What is a call centre, how does it work?

A call centre is a term for an office where a company's inbound calls are received or outbound calls are made.

Call centres employ many staff members in customer service, sales and support roles. If your company works with a call centre, you are likely to work with a dedicated account manager.

Some call centres are larger than others. Some also focus on answering inbound calls, wheras others focus more on telemarketing or sales.

There are many advantages to a call centre. By centralizing telephone-based services in one location, companies can become better organised and easily adjust their staffing levels.

Call centres can be located almost anywhere, but the caller need never know their location as they will think they are just calling the company. This allows companies to take advantage of time zones and trade internationally.

Many call centres use various technologies to help improve their performance and track customer service and experience. The company can then analyse these results effectively.

Inbound call centre uses automatic call distribution, this is where incoming calls are assigned to representatives in the exact order they are received.

Other call centres work differently, they utilize call monitoring. This is where customer calls are randomly monitored to ensure that phone representatives are working properly and fulfilling quality standards.

Call centres have become increasingly popular as companies look for ways to save money, rather than hiring an in house call answering team. Investing in up to date call centre equipment and staffing can be expensive for a company, so some companies choose to outsource as a way of saving money. Some say it can save the company thousands and thousands of pounds a year. Larger corporations can save even more money by outsourcing a call centre service.