These days, it is undeniable that technologies are evolving in such an ever faster way. They bring us new possibilities to realize daily tasks. Concretely, in a company context, those innovations are pushing businesses to search for groundbreaking ways to communicate, whether it is internal or external with the customers or the suppliers . call centers.
Therefore, IP telephones and call centers have become the preferred choice for companies that want to trigger their digital transformation in their ways of communication.
If you are reading this post, it is maybe because you are starting to feel the need to handle a certain amount of incoming and outgoing calls and you are trying to know how to create a call center. It is also likely that you may already have one and you are just looking to adapt your business and move on to a more virtual model.
Some basic element about call centers
Some companies consider that call centers are only destined to be used by big firms. It would not be wrong. As we already know, call centers are dedicated to the mission of receiving and transmitting calls with the objective that any company that wishes to provide quality customer service but also sell its products, can benefit from the advantages of call centers. It only requires a list of elements that form the call center and here it is.
A virtual phone number
It is a necessary element. Before even starting to receive or to make calls, we will need a phone number from which we would be able to do this. Unlike traditional landlines, call centers and virtual PBX make the voice transit through the Internet. Thus, we will only need a device connected to the network that will allow us to do so and a virtual number.
According to the needs of your business and the intensity of your activity, you’ll probably need more than one virtual phone number, all of them incorporated into your contact center. For example, you could acquire a free phone number (800 in the US) to give your company a national image, to encourage your customers to contact you or simply for legal reasons. You can also rely on international phone numbers so that you can be called from anywhere your business is operating.
A device from which to make and receive calls
In the case of the WebRTC technology, unlike how systems with IP protocol works, we won’t have to implement any kind of installation and you won’t need to download extra software programs or extra applications. You can use any device you already have whether it is a laptop, a smartphone or a tablet.
A stable internet connection
As we said before, in a virtual call center, the voice is transiting through the Internet. This implies that the set of a call center requires a device which is connected to the Internet so that you can access your navigator. In this manner, you could make and receive your calls without troubles, at any time and wherever you are where there is a stable internet connection.
How to set up your call center
Now that you know all the basics on which you can rely on to create your call center, you will have to learn how to organize it, and it will depend on the needs of your activities.
To do so, at first, you will have to know how many incoming and outgoing calls your company carries out per day in order to assess your needs that best fit with your activity. Some call center software offer access to a large range of statistics. You will be able to have a precise point of view on your calls’ behavior (call duration, if it has been picked up or not, the waiting time before being taken in charge…)
Once all of these pieces of information have been gathered, you will then have to define who is going to answer the phone, what can be done according to the skills of one another (that is to say a skill set that specifies each agent).
At last, it is essential to pick up the system that will distribute the calls in a dynamic and efficient manner. In this case we talk about the ACD system which stands for Automatic Call Distributor. It is a part of the call center which is in charge of distributing entering calls according to the skills that have been assigned to each agent beforehand (the set of skills mentioned in the previous paragraph). For instance, let us imagine that you are receiving a call from a salesperson in French. In this case, the system is going to seek for the most qualified agent available at the moment and who has the necessary aptitudes in French to answer the phone. In case this person is not free to respond, the system will search for the next agent who has the competence and pass it by him or her. Thus, the system ensures that your client will be talking to the most qualified agent at the right moment, which will provide you with a differentiation element.
How to create a call center
You now have all the elements at your disposal, and you perfectly know the best way to organize your virtual call center. What’s next ?
- Configure your call center: once you have your virtual phone number, whether you already have one or you have been assigned a new one, the next step is to configure your contact center. You will then be able to manage the display of phone numbers when receiving a call, customer care schedule, the languages spoken, when the calls pass through the telephone messaging system etc… You can handle it by yourself or ask your operator to help you.
- Add functionalities to your call center: once it is set up, you can easily add functionalities to your call center so that you’ll be able to provide a quality service such as a queue, identification of the calls, calls filtering…
- Access to it from the navigator of any device: then, you’ll just have to access the platform thanks to your login and your password, and you’ll be able to start receiving and making calls.
- Eventually, integrate your CRM : Finally, even if it is not an essential element to the creation of your call center, we strongly recommend it. It would certainly be useful to integrate the CRM that your company uses (such as HubSpot, Zoho, Salesforce…) to your telephony system. Thus, you’ll be able to manage your customers’ data from the same platform without exiting the call.
