Does your company need a contact center or a call center to handle conversations? This is a critical question to project an efficient customer service strategy.

Customer support features have changed over the years. This is the result of technological evolution and change in people’s behavior. There’s been an evolution indeed: customers’ interaction with companies and collaboration between employees are increasingly within an omnichannel scenario. Despite this element, not every company has the same requirements and the same customer behaviors. Your decision-makers should choose the right specific UC system to support your customer service activities. They should know the main differences between a contact center and a call center.

The line between these two UC solutions is often fuzzy and we want to shed light on this topic because choosing the wrong center negatively impacts your business growth and your customer satisfaction. It is the first key aspect to be considered when you think about offering a 5-star customer experience!
Let’s analyze them to understand which best suits your business needs.

What is a call center?

The call center is the traditional customer service system that handles inbound and outbound conversations between customers and company representatives through telephones, despite of whether it is a legacy or VoIP call.
An automated call answering system (IVR), with sophisticated distributed algorithms, and a queue manager help this department efficiently answer a huge volume of requests. It decreases the waiting time so callers receive personalized support in the shortest possible time and the most skilled agent can quickly resolve customers’ issues. In this case, a well-trained team makes a difference in this customer support service.

What is a contact center?

The contact center is a more complex customer service system that, unlike the call center, handles inbound and outbound interactions through different channels, such as calls, instant messaging applications, social media, emails, live chats, forums, and SMS. Customers can get in touch with the company in more convenient ways for them. CRM integration is essential: all customers’ information must be well combined in a unique hub.
to promptly handle conversations coming from many channels at the best, agents should have all the information at their fingertips.

 

So is a contact center just a call center with a step ahead?

It would seem so, but there are other aspects to be considered. The difference between these two systems is not only related to the supported channels but also concerns more complex elements: 

  • skills: contact center agents are required to have verbal and written skills, social media management skills, and multitasking in addition to empathy and patience, typical in the call center department. They should be familiar with other communication channels and be well-trained for each one.
  • customer self-service: with a contact center approach customers have more possibilities to solve their problems by themselves quicker than within a call center. In this last scenario, they can only rely on customizable audio messages (IVR), while in more complex customer service they can count on FAQ webpages, forums, and chatbots. This complete self-service approach reduces costs and employees’ workload because only complex inquiries can be posed to agents.
  • technologies: the contact center puts together different channels of communication and this means it needs additional technical elements to efficiently handle a huge number of requests, such as an email response management system to automatically answer emails, and advanced analytics to track KPIs to always improve performances and ensure top-quality service.

 

The decision of which solutions should be adopted could be tricky if you don’t consider your priority business needs, your products and services, and your customers’ behaviors.  Contact one of our experts to discuss your priorities and get the most adapted UC solution.