Call Centers - A Brief Report

Call Centers - A Brief Report
Call Centers are now the sunrise industry with thousands of such centers operating around the world, employing millions of people and catering to probably billion of callers worldwide. The term call centre is self-explanatory; people who "call" the customer service cell of any company, are answered by a team in these "centers", hence the term "call centers". Call centers, as a business establishment, had existed in some primitive form since the late 1970s and 1980s. The business really started to boom during the world economic growth of the 1990s and the rapid growth in computers that enabled VOIP call centers reducing the costs. Now these centers are throughout the world, catering to local, national and international demand. A typical call centre has at least a dozen to hundred computers, while a really large centre can have hundreds of computers or workstations assigned to one individual. The workstations are fully networked with the latest software and hardware. The software includes pre-programmed responses that target FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) of the customers, which can be easily repeated by the call centre employee. Sometimes a call centre can handle multiple forms of communications like faxes, emails, chats and so on. This is called "contact centre". In this case, a person can just respond with automated responses etc. The hardware for a call centre consists of a decently powered computer, with headphones and microphone to attend to calls instantly and individually.
A call centre need not always be situated in the region or country where the calls originate. Instead, these days we find that call centers are located halfway around the globe, thanks to the Internet, which has revolutionized voice communications, by reducing costs. Today a person in New York, U.S.A. could very well be talking to someone here in the Philippines and might not know the difference. The reason for such a business scenario is that with increasing cost-cutting measures being undertaken by the corporations, jobs are being shifted to the developing world where incomes are low. With countries like the Philippines having a huge pool of English speaking talent, it is then no wonder such a situation came about. Though many in the West have protested about the loss of jobs, the pressures of a global economy and competitiveness of the world trade have put such concerns aside. However, as with any improvements in technology, call centers do have its pitfalls too. Many, in the west have complained that the person on the other end often speak in a different accent which is sometimes quite confusing for the client. Still others have found that these call centers sometimes indulge in fraud as they have access to a foreigners' credit card accounts to other important details. However, such issues are smaller than the benefits that the industry has provided to companies worldwide and therefore, call centers are considered to be the way forward in maximizing customer satisfaction, integrating company records in one place and reducing costs for the client, thus inducing overall growth.