Can you imagine a world without call centers? There would be no technical support, no person to speak to about changing appointments, and no way to get live information from the comfort of your home. While all call centers serve the same basic function of communicating information to customers or potential customers, every call center serves different purposes and goals.
Call centers are designed to provide customer service by handling large volumes of phone calls. Their role is essential to business success. Since there are many different businesses, there are multiple types of call centers with many different responsibilities and services. Outlined below are a few of the different types of call centers to give you an idea of what type of call center would be best for your business goals.
Inbound Call Centers
Inbound call centers focus on receiving calls from customers. Their main objective is responding to existing customer concerns and new customer inquiries. Inbound call centers are the most common type of customer service and may provide the following services:
- Providing product or service support
- Processing orders
- Addressing concerns or questions
- Transferring calls
The inflows of calls are dependent on the number of daily callers. Some days agents may have a high frequency of calls, while other days agents will have a low call volume.
Outbound Call Centers
Outbound call center’s primary focus is to make calls that reach and attract prospective customers. These types of call centers are a great way to expand company outreach and save costs. There are three main responsibilities and services that outbound call centers offer:
- Market research
- Outreach
- Sales and leads
Calls are made to existing customers to welcome, inform, and collect information. Handling complaints about purchases and bills is also a responsibility of outbound call centers.
Multichannel Contact Centers
With the increasing channels of communication, businesses need to incorporate multiple ways to connect with customers. Rather than specializing in inbound or outbound services, multichannel call centers focus on a variety of capabilities. Their larger pool of communication channels includes inbound calling, outbound calling, websites, email, online chat, social media, and many more.
Omnichannel Contact Centers
Omnichannel contact centers take a multichannel approach one step further. After configuring all the communication channels, an omnichannel combines them into one system or strategy. This approach provides a customized experience for agents to interact with customers.
Virtual Call Centers
Some businesses have opted for a virtual call center. Employees work remotely since the call center does not operate from a physical location. This gives virtual call centers the advantage of lowered operating costs, easy marketing integration, and lower rates for customers.
Industry-Specific Call Centers
Industry-specific call centers are just as the name implies, separate call centers designed for each industry. Earlier, we mentioned how different businesses have different types of call centers. Within these different types, the goals and processes each call center has also differ depending on their industry. Below are just a few examples to give you a feel of how goals may differ.
Healthcare
Healthcare or medical call centers are responsible for relaying messages between customers and healthcare professionals. Agents handle hospitalizations, patient-to healthcare provider connections, prescriptions, test results, and appointment scheduling. Differing from traditional call centers also means separate healthcare call center metrics.
Insurance
An Insurance call center is responsible for providing important information between policyholders and the insurance company. Policy changes, new policy applications, answering questions, and health insurance are all services these types of call centers offer. Focusing on the correct metrics, audience, time, and cues is necessary to maintain customer satisfaction.
Financial Services
Financial service call centers help people manage their money. They are responsible for a wide range of financial transactions like deposits, withdrawals, and paying bills. Since they are dealing with people’s financial information, establishing trust and assurance upfront is vital to a financial call center's success.
How Hiya Helps Your Call Center
The Hiya Connect Voice Performance Platform is a great tool to help all types of call centers. Hiya Connect provides enterprise intelligence and increased influence over the performance of voice calls. Branded Calls increase answer rates, decrease the cost to connect, drive faster lead conversion, and improve customer satisfaction. No matter what type of call center you run, Hiya can help you secure your calls and improve customer outcomes.
Looking for more ways you can improve your call center? Download our Call Center Metrics eBook to learn more about which metrics you should be tracking.
