Contact center technology has always had two major components: a way to intercept calls and a way to take messages (or otherwise meet customers’ needs).
Pre-World War II, call centers consisted of switchboard operators hand-connecting telephone calls or receptionists writing messages on notepads. Today, acronyms like CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) embody a call-routing technology that’s much more complex than the old days’.
Distributed Internet and mobile technologies, displacing previous generations’ legacy phone systems, have opened up new possibilities for answering and routing calls, tracking customers interactions, making appointments, taking orders, managing leads and providing customer services.
Mostly obsolete is “While You Were Out” pad and paper technology. Nowadays, a caller from Buenos Aires, Argentina, phoning a Canadian company’s customer service line, can have a seamless—and fruitful—conversation with a customer service representative in their home office in Oregon.
Contact center technology is efficient, affordable and robust. By partnering with a call center, companies can build strong customer service departments, from the ground up, in a matter of days.
Companies can employ fantastic customer service representatives. Employees can benefit from a distributed work model that emphasizes connection, productivity and results over commute times; rural workers, especially, benefit from the chance to work from home. Customers enjoy greater access to support and service, especially if the contact centers are located in different time zones than callers.
Information and communication technology minimizes geographical distance and keeps people in touch like never before. The methods have changed since the old days, but the ideas remain the same: Get the call to the right person, and make sure the caller feels satisfied.
