Call Center Metrics

Call center is a computer operated centralized office that is being administered and operated by companies to provide a proper support and information inquiries with the customers. Various companies do setup their call centers to even deal with their clients abroad and maintain a proper communication channel between them. Call centers may said to be a kind of help desk where number of employee do sit around in office with a computer, head-set and a telephone to provide in-time support to the consumer of the company products.

A call center is very often operated in an open work place with number of employees working together 24/7 in shifts to provide all time support to consumer world-wide. Calls from consumers and clients from all over the world are being entertained through these employees. Outgoing call is also being made for telemarketing, clientele and debt collection. There are several wings in call centers, each of which is imparted with a specific task. A section is defined for collective handling of e-mails, fax, letters and other hard-copies of important documents. Depending on the product range of the company, number of sections are defined and being operated by the trained employee. Those employee are first imparted with in-depth knowledge of all the good and bad aspects of the product he is about to deal with. Customers may put on variety of questions which they have to sort out with patience.

Each of the computers installed in a call center can either be independently operated or may work under a common computer network, including mainframes, microcomputers and LANs. Hence all the computers have a common pathway so as to maintain a collective track record of all the customer details and respective performance of the employees. Computer network are interconnected by star topology or sometime bus topology as per the requirement. Voice data and the pathways are linked through new technology, termed as computer telephony integration.

Most of the call centers do maintain a key performance indicator (KPI) as a financial or non financial metrics to measure overall progress rate of the company. The overall management of the business is traced and conclusive result is taken out with this key performance indicator. The present state and the prescribed course of action is accurately being judged by this key performance indicator.

Call centers are centralized to enhance company’s performance and cut the extra costs due to unnecessary work flow. A streamlines and uniform services is provided to consumers of the company. Latest computer technology is installed to monitor quality control and performance activities of the workers. Many call centers do adopt workforce management software that generates an automated schedule to meet an anticipated staffing level needs. As per the software, a scorecard is maintained that guides through a proper work flow in every section depending on the wrap-up time, average call duration, number of calls in queue etc. A close view to the consumers with different languages other than English is also given importance by hiring employee with variable language skill

Tags: call center, service

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 4:31 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.