Page 150 - DMGT308_CUSTOMER_RELATIONSHIP_MANAGEMENT

Unit 6: Technology for Customer Relations

 Of the Advantages Notes
 It is Economical
 Of Ease of contact and Time Saving
 Of the Availability of standardized product/customer information

 Of the Service availability 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

6.1 Contact Centre Technology

Sometimes a contact centre is just one or two people sitting beside a phone answering customer
calls. Often it’s a very large room with lots and lots of people neatly organized into rows, sitting
beside their phones, answering customer calls.
But contact centres are more than headset-wearing switchboard operators. The modern contact
centre handles phone calls, e-mail, online communication, and sometimes even old-fashioned
written letters. In short, contact centres deal with any type of contact for a company (other than
in-person) — contact with the general public and customers of all types: potential, happy, or
even disgruntled. Contact — good, bad, or downright ugly—is the name of the game.
To a customer or client, contact centre personnel are the voice and face of the company. If you (as
a customer) are angry, you often get mad at the person on the other end of the phone—after all,
you’re talking to the company, right?
Inbound/Outbound

Contact centres communicate with customers in a number of ways, but who initiates the contact
defines the type of contact centre. If the outside world initiates contact, then the contact centre is
said to be an inbound contact centre.

Conversely, if the contact centre itself is responsible for initiating contact, then the contact
centre is said to be an outbound contact centre.
Customers contact inbound centres to buy things, such as airline tickets; to get technical assistance
with their personal computer; to get answers to questions about their utility bill; to get emergency
assistance when their car won’t start; or for any number of other reasons for which they might
need to talk to a company representative.
In outbound centres, representatives from the company initiate the call to customers. Your first
reaction might be, “telemarketing, right?” Well, yes, telemarketing is a reason for a company to
contact you, but companies have lots of other good reasons to contact their customers, as well.
Companies might call because the customer hasn’t paid a bill, when a product the customer
wanted is available, to follow up on a problem the customer was having, or to find out what the
customer and other customers would like to see by way of product or service enhancements.
Outbound contact centres are, most often, very telephone centric.
Whereas inbound centres can handle many different ways of contact, outbound centres most
often use telephones because of, well, tradition and perception. It is not unusual for a company’s
representatives to call a customer on the phone, but it is more unusual for them to send an e-mail
to a customer.
If companies send out e-mail to customers, it is often done through some mass-mailing effort,
not as one-on-one contact. Perception enters into the picture because people are very quick to
categorize unexpected e-mail as spam, but less likely to be upset by unexpected phone calls.

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