Virtual Call Centers

Virtual Call Center

A virtual call center is a call center in which the call centers employees are not located in the typical office space owned by the organisation, but are dispersed. This could mean working in smaller offices or even mean employees working from home. This virtual call center is both attractive to the employee and the employer. The call center employee benefits from working from home in that they have no travel costs, both monetary and time wise. The employer benefits from the virtual call center by not having to house his employees in expensive office space. The virtual call center saves equipment costs also and can lead to lower employee turnover rates, which can be high for traditional call centers.

At the center of the virtual call center is computer software which either answers customer telephone calls with self-service options or directly routes the telephone call to a virtual call center employee wherever they may be. Telephone calls can be routed to almost anything that has a dial tone or can utilise voice over IP options. All the traditional services provided by call center software can apply such as voice recording and advanced call analysis giving info such as call length, dropped calls, answered calls etc... All the virtual call center software and hardware is hosted in a disaster-proof location. Technical support is provided.

Call Center Background

A call center is a centralized office used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone. The purpose being to administer incoming calls from consumers. Outgoing calls for telemarketing, clientele, and debt collection are also made. In addition to a call centre, collective handling of letters, faxes, and e-mails at one location is known as a contact centre.

A call centre is often operated through an extensive open workspace for call center agents, with work stations that include a computer for each agent, a telephone set/headset connected to a telecom switch, and one or more supervisor stations. It can be independently operated or networked with additional centres, often linked to a corporate computer network, including mainframes, microcomputers and LANs. Increasingly, the voice and data pathways into the centre are linked through a set of new technologies called computer telephony integration (CTI).

Most major businesses use call centres to interact with their customers. Examples include utility companies, mail order catalogue firms, and customer support for computer hardware and software. Some businesses even service internal functions through call centres. Examples of this include help desks and sales support. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "call center".