IS 81 IS Elective 2 Contact Center

Assignment #1
1. Activities and Operations inside a Call Center.
- Call Center Activities
Call Center activities spread over multiple fields.

Customer acquisition

Lead generation

Call center survey

Customer care

Customer acquisition includes:

the marketing process of obtaining new customers;
the process of converting existing prospects into new customers.
In the traditional approach to customer acquisition mass marketing (billboards,
magazine advertisements, etc.) is combined with direct marketing (telemarketing,
mail, etc.) campaigns based on the knowledge of the particular customer base that
was being targeted.

Lead Generation is a general business practice that refers to creation or

generation of new potential business customers, generally operated through
a variety of marketing techniques. It facilitates a business's connection
between its outgoing consumer advertising and the responses to that
advertising.

Call center performance has a great impact on the bottom line. Being aware
of this, many companies initiate call center survey programs to measure the
performance of front-line personnel and improve customer service.

Customer care is usually the frontline of a business. Customer satisfaction plays an

important role not only in keeping customers but also in attracting new customers
through positive referrals.
A call center is an optimal solution for customers that
1. need information regarding their bills;
2. need to cancel a service;
3. require support with a company's equipment or service.
4. Direct response
5. Direct Response is a call center that refers to sales that are generated
by customers contacting a company to purchase a product or service.
6. The consumers may find a product or service that they would like to
purchase through a catalogue, TV or radio commercial, a phone
number posted in an advertisement or on the internet.

IS 81 IS Elective 2 Contact Center

MIT

Marlyn C. Madayag,
Subject Instructor

Call center operations

-There are 6 key components which should be integrated into the call centre
operation:

Location, building and facilities, Customer, Technology, Process, People,

Finance and business management

- Location, building and facilities

Where a centre is located is critical in terms of the cost of the building but
more importantly the ability to recruit and retain employees to work in the
centre. The ease and cost to get to a centre is important for those employed
in the centre but also in the integration with the Head Office functions that
the centre needs to work with. The facilities and working environment is more
critical than for functional line departments because of the intensity with
which the Agents have to sit at their desks and the need to manage resource
patterns.

- Customer
Customers can be anyone, and the Agent needs to have the skills to be able
to adapt their style and vocabulary to suit different customer types. The
Agent talks to more customers in any one day that any other person in the
organisation.

- Technology
There are significant amounts of technology available and it is very easy to
be bamboozled by it all! It very much depends on the size and nature of your
business as to what you require. The basic equipment to handle calls is the
Automated Call Distributor but these can range from basic to a Rolls Royce!
Many centres do not fully utilise the technology that they have.

- Process
Every centre has a multitude of processes, but the biggest challenge that it
faces is to understand the end to end process from the customer perspective!
The customer journey is what happens from the point in time when a
customer decides to contact you through to the completion of that request or
transaction.

- People

People are the most critical asset in a call centre as it is they who really
deliver the business performance. Unfortunately the investment and
perception of your staff may be rather poor. The people (Agents) often have
to deal with difficult situations when things have gone wrong in your

IS 81 IS Elective 2 Contact Center

MIT

Marlyn C. Madayag,
Subject Instructor

organisation and deal with a large volumes of calls that result, whilst not
always having the necessary training or skills. However, the teams in Centres
can be very resilient and are often very social, making the centre a great
place to work. There are many different roles on offer and so they can a good
environment to start and develop a career!

-Finance and business management

There will be more management information statistics in a call centre than in
any other part of the organisation. The centre is measured from every
different angle but unfortunately, this does not always give a complete
picture! One of the most challenging roles is the planning, measuring and
reviewing of performance because so many centres are under pressure from
calls and other expectations, that being able to step back and take an
objective view maybe difficult. Most centres are run to very tight budgets so
factors such as turnover of staff will have a huge impact.

2. What are the different Call Center Terminologies?

ACD
After Call Work
Also referred to as 'Wrap Time', this describes the time taken by an agent to
complete any transaction or work for a customer after the call has ended.

ACW
Automatic Number Identification
Also known as Calling Line Identity (CLI), this is a feature on telephones where you
can see who is calling you before you answer. A common feature on many phones
today - and also very helpful in a personal and business sense.

ANI
Agent
Also known as a "Customer Advisor" or often as "Representative", these are
people
who correspond with customers on behalf of a company. This can be through
any
channel, for example by receiving and making customer calls, responding to
emails
or social media interactions.

Agent
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber
ADSL is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data
communications
technology that enables faster data transmission.

IS 81 IS Elective 2 Contact Center

MIT

Marlyn C. Madayag,
Subject Instructor

ADSL
Application Programming Interface
API specifies how some software components should interact with each other.

API
Average Handling Time

A call center metric for the average duration of one call.

AHT
Applet
Small application that performs one specific task that runs within the scope of
a
dedicated widget engine or a larger program, often as a plug-in.

Applet
Blended Universal Queue System
Combination of email, chat and other data enabling universal queuing and
call
blending.

BUQS
Customer Experience Management
A collection of processes a company uses to track the interactions between a
customer and the company.

CEM
Call Blending
An effective strategy to essentially smooth demand of inbound and outbound
calls.
For example, an agent may receive a high volume of inbound calls at a
specific time
each day, so at this time outbound calls will be kept low and vice versa.

Call
Blending
Call Recording
Includes the recording and storing of calls, normally relating to financial or
legal
transactions. The caller has to be informed before the call is recorded. For
example
"your call may be recorded for training or monitoring purposes".

Call Rec
Contact Center as a Service
A cloud deployed contact center that enables an organization to reduce
capital
expenditure and operate a fully featured, multi-channel contact center with
greater
flexibility and scalability.
IS 81 IS Elective 2 Contact Center
MIT

Marlyn C. Madayag,
Subject Instructor

CcaaS
Analogue Telephone Adaptor
ATA is a device used to connect one or more standard analog telephone to a
digital
telephone system.

ATA
Call Data and or Detail Record
A data record produced by a telephone exchange or other
telecommunications
equipment that contains attributes that are specific to a single instance of a
phone
call or other communication transaction.

CDR
Calling Line Identification
CLD refers to a service available in most telephone services, it is essentially
when a
caller's number/caller ID is either displayed or provided.

CLID
Calling Line Identity
A technology that uses CTI software to match a customer's number and their
previous call records with the company.

CLI
Cloud Computing
The means of storing and sharing computing resources online that would
normally
be found on an individual's server. This means anyone can access their
documents
from any source, while also having the guarantee that these resources are
secure.

Cloud
Computing
Colocation

In the call center sector, this term refers to a hosting service whereby a
company
can store computing resources and data in a third party data center. It's
advantages are it provides space, power, cooling and is a form of disaster
recovery.
It is a very popular system for cloud providers.

Colo
IS 81 IS Elective 2 Contact Center
MIT

Marlyn C. Madayag,
Subject Instructor

Customer Relationship Management

Business processes and applications that organize customer information,
activities,
and conversations in one easily accessible place. A good example is
Salesforce.

CRM
Corporate Social Responsibility
A widespread business term simply referring to the ethics of a company, for
example in terms of environmental awareness and social factors.

CSR
Computer Telephony Integration
The ability to combine previous contact history and data with an incoming
call,
email, etc. This can save a huge amount of time for agents and customer,
and can
improve customer experience as all data is on hand.

CTI
Customer Experience
CX describes a customer's experience when in contact with a call center. It
can be
based on aspects such as; waiting time, customer service, whether they felt
the call
was helpful, etc.

CX
Digital Access Signalling System

A digital telephone line that connects call centers and telephone exchange. It

allows
up to 30 calls to be carried out on one set of telephone lines at the same
time.

DASS 2
Dial Direct In

This is a system that informs the company what number callers used/are
using, for
example an extension or geo locator. This is helpful for determining how to
answer
an incoming call.

DDI
Direct Inward Dialling

DID is a service that provides a direct telephone number for calling into a
company's PBX (Private Branch Exchange). This therefore offers customers an

IS 81 IS Elective 2 Contact Center

MIT

Marlyn C. Madayag,
Subject Instructor

individual phone number for different workstations.

DID
Dialled Number Identification Service

This is a system that informs the company what number callers used/are
using, for
example an extension or geo locator. This is helpful for determining how to
answer
an incoming call.

DNIS
Digital Subscriber Line

Technologies that provide Internet access by transmitting digital data over

the wires
of a local telephone network.

DSL
Enterprise Resource Planning

The name given to a management software that oversees core business

processes
and determines staffing levels. It's useful for companies so they can see an
integrated view of the business, and manage each business stage at different
levels

IS 81 IS Elective 2 Contact Center

MIT

Marlyn C. Madayag,
Subject Instructor