated data like Automatic Number Identification (ANI) and Caller ID display the phone number of the device that initiated the call, as well as the name of the device’s owner. This data can be cross-checked with the CRM system to automatically pull up any data the company already has about the caller as a customer, and if helpful, automatically route the call appropriately.
Automatic Call Distribution (ACD): ACD is the technology that allows calls to be routed to departments and individuals automatically, based on ANI data, customer characteristics, history location, or the caller’s answers to questions from an IVR.
Interactive Voice Response (IVR): As they call in, callers can answer a few questions from an automated voice. Their answers can inform where the call gets routed, allowing the proper people or departments to focus on the caller’s inquiry.
Once an inbound call is properly screened and routed, an agent can provide a variety of services from answering questions and troubleshooting to performing a variety of helpful tasks, such as tech support, scheduling, account management, and many others.

Outbound Call Center

In outbound call centers, agents will represent an organization and make outgoing calls, most often for the purposes of lead generation and telemarketing, but can also be helpful in retaining existing customers through effective outreach campaigns.

Additionally, outbound call centers tend to be utilized for market research, appointment scheduling, and a variety of other applications.

In practice, outbound call centers usually use automatic dialing software, which efficiently manages the sending of calls.

As the agent finishes up with one call, the system will queue up the next call in the agent’s schedule along with any relevant information in the CRM, before allowing the agent to initiate the new call.

Blended Call Center

Blended call centers are hybridized, equipped, and trained to both take inbound calls and make outbound calls.

These call centers follow similar procedures as both inbound and outbound call centers and may either cross-train all agents or divide those responsibilities between different teams.

Call center teams and structure

What does a call center look like, structure-wise?

Call centers are built from well-organized teams of skilled individuals, working together cohesively toward the common goal of an excellent customer experience.

Some of the most common teams and roles found at call centers include:

Call Center Director:

The director is the head of the call center and team leaders report to them. Directors closely monitor the key performance indicators (KPIs) that define success for the individual agents, their teams, and the call center as a whole. Directors will organize and delegate assignments and work with team leaders to align each team their goals and the goals of the call center as a whole.

Team Leaders:

In most call centers, agents will be subdivided into smaller teams to allow more individualized management and coaching. Team leaders manage these small teams, providing assistance to agents for more complex inquiries, and deescalating tense conversations.

Call Center Agents:

The agents are the most visible and perhaps the most important part of a call center. These are the people who directly speak with current and prospective customers. Depending on their role and the type of call center they work in, an agent might be receiving incoming calls, placing outgoing calls, or some combination of the two.

Quality Assurance:

Some call centers include a quality assurance (QA) team, whose role is to monitor phone calls between agents and customers. While listening to selected calls, the QA team will evaluate the calls based on company and regulatory standards. This ensures that the customer experience stays excellent, identifies trends, and provides coachable moments for individual agents or teams. QA teams might also use speech analytics tools.

IT:

There’s a lot of software and technological infrastructure involved in keeping a call center running smoothly, which is why IT is a crucial part of the whole process. An IT team provides the preventative maintenance, internal tech support, and overall stability and security necessary to provide consistent customer service.

Functions of a call center

Call centers can provide a variety of services and fulfill a variety of functions on your team.

Which call center model and the types of call center functions you need will depend on the current pain points you’re addressing, the goals of your business, and, of course, your current needs and priorities.

Some of the main services a call center may offer include:

Provides (potentially 24/7) customer service by phone.
Provides consistent customer support and branded messaging.
Can focus on customer service, technical support, and/or marketing/sales.
May be either inbound or outbound, or both.
Collects & analyzes customer data to improve customer experiences.
Frees up internal teams to focus on other tasks.

Some call centers may also provide some multi-channel support, such as email, social media, web chat or other capabilities.

However, a call center’s primary goal is to provide exceptional telephone support.

Call center benefits

With so many different types of call centers, there’s a lot a great call center can do to alleviate pain points within your business.

You might need to consider a call center if:

You’re struggling to keep up with the demand of customer service calls
You have a highly technical product that requires customer support
You’re struggling to grow your team at scale
You’re struggling to follow up with the amount of leads your business has
You need to do extensive market or customer research
You’re looking for a human-centric approach to drive sales

A call center can help these pain points by providing a fully managed call center team that can manage all of your customer calls and outbound call center marketing.

Want to scale your business?

Global Response has a long track record of success in outsourcing customer service and call center operations. See what our team can do for you!

Types of call centers

So what exactly are the differences between all the types of call centers?

If you’re feeling confused and not sure which is right for you, let’s break down the most common types of call centers.

Traditional call centers: A traditional call center handles voice calls, either inbound or outbound. Individual agents answer calls from customers or may make outbound calls to prospective customers. Traditional call centers typically focus on customer service and technical support.

Inbound call centers: Inbound call centers focus exclusively on inbound customer calls. Inbound call centers are most commonly focused on customer service, technical support, inbound sales calls or product upgrades, or other general inquiries.

Outbound call centers: Outbound call centers focus on sales and marketing calls, managing outbound calls to current or prospective customers. They are often highly automated and may provide everything from telemarketing and sales to lead generation and market research.

Hybrid call centers: A hybrid call center model combines an inbound and outbound call center within a single, centralized team. A hybrid model streamlines communication and provides a smoother experience to customers across the entire customer journey.

Multi-channel vs. omnichannel call centers

Multi-channel call center: A multi-channel call center, as the name suggests, manages many channels, not just voice calls. Multi-channel call centers may also provide support via email, web chat, mobile app, text, social media and more.

Omnichannel call center: An omnichannel call center is better named an omnichannel contact center, as it combines the advanced technology and centralized benefits of a contact center with an omnichannel customer support approach. Omnichannel contact centers provide tools to manage customer communications across any channel through one centralized platform, streamlining customer service and providing exceptional support.

Inhouse vs. outsourced call centers

In-house call center: An in-house call center is one that is staffed and managed completely within the given company. The company itself must hire, train, manage and perform all call center activities.

Outsourced call center: An outsourced call center is a call center partner outside of a given organization that works with the business to perform call center functions, including staffing and training a team, performing call center activities, and so on.

Onshore call center: An onshore call center is an outsourced call center that is still located within the same country as the given business. It’s not necessarily in the same time zone, though. For example, a company in Nevada may have an outsourced onshore call center in Chicago.

Offshore call center: An offshore call center is an outsourced call center that is located in a different country as the given business. For example, a company in the US may have an offshore call center in India.

Nearshore call center: A nearshore call center is an outsourced call center that is located in a different country as the given business, but one that is nearby, perhaps in the same time zone as the business. For example, a company in New York may have a nearshore call center in Canada or Puerto Rico.

Benefits of call centers

The majority of customers have been shown to prefer digital, self-service options as a first contact when troubleshooting an issue with a product or service they use.

So what is a call center‘s role in customer service?

While many people do prefer to help themselves as they begin looking for solutions, it’s also established that most people view phone interactions as the channel best suited to tackling more complex issues that require a more nuanced, human touch.

When customers are looking for more customized support, a call center functions as a more efficient way to describe the problem and receive a specific answer to their unique challenge.

From the company’s point of view, call centers are also an excellent relationship-building tool.

By taking the time to speak one-on-one with customers, call centers provide an opportunity to show interest and concern.

This investment allows customers to not only solve their problems but also to feel heard and understood, which goes a long way to fostering customer loyalty.

Common call center technology

Call centers make use of a wide variety of technologies to receive, place, manage, record, and monitor calls.

Some of the most commonly used tech solutions in call centers include:

Interactive Voice Response (IVR): IVR systems answer incoming calls with a pre-recorded message, prompting users to share some information about what they need help with. Between touch-tone options (“Press 1 for Account Services, Press 2 for Billing, etc.”) and smart voice control options, users can be directed to the agent or department best suited to help.
Customer Relationship Management (CMS) software: With a full overview of a customer’s relevant information and a history of their interactions with the brand, call center agents can be instantly brought up to speed with the context of what help the customer has needed in the past.
AI: Through speech analytics tools, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and other machine learning technologies, call centers can easily transcribe calls, detect the overall sentiments of conversations, and even route calls after intelligently determining which agent or department is best suited to handle them.
Workforce engagement solutions: These systems function as central hubs to track and manage various different parts of the call center operations, from monitoring and QAing calls to monitoring call volumes and making predictions for future demand, even assisting in the creation of employee schedules.

Examples of call centers across industries

What do call centers do for the various industries they serve?

Here are just a few of the ways that call centers can assist customers depending on the company’s unique vertical.

Billing inquiries
Cross-selling and upselling
Customer complaints and concerns about products
Processing orders and initiating returns
Shipping concerns
Troubleshooting eCommerce platforms

Enrollment and scheduling
Admissions
Billing and financial aid inquiries
Troubleshooting student accounts and platforms

Appointment scheduling and appointment reminders
Assistance with basic medical questions
Billing and insurance inquiries
Follow-up and aftercare instructions
Prescription refills

Billing inquiries
Claims filing and inquiries
Finding in-network providers
Policy and coverage clarifications
Processing claims
Verifying eligibility

Appointment scheduling
Emergency repair inquiries
Equipment troubleshooting
Pricing estimates
Technician dispatch

Billing inquiries
Policy and coverage clarifications
Processing claims

Assistance with client paperwork
Billing and payment inquiries
Case inquiries and updates
Clarifying legal cases, processes, statuses, etc.
Scheduling appointments and consultations

Information about promotions and offers
Payment and sales inquiries
Processing orders and returns
Support with distributors

Billing inquiries
Emergency support
Lease and rent inquiries
Listing inquiries
Maintenance and repair scheduling
Rental application inquiries

Inventory inquiries
Membership and loyalty program inquiries
Product complaints and troubleshooting
Questions about orders, returns, and exchanges
Warranty inquiries

Billing and payment inquiries
Emergency dispatch
Service activation or disconnection
Troubleshooting service disruptions

How to measure call center success

What does a call center look like when everything is running correctly?

That’s what metrics like key performance indicators (KPIs) seek to measure. KPIs are the important measurements of a business that are most that are most likely to indicate success.

The specific metrics used for KPIs will vary from business to business, but some of the most common KPIs that call centers typically monitor are:

This measures the average time that agents spend on each customer interaction, covering everything from actual talk time and hold time, to the time it takes to process post-call data entry. A good AHT requires balance. Too long indicates inefficiency and too short means that the calls are rushed and quality might be suffering.

This metric shows the percentage of inbound calls where the customer disconnects before speaking to an agent. If the call abandonment rate is high, that likely means that hold times are too long, and therefore a poor customer experience.

CES is a measure of how much effort the customer has to personally spend to get their problem solved. This is usually an averaged value from customer surveys. The lower the CES, the easier the experience is for the customer.

A CSAT score measures how satisfied a customer was with a particular call, chat, or other customer service interaction, usually gathered via survey.

FCR shows the percentage of problems that are solved by the first interaction, without the need for follow-up. A high FCR means that not only are the customers happy, but also that the call center is working efficiently.

NPS is a measurement of customer loyalty, which expresses how likely the customer in question is to recommend the company to someone else. NPS is usually shown as a score from 0 to 10, with the answers gathered via survey.

Selecting the right call center

So, how do you decide which type of call center is right for you? Selecting the right call center comes down to a variety of factors, including your goals, the services provided, flexibility and culture, location, security and more.

Let’s walk through ten areas to consider when selecting a call center.

Similar businesses or brands

When hiring a new team member, you’d never hire without checking their experience, right?

The same is true for call centers.

Look at what types of brands or businesses they’ve worked with in the past, and what industries they’re familiar with. Has this call center worked with brands or businesses similar to yours?

Perhaps more importantly, has this call center worked with businesses who’ve had similar goals or pain points to yours?

Knowing your industry is important, but so is an understanding of your pain points and a proven strategy for solving them.

History

Further, the history of a call center is a great way to look into the experience of the call center.

How long has the call center been in business?

What are the reviews of other businesses who have worked with this call center?

Do they have proven experience getting results?

Check the website of the call center for reviews, case studies, white pages, general history or other details that will give you insight into the history and experience of the call center.

It’s a good idea to look for call centers that have:

been in business for a sufficient amount of time
offer case studies or white pages that demonstrate their experience and results
positive reviews from other businesses

Understanding how the call center has performed in the past will give you a helpful idea of if it’s a call center that can meet your goals and needs at this time.

Services

While this is probably the most obvious consideration to make when choosing a call center, it’s one that deserves ample time and attention.

The call center or contact center you choose should be able to provide management of any communication channels you need, as well any other services you need.

If you’re looking for in-store support or field support, the omnichannel contact center you choose should offer that support.

If you’re looking for more ancillary services as well, like sales, retention or loyalty programs, look into a call center or contact center that can manage and optimize for these programs or goals as well.

Some of the services you may want to look for include:

voice calls
inbound and outbound calling
multi-channel or omnichannel models, to manage web chat, email, social media and more
customer analytics and data
advanced technology to streamline customer support
field support or in-store support
multilingual customer support

The team at Global Response provides services across all communication channels, from call centers focusing on voice calls to web chat, social media and more.

If you need additional support for sales, retention or loyalty programs, that’s also an option.

Need multilingual customer support?

Our teams can cover it.

Looking for field support or store support?

That’s also an option.

From digitally-powered technical solutions to brand specialists who will make sure your customers have a superior experience, advanced analytics and data to true omnichannel support, Global Response can help your business cut your costs, boost conversions, and power your growth.

Locations

Location is key.

This goes for call centers as well as many other things. Have they worked with customers in your geographic area?

Further, it’s important to understand the differences between offshore, onshore, nearshore and homeshore call centers, as well as the benefits and challenges of each. If you’re looking for an onshore call center, then location may be less of a concern.

However, for nearshore or offshore call centers, location becomes more important.

Some questions you may want to consider include:

What time zones will you be working across?
Will there be any language barriers that need to be addressed between your target market and the call center?
Will it be difficult to contact managers and leadership?

Executive engagement

Speaking of leadership, this is another key area to consider when deciding which call center is right for you.

The leadership of a call center determines many things, from the strategy and models the call center uses, to the employees who are hired, the quality of the services, the quality of communication and data you receive from the call center partner, the ease (or difficulty) of the partnership, the kinds of results you’re able to achieve, and more!

Ultimately, good leadership at a call center can make or break your service and experience with them—and in turn, the service and experience your customers have with your business.

It’s important to look for a call center with experienced leadership, as well as one that has leaders who are involved not only in the day-to-day operations of the call center, but also in your partnership.

Some questions you may want to consider include:

How experienced are the leaders? Do they have demonstrated management experience?
What are their methods for including and attaining QBRs?
How accessible is the leadership for your questions and concerns?
How involved is the leadership in the call center and call center processes?

Flexibility & scalability

Your business is growing fast.

Not to mention, with exceptional customer service, you’re expecting growth and sales to grow even faster.

As such, you need a call center that can keep up with your growth—and grow with you. It can be difficult to grow a team at scale, internally or externally.

An outsourced call center is a great way to grow your team at scale, and at a lower cost than managing a call center internally.

For businesses in e-commerce or retail spaces, you may want flexibility to scale your call centers and customer management resources by seasonality.

You may need to scale up or down in certain seasons, for new product releases, or for big promotions.

Your call center should provide the flexibility you need to scale appropriately in different seasons for cost-effectiveness and ongoing customer support.

Some questions you may want to consider in this category are:

What options do they have for scaling in the future?
Are there any concerns that you might outgrow them in the next 1, 3 or 5 years?
How flexible are they in terms of service packages and offerings?
How flexible are they in terms of scaling throughout the year?
Will they be able to support you if your needs and goals change over time?

Culture

Your brand speaks a specific language, has a certain culture and aims to deliver exceptional experience.

Shouldn’t your customers’ experiences with your call center be a natural fit to your brand?

While often overlooked, making sure your call center’s culture matches your brand or business culture is an important consideration.

If you’re looking for a call center for a financial corporation, for example, you’ll need to make sure you find a call center with a high level of professionalism, security and technology—things consumers expect from their banking solutions.

However, if you’re a retail or consumer-focused brand that’s aiming to build connection and loyalty through perks and products, you’ll want a call center that not only cares about your customer as much as you do, but also serves as brand specialists.

At Global Response, our employees aren’t just customer service associates—they’re brand specialists.

They know your brand inside and out and are ready to walk alongside your customers every step of the way.

We match our brand specialists with brands they care about, so that their excitement and passion shines through in every interaction.

Tech stack

Obviously, technology is an important consideration when deciding which call center is right for you.

You may want to ask questions like:

What technological solutions does this call center offer?
Does their tech stack integrate with our current operations?
Are they using top-of-the-line solutions?
What services and solutions can they provide through their tech stack? Does this align with our goals?

Some of the technological solutions you should look for in a call center include:

IVR (interactive voice response)
Automated outbound dialers
Omnichannel contact management
Cloud-based omnichannel contact solutions
Advanced data security
Robotic process automation
WFM (workforce management) tools
Social media management platforms
CRM software
Cloud computing services

Of course, not every business will need every technology available, and you may need others that aren’t mentioned here.

Considering your technical needs and goals and partnering with a call center that is able to align with those is most important.

If you’re looking for a human-centric call center with advanced technology that can integrate to a wide number of platforms and systems, Global Response offers all of the services and technologies listed above (and more!).

From cloud-based omnichannel contact management to advanced data security and WFM tools, Global Response can help take your customer experience to the next level.

Security

Call centers handle a lot of customer data.

If you’re using a contact center solution with a centralized CRM or customer communication source, there’s even more data to keep track of.

Customer data is important for any business, of course, but it’s even more important for financial and banking institutions, automotive businesses and healthcare providers.

Is your customer support team ready to handle it?

One of the most important considerations when it comes to choosing a call center is making sure they have the tools, processes and know-how needed to keep your customer data safe.

Some questions you may want to ask:

How is this call center team handling security?
What experience do they have with businesses like yours who need a high level of security?
Is this call center up-to-date on compliance standards and policy adherence?
Does the call center have systems in place to meet HIPPA requirements or other data privacy requirements?

Whether or not your industry has specific privacy standards, it’s important to make sure your call center has rigorous data privacy standards to protect your customers’ security.

Reporting & Analytics

Last, but certainly not least, it’s important to spend some time understanding contact center’s analytics and reporting capabilities.

You may want to ask:

What KPIs and metrics this call center tracks
What reporting capabilities they have
What reports and data they’ll share with you
If they offer configurable data and metrics reporting dashboards
Which data and metrics they find the most important
How they’ve used data in the past to make changes and improve

Your own goals as a business are unique.

While it can be helpful to read case studies from a call center about other businesses they’ve worked with, it’s also important to make sure this call center will be able to track, analyze and implement results from data and metrics that are important to your brand and goals.

Not sure which metrics you should be tracking?

There’s a few important call center metrics & KPIs that every call center should be tracking.

13 questions to ask before choosing a call center

In short, before you choose a call center, make sure you ask yourself these 13 questions:

Does this call center have knowledge of my business’s industry?
Has this call center worked with businesses like mine?
How long has this call center been in business?
Does this call center have proven experience getting results for pain points similar to ours?
Where is this call center located? Does this align with our needs?
How experienced and involved are the leaders at this call center? How accessible are they for our team’s questions and needs?
What services does this call center offer? Do these services meet all of our (and our customers’) needs?
Is this call center solution scalable?
What are the values and cultures of this call center? Do these values match our own?
What technological solutions and tools does this call center use? Will they integrate with our current operations?
Does this call center have proven experience maintaining customer data and security? Can we trust them to keep our customer’s data secure?
What reporting capabilities does this call center have?
What KPIs and metrics is this call center tracking, and do they align with our current goals and needs?

For a full-scale call center that can meet your business needs and supercharge growth, Global Response is here to help.

Connect with a customer service consultant today to get your call center questions answered.

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Contact Center

What Is a Call Center? An In-Depth Guide​

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