Call Center Call centres are comparatively a recent introduction to the world of career options in India. The career avenues provided by call centres is one of the best suited and growing option which even a fresher can opt for. With the opening up of the Indian economy and the advent of globalization more and more companies from abroad are basing or outsourcing their call centre services to India, a trend started by GE when it established a call centre near New Delhi in 1998. A call centre is a service centre with adequate telecom facilities, access to internet and wide database, which provide voice based or web-based information and support to customers in the country or abroad through trained personnel. Call centres exist in all sectors of business including banking, utilities, manufacturing, security, market research, pharmaceuticals, catalogue sales, order desk, customer service, technical queries (help desk), emergency dispatch, credit collections, food service, airline/hotel reservations etc. The wide area of services provided by the call centres makes it a lucrative career with a range of opportunities. Traditionally, call centres meant only voice-based customer support. But now most call centres are more of a contact centre, offering e-CRM services, that include voice based customer support as well as e-mail response, web-based text-chat services and other customer interaction channels. The call centre services can be 'inbound' where in calls are received from customers enquiring about a service or product that an organisation provides. The call centre services can be 'outbound' where in calls are made to customers to sell products or collect information/money etc. Call centre services can also 'specialised' say in business processing where in calls are made from one company to another company. Some call centres stick to only domestic businesses dealing with customers within the country called domestic call centres while others such as an International call centre mainly deal with clients from abroad say from US, Europe etc. There is a great scope for Call centres in India, with a large population of educated English speaking people. The wide range of opportunities, comparatively well paid jobs for the minimum qualification it requires and the facilities the companies provide like to and fro transport, subsidized meals and medical facilities makes Call centres a good option. The Us $500 billion global IT enabled services industry is currently undergoing a paradigm shift: outsourcing. It is a phenomenon comparable to that, which affected global manufacturing from the 1960s onward. The jargon used is “ business process outsourcing”, or BPO. The trend towards BPO is creating similar anxieties among white collar workers in the developed world as it did among their blue collar counterparts a generation ago. What started with the outsourcing of mainly low end, labour intensive services such as data entry, medical transcription and simple call centre functions in the mid-1990s has now extended to more sophisticated operations. Today, It-enabled services include engineering, financial research, payroll and accounting services, insurance claims processing, tech support for R&D operations, chip design and telemarketing – this on the top of software services. What is a Call Centre? Let's face it, not everyone knows what a call centre is. When was the last time someone asked what you did and you said "I work in a call centre" and the response you got back was a look like you had antennae growing out of your head! Here is a definition of "call centre" (without the antennae): Call (verb): to make a request or demand Centre (noun): a point, area, person or thing that is most important or pivotal in relation to an indicated activity or interest The definition of call centre is changing in our opinion, but the core fundamentals of a customer making a call (via a phone, email, web site, IVR or fax) to a centre (point, area, person or thing (e.g. IVR)) will remain constant because the customer views the call as an important or pivotal activity to themselves. Call centre, contact centre or customer interaction centre - by whatever name you give it (we still call it a call centre) - operate on near identical principals of meeting customer needs in real-time or near real-time. Call centre is traditionally defined as a physical location where calls are placed or received in high volume for the purpose of sales, marketing, telemarketing, technical support or other specialized business activities. How does a Call Centre Function? A typical call centre functions as follows - A caller uses a toll free number that is connected to a customer support centre. When the call reaches the call centre, a trained consultant with access to a wide database of information, answers the call. The dedicated telecommunication links connect a remote call centre to the parent organization through voice links and online database access. Therefore a caller maybe calling a local number in USA, but the call maybe answered in India without any time delay and the caller is oblivious of where the call is being answered. These services are very popular in countries such as USA, Europe, Japan and Australia. TYPES OF CALL CENTRE A CALL centre combines data and voice communication, data processing and, in the near future, video technology, to enable organizations to implement critical business functions, while targeting reduction of costs, or increasing revenues. It is sometimes defined as a telephone/web-based shared service centre. Banks, airlines and telecom companies require large-scale data entry and revenue accounting work to be done. For this, documents or raw data is sent to remote locations, which are used for data entry and necessary reconciliation. When they outsource back office and data processing operations to service providers, the main concern of these companies is 100 per cent availability of data and uptime of facilities. The burgeoning remote processing industry has spawned a whole genre of companies. Primarily, it could be a dedicated unit set up by a MNC to meet its own needs, either on its own, or through a joint venture. The latter is done for specific services and is a more common practice amongst the airlines and insurance companies. The technology and infrastructure and manpower is often provided by the local partner while the MNC brings in its processes, expertise and systems. This model allows continuous feed of work from the overseas JV partner, while allowing cost savings and higher profit margins amongst the overseas partner. Then, there are third party service providers who have trained workforce to cater to long-term overseas (and sometimes domestic) contracts. In between too, they take up a few short-term assignments. Many Indian software and services companies also provide remote network or technology maintenance for larger software companies overseas which can be classified as the top end of the IT-enabled value chain as this type of activity requires hiring techies and fetches the highest per seat remuneration. There are two types of a Call Centre, an Outbound Call Centre and an Inbound Call centre. Inbound Call Centre Services - Inbound services provide customer support and product information for consumers who call a firm. Outbound Telemarketing Services - Outbound services provide telephone sales representatives (TSR) who call potential clients with product information and sales pitches.