The Contact Center Blog

"Contact Center" versus "Call Center"

In my experience when talking to prospective clients and industry professionals, many use the word “call center” and “contact center” interchangeably. Despite semantics, these two are very different and can mean different things for a client.

So, what’s the big difference?

A call center is solely voice focused. Call center agents will answer phone calls from customers, partners, internal employees, or anyone else trying to reach the company. A contact center, on the other hand, answers voice calls but also has multi-channel capabilities. Agents have the training and technology support to answer phones, chats, web-based calls (VoIP) and emails. Contact centers are also referred to as “web-enabled call center” or a “customer interaction center”. In everyday conversation, call and contact are used synonymously. However, essentially, a call center is part of a contact center.

With today’s technologies, it is essential that call center become web enabled and evolve into contact center. We are in an industry that is so attached to the word “call center” even though clients may require more than just voice support.

Five years ago, 24-7 INtouch evolved into a contact center to meet the demands of our online focused clientele. Although voice still represents a large part of our business, there is much growth in answering chat and emails for our clients and will continue to grow as Internet adoption rates increase for these web based tools.

Even though many clients call still call us a call center, we are multi-channel and can do much more than just answer phone calls. Think of joining a fitness center and only using the weight machines “(i.e. the call center portion), but you have access to the swimming pool and squash court too!

MK

Welcome! An Introduction....

Hi, I'm Maya Kotecha and I will be one of the main contributing authors on this blog. I'm currently the Director of Marketing & Corporate Strategy at 24-7 INtouch. My role is to keep our company current through new marketing and communication campaigns (like this blog for example!). To learn a little more about me, please check my bio on our corporate site or view my LinkedIn profile.

My personal goal for this blog is to provide some insight and expertise on all things contact center. I will share my ideas and give my comments on topics related to the outsourcing industry and those industries where our clients reside - online retail, automotive, financial services, food and beverage, etc. I plan to focus more on marketing, sales, and general strategy as that is my area of interest. Please feel free to make comments and stimulate some good conversation. This blog is all about communication with other industry professionals and those who are interested in learning more about outsourcing and the dynamics behind an outsourced contact center.

Happy reading!

Things that make me go HMMMMMM

As anyone who is in the contact center business knows, there are things that happen every day that are sometimes almost impossible to understand.  A management blunder, an agent misbehaving, strange but true miscommunications between management and front line staff.  I am amazed each and every day that no matter how hard I try it is virtually impossible to avoid these annoying but sometimes funny situations.  One such instance came up today and it had to do with one of my main competitors... Convergys.

Convergys is one of the largest contact center outsourcers in the world.  They operate on a scale that few in the industry can compete with.  Unfortunately, although in many ways it is a strength, their size works against them as well.  One of the chief areas is in employee communications.  By no means an easy task as it is one we consistently struggle with but have only a few hundred employees.  Nonetheless, what I saw today was one of the most insane things I have seen in this business during my entire career.  I was searching Convergys on Google and the third listing in the organic results was a website called www.convergyssucks.com!  To be clear, this is not a Convergys sponsored website but a employee founded messageboard for past and current convergys employees to complain about working there.  Everything from there not being enough stations to clients leaving to agents committing vulgar acts in the washrooms is discussed at length....UNBELIEVABLE!  As an outsourcer, I really cant imagine having a client come across this site only to discover Convergys employees discussing their account and often disclosing confidential information.

Here is my question, if you hate working at convergys so badly why dont you just quit?  There are lots of places to have a job where with any luck you will enjoy your work.  I know its not that simple, and I know that convergys employees most likely have several legitimate issues, but I would hope that the people responsible for convergyssucks.com are putting as much energy into their work as they are into the website!

My take on this is that the blame rests on both sides of the fence.  Clearly, based on the posts I read, management has a major communication issue with their staff.  Fairly typical of large corporations like Convergys but also incredibly damaging to staff morale and the quality of work performed at the contact center site.  At the same time, again based on the posts I read, the employees are taking a very one sided view and often coming across as complaining with no real purpose in mind.  The solution, you ask?  A company sponsored message board, hopefully not located on the URL www.convergyssucks.com that encourages open and honest communication that allows the management to post back with solutions or comments.  All agent posts could be kept confidential while management posts would be signed by the author.  All agents would be encouraged to post entries with fixing the problem in mind as opposed to just complaining.  This way, hopefully some good will come out of all the energy spent on the website!

I am interested to hear your feedback!

Welcome to the Contact Center Blog!

Well folks, here it is, finally, at long last, the contact center blog has arrived.  What is the contact center blog you ask?  The general idea was to create a blog where people who are stakeholders in contact center outsourcing companies, whether it be clients, suppliers, partners, or even outsourcers themselves can have open discussions on all things contact center.   Whether it be topics like operations, new technology, driving volumes, workforce, human resources or whatever, we want to encourage open and honest communication in our industry.

I'm sure your next question is "who the heck is this guy?"  Well, my name is Greg Fettes, and I am the President and CEO of 24-7 INtouch, a contact center outsourcer based in Canada.  You can check out my LinkedIN profile or visit the about us area on the 24-7 INtouch website.  At the risk of sounding too "salesy" (a big no-no on this blog from here on!), we have been recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in Canada two years in a row and pride ourselves in being a true leader in innovation for technology, process, and management in contact centers.  In fact, that is the underlying reason this blog got started.  It was a way to create a community that will push the industry in a new direction.  In the coming months you will see guest authors from inside and outside the contact center world make posts on different issues concerning contact centers.  But here's the trick; we are depending on you, the readers, to make comments and push discussions forward.  Maybe you agree, maybe you disagree, or maybe you have experiences that you can share that will bring the conversation in a new direction.  We will not be censoring posts or comments for any reason (except vulgarity of course!) so you will be free to absolutely speak your mind.   Anyways, enough background already, lets get on to the blog!

My plan for posting comments on the contact center blog will be to follow a somewhat similar format each week.  I am hoping to post regularly once per week on Mondays and have a few random posts throughout the week.  Please feel free to give feedback on the blog in general as my goal is to make it as useful and informative as possible.

Thanks and happy blogging!

GF