We have all interacted with a Call Center at some point. Remember the time you got in a fender bender and had to call your insurance company? Or when you phoned your cellphone provider looking to change your plan? What about when you were eating dinner and those pesky marketers called asking if you would like to participate in their survey? All of these examples most likely involved a Call Center.
Although Call Centers have been around for a while, they have improved over time. The traditional view of a Call Center is a large open office, packed with cubicles and agents, receiving inbound and placing outbound phone calls. Call Centers’ sole focus was on voice calls. But now, they have evolved to other forms of communication and are recognized as Contact Centers.
A Call Center and a Contact Center have some similarities. They both are tools for customer service, involve telephone channels, and, well, that’s where the similarities end. Some would argue they both have several agents, but the fact is your business could operate like a Contact Center with only a few employees. Hey, you might be a Contact Center, but you don’t know it yet.
The difference between a Call Center and Contact Center are the methods of communication and overall customer experience. Before the advanced technology of a Contact Center, customers were being routed through an endless IVR when calling a Call Center. Today, a Contact Center uses applications that provide a modern and efficient way to connect the customer to the company.
Now a Contact Center is not just handling calls. They can connect with customers through other applications like:
- Instant Message
- Web Chat
- Social Media
- SMS
In the upcoming release of Version 6, Bicom Systems changed the name of our Call Center Edition to Contact Center. The direction we plan to take PBXware in is to do more than just phone calls. Our team is working hard to provide other forms of communication for our users to get in contact with their customers.
Look for upcoming versions of PBXware, where we plan to implement omnichannel strategies for your contact center. To learn more about PBXware, visit our website or send our sales team an email at sales@bicomsystems.com.