Technology plays a crucial role in Call Centers from the operational point of view as it enables handling of high volume telephony traffic for servicing customers and dramatic improvement in call service rates, customer satisfaction and agent productivity. Compared internationally, most of the call centers set up in India so far are of international standard. Plus being a late entrant into this field, those in India have the added advantage of adopting the latest in Call Center and Web Technologies. Thus the Call Center servers are interfaced to standard telecom links, from the Telecom Network and in increasing number of cases have directly leased lines on fiber optical cables among others. Plus they have a database server for storing call center configurations and statistics, running data base applications and CRM functions and management demanded data are also given instantly through web systems to the customer in USA / UK etc.

Even at the unit level, most call centers have Intel/equivalent PCs with NT operating systems equipped with latest technology Telephony Cards. As for agents and supervisors they are equipped with sophisticated headsets in addition to these Windows- based desktops.

Before providing you with an outline of various technology options available, we would like you to know that the choice and extent is directly linked and is determined by the size, functionality and positioning of your call center. For example if you decide to be a high-end call center you will have to invest in solutions which can integrate with other applications such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and its modules, billing applications and lead management software for screen pop-ups and predictive dialing etc. among others with standard middle-ware such as ODBC drivers and well-defined APIs. For further flexibility and protection of investment it is recommended that the architecture and solution be chosen keeping in mind new applications and capabilities, which need to be integrated into it in the future. The best and comparatively faster way of wading through this is to hire a integration consultant who would map your needs based on the business plan and then shortlist among the platform and equipment choices available. The time consuming and tougher option (but cost-wise better) is to learn it yourself and do it. Which ever path you might take, here are few features/capabilities that technology offers:

Agent Control API

The entire call center functionality is exposed through this API, allowing the call control to be embedded into the user application screen, thus providing a single screen to the agent concerned.

System Administration API.

Providing additional security and data access control is always possible due to the ability of the API to add to the existing set of system administration features, hence it is always a dynamic system ready to be set as per the customers/clients need for any special features about security and data access control.

Interactive Voice Response Systems (IVR) Or Fax-On-Demand

In simple terms, IVR is the customer-oriented front end for Call Centers. It is an automatic system for collecting information from callers. The Interactive Voice Response system is a specialized computer system that lets callers enter information in response to questions, either through a telephone keypad or spoken word. The caller then gets some kind of information back from the system through a recorded (and digitized) voice or a synthesized voice. The Call agents also get that information back through a connected fax system or a web site. It be noted that how the information is delivered is less important than the fact that the customer can arrive, input and review data at any time, even when your call center is un-staffed.

To say it briefly, IVR allows routine information to be disseminated using fax or pre-recorded voice messages, which reduces the time spent by the call center agent in providing unnecessary details coming in during the call conversation, thus increasing the efficiency by reducing fatigue.

Predictive Dialers

The predictive dialer functionality dramatically enhances Call Center Agents’ productivity by automating dial outs and connecting to the agent only when the call is answered. On connection, the customer’s details are sent to the call center agent. The predictive dialer is designed to suit a number of parameters including current status of agents, past statistics and negative feedback significantly improving agent productivity at desired levels and call abandon rates, thereby giving tremendous efficiency.

The Automatic Call Distributors

The Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) is the heart and soul of the call center. In fact it is the engine of Productivity. It is also called as the brain and control point in the Call Center for voice calls and data traffic (inbound and outbound). The ACD is a robust and flexible call distribution system, which allows the Call Center Manager to optimally utilize resources while providing superior service levels and customer satisfaction. The ACD is capable of handling calls at a rate and volume far beyond human capabilities. The ACD gives a call center the resources to manage the many parts of a Call Center – from telephone trunks to agent stations, making calls to and receiving calls from customers etc. The latest model ACD also provides skill based routing and data access and particular person based routing. The ACD in the call centers can be configured to route calls based on ANI, DNIS, skill mapping, agent idleness, time when the call is received and inputs provided by the caller through an IVR.

Computer Screen Pop-Up’s

When a call is presented to an agent through a Pop - Up screen & the moment the voice channel is connected to the agent, the Pop-Up provides some of the details relating to the call to the agent on the screen, thus saving the user some time and providing a much superior level of service.

Call Control And Monitoring System

This system is designed to provide unparalleled call handling and call control features to the agents and the supervisors on their desktop computers. It has a rich set of supervisory features, which allows for easy monitoring of agent and call center performance and facilitating agent training. Besides, the supervisor has facilities for listening to any agents’ conversation, breaking into the conversation without the calling party able to find out (coaching) and having a conference with the calling party and the agent (Barring). There are also extensive online reports to help the supervisor track performance and take corrective actions if required, immediately.

Surviving with the call-me-button

A call center is an excellent and effective tool for meeting these new requirements of the organization. The home page may be equipped with ‘call-me-buttons’ where the customer may write his telephone number asking to be called back. A call between a customer service representative in the call center is set up at the earliest. As the customer service representative gets the same screen displayed as the customer it helps in all discussions with the customer. The customer sales representative may take the customer ‘on a tour’ through the information and applications on the net! This combination between the interactive screen, the call center and the competent advise of a live customer service representative may very well be the key to success in the Internet-era.

The Natural Language Speech Recognition (NLSR) Software

The emergence of Natural Language Speech Recognition (NLSR) has given further impetus to the call center industry towards achieving complete customer satisfaction. The NLSR is a useful and exciting tool for supporting customer relationship management (CRM) applications. The software recognizes a sentence of words from a set of tens of thousands of words, and the technology performs additional sentence structure processing to extract specific meanings. The technology enables customers to speak naturally into telephones and computers in order to send and retrieve information and even complete entire transactions. It is ideal for IVR call flows in which callers need to provide more complex information than can be captured by pressing keys on a telephone keypad. Furthermore, as an innovative way of using networks to conduct business, NLSR is at the forefront of the e-business movement.

The NLSR represents a logical progression from “basic” speech recognition, which businesses have been implementing with increasing regularity over the last few years. It gives customers an option to communicate naturally, thereby creating favorable impressions, which automatically increases the likelihood of return customers. The software also provides an opportunity to automate new types of transactions thereby potentially reducing costs and increasing revenues and improve the bottom line. Organizations, which handle high volumes of customer interactions, could benefit by examining NLSR’s possibilities.

This list of options by any means is not exhaustive considering the rate of change in the industry. Please read another article in the same issue on Call center integration and trends, to get a better picture.

(The article was written by the businessgyan editorial team with inputs from various Experts. Feedback can be mailed to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it )

Issue BG6 Sep01

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