Features and Types of Voice-Based Contact Centers

In the first part of this article, I mentioned that a voice tool tends to make customer support more satisfactory, providing the user with a customized, dynamic, and inclusive service. Voice services also offer a more humanized and empathetic experience by allowing real-time reactions and the possibility to analyze and make exceptions, improving the quality of customer responses and solutions.

In this second part, we will mention some of the specific characteristics of a voice-based contact center (Telephony).

Inbound call center

This call center is for receiving and answering customer requests rather than making calls. An inbound call center usually uses software – known as Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) – that allows it to filter incoming calls and distribute them to the agents who are best equipped to answer them.

They can be as sophisticated as needed, measuring and recording call activity, and acting accordingly, prioritizing or predicting occurrences to inform the supervisor or administrator of how to prepare operators’ availability for intake, avoiding an increase in the abandonment rate (i.e., people who get tired of waiting for the service and hang up).

Critical in this type of experience center (in addition to the ACD) is the IVR (Interactive Voice Response equipment), which also evolved from the old DTMF (Dual Tone Multifrequency) that allowed users to access a menu where they could press phone keys, select an option, and be sent to the sector indicated in the menu. Today’s third generation IVRs can be integrated with Amazon, Azure, Google, or IBM Cognitive Services and resolve complex requests, as well as incorporating bots, converting announcements from text to speech (TTS) or speech to text (STT) and routing to other digital channels, if required.

Outbound call center

The agents’ job is to communicate with the user and not to wait for customers to get in touch with the company. These calls (most often organized in campaigns) can be for sales, research, and collections purposes or for providing information about new products or services.

In these cases, automatic dialing is key in optimizing the relation between lines, agents, and target contact. This tool makes it possible to contact many customers in a short period, increasing the call center’s productivity and efficiency.

They have greatly advanced and today can be combined, for example, with automatic messages through IVR, sending information online via email, SMS, or WhatsApp, and transferring the user to a survey at the end of the conversation with the human or bot. The predictive dialer (PD) can also carry out less aggressive dialing modes, such as power, progressive or preview dialing.

Blended call center

This is a combination of the above. In this case, the telephone service is used for both answering and making calls. This is considered the most complete type of customer service. The key is in the “orchestration engine’s” efficiency to implement the blend, i.e., to distribute and balance the groups of Inbound/Outbound agents according to customer demand.

Implement each country’s applicable legislation

Finally, your company should understand the legislation of the country in which it will operate in order to comply with service requirements or standards. I can give you two examples, but as I said before, each country has its own regulation, and we must understand them in detail to avoid incurring in fines and penalties.

In the case of Argentina, Resolution 1033/2021 establishes the Minimum Mandatory Quality Parameters for Customer Service and Long-distance Communications Services, offered by Argentina’s providers of goods and services. This resolution was published in the country’s official National Bulletin on October 12, 2021. According to the resolution’s annex, providers’ customer services must be effective and accessible, and offer respectful, cordial, kind, considerate, affable, and attentive treatment, to facilitate information, receive and resolve complaints and claims, or any other incidences that may arise.

Additionally, providers must offer consumers a free customer service and contact e-mail, which should in no way generate additional revenue for the provider or for third parties at the customers’ expense.

In Brazilian law, the service must be active 24/7 and the option of “speaking to an attendant” must be available from the beginning of the call. Anyone running a Customer Service Center (SAC) should be aware of these obligations and adapt their business to avoid conflicts and fines.