Tuesday 5 August 2008

The value of contact centres - consistency in the message and delivering excellent customer service

A contact centre is a team of trained specialists, who are there to deliver a first class service. They are very different from a call centre. Contact centres serve a multi-channel environment; For example, a contact centre maybe used to answer emails, work on written material that has come via post as well answer telephone calls. When you go through to a contact centre using multiple communication channels, there will always be consistency in the message communicated. A contact centre plays a key role and is very much a frontline for our client’s customers at EWA.

Leave it to the experts when investing in a contact centre…

It’s a bit of a cliché, but when you do invest in outsourcing a contact centre you are leaving it with the experts. It’s like when you are looking for a plumber, you’re looking for a professional who can do the job. All our experts in our contact centres are professionally trained and have the time to talk to clients’ customers. Our team are trained in answering the telephone appropriately and in a timely fashion.

The added value of a multi-channel contact centre does also give you the facility for a higher volume of customers to reach you more quickly. For example, if you have five or six people who happen to call you at the same time, and there are only just two of you in the office, you are potentially going to miss three or four of those calls, whilst a contact centre is going to be able to pick up those calls almost immediately.

The volume of traffic can also vary. This will depend on the client’s requirements and the customer service offering. Sometimes you could receive fifty calls in a week or fifty in a day. Again this depends on the message you want to send to you customer. We always evaluate the client’s needs and the history. A contact centre can be used for a variety of requirements. Some clients may make use of our multi-client contact centre facility because they may want us to manage the back end of a direct marketing campaign and provide response handling services. Or it could be they want us to look at one of our dedicated units where they want to have a conversation with their customers, offering advice and guidance so this would be a very different call.

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