Advanced Network Services

Advanced Call Center Routing Services is an application package on the Cisco Network Applications Manager (NAM) for Service Providers. NAM Advanced Services allows Service Providers to offer advanced Intelligent Network (IN) features capabilities to a broad market of business customers. The features include dynamic call allocation, network-based prompting and queuing and Web-based end-customer call control and reporting.

Advanced Services can be deployed on top of TDM infrastructure as well as with IP networks, using the Cisco Internet Service Node (ISN) or a third part IVR systems as prompting and queuing platform. Advanced Services facilitates rapid end-customer provisioning, since it requires no changes to existing customer infrastructure and can use the Internet for the call control and reporting functions. As a result, the costs and efforts associated with provisioning these customers is dramatically reduced, making them cost effective for small and medium-sized businesses.

With Advanced Call Center Routing Services, Service Providers can directly address the following market segments:

• Customers with small to medium contact centers for whom high-end hosted call center services like Cisco Intelligent Contact Management (ICM) or IP Contact Center (IPCC) may not be cost effective but who still require dynamic call distribution capabilities.
• Contact centers with low-end PBX equipment that can not be readily incorporated into real-time virtual call centers using Cisco ICM software
• Cisco ICM users who require dynamic call routing to small branch offices with low-end equipment.
• Cisco ICM users who require dynamic call routing to small branch offices with low-end equipment.
• Businesses ‘informal’ contact centers.
• All customers requiring integrated prompting, queuing and IVR services.

Vcare Switches from Avaya to Cisco

Vcare Call Centers India - a 100% subsidiary of Call Centers India (CCI) has contact Center operations in Chennai and New Delhi , providing both voice and non-voice services to global clients. The company has deployed Cisco's technology. Before Cisco's solution, the company was operating out on a leased facility, using Avaya-based solutions. Vcare wanted a robust, secure and scalable infrastructure for supporting their inbound and outbound calling process.

The company has implemented Cisco IP Contact Center (IPCC) solution and is currently using Cisco Call Manager and the Electronic Private Branch Exchange (EPBX), Cisco Interactive Voice Response (IVR), and Cisco Unity Voicemail.

Sandeep Mehra, CEO of Vcare Call Center India , said, "We found Cisco's IP-based offering superior than the traditional Time Division Multiplexing (TDM based offering). We started using Cisco's Voice over IP Solution for about 2 years. We moved from a leased facility to our own facility and found that the voice quality of the Cisco's IPCC was far superior to any of its competitors." Mehra adds, "This solution helps large enterprises that need to centralize their contact center operations to gain more control over their resources."

Vcare faced several challenges before deploying the solution. "We had to have a cost effective solution, which would meet the ever-changing process requirements and co-ordination that is faced by SMB segment-based clients," said Mehra.

According to the company, exploring Cisco system's full functionality has been a big challenge. Though the system is very powerful, the domain expertise of this system is still very limited. IT plays an important role in addressing these challenges. One of the major challenges - cost effectiveness - is strictly based on the total cost incurred on IT equipment and maintenance. Total cost of ownership, in the long run, is a lot lower in Cisco.

The company claims that the main business benefits of the solution are that it is very simple to use, stable, and reliable. Additionally, through the usage of IP-based systems, the survivability of calls is the highest. Even if one of the lines were to go down, the calls would roll over to another circuit within a few milliseconds, without disconnecting the calls.

Effective correspondence and communication is the most common HR issue, as disclosed by Vcare. "Reporting being one of the important functions in a call center, our HR manager is able to substantiate any action we take using the vast reports we get from IT. Through Cisco's technology everything is logged in the system," said Mehra.

The infrastructure deployed at Vcare's data center include Cisco Predictive, Preview, Outbound, 24/7 Dialer, Cisco Call Manager called PBX, Cisco Unity Voice Mail, and Cisco IP 7940 series phones. The Cisco solution was deployed in a span of about 3 months, start to finish. The company's estimated IT budget for this year is about US $250 thousand. It is looking to deploy these solutions in multiple cities in India .

Computer telephone integration

CTI sells its range of voice solutions via the NEC Global Sales Distribution Network and works closely with NEC in the Asia Pacific, South East Asia, Middle East China South Korea, European, North and South American markets.

Computer telephony integration (CTI) is technology that allows interactions on a telephone and a computer to be integrated or co-ordinated. As contact channels have expanded from voice to include email, web, and fax, the definition of CTI has expanded to include the integration of all customer contact channels (voice, email, web, fax, etc.) with computer systems.

The following functions can be implemented using CTI:

• Calling-line information display (caller's number, number dialed, IVR options)
• Screen population on answer, with or without using calling line data.
• On-screen dialing. (Fast dial, preview, and predictive dial.)
• On-screen phone control. (Answer, hang up, hold, conference, etc.)
• Coordinated phone and data transfers between two parties.
• Call center phone control. (Logging on; after-call work notification)
• Advanced functions such as call routing, reporting functions, automation of desktop activities, and multi-channel blending of phone, e-mail, and web requests.
• Agent state control. (For example, after-call work for a set duration, then automatic change to the ready state.)

Forms of CTI

Generally, there are two forms of CTI.

First-party call control

First party call control operates as if there is a direct connection between the user's computer and the phone set. An example of this would be a modem card in a desktop computer, or a phone plugged directly into the computer. Typically, only the computer associated with the phone can control it, by sending command directly to the phone.

Third-party call control

Third-party call control is more difficult to implement and often requires a dedicated telephony server to interface between the telephone network and the computer network. Third party call control works by sending commands from a user's computer to a telephony server, which in turn controls the phone centrally.

CTI Application Event Flow

A typical CTI application manages the event flow that is generated by the telephony switch during the lifecycle of a call. This typically proceeds along the following sequence:

• Set up

•Deliver (ringing)

• Establish (answer)

• Clear (hang up

Other call events that can be handled by a typical CTI solution include the following:

•Hold

•Retrieve from hold

•Conference

•Transfer

Call Logging systems

As soon as you start looking at any call logging product you are immediately dragged into their literature.Their literature immediately starts shooting out questions such as :

• Which departments make the most calls?
• On average, how long do staff spend on a telephone call?
• Which supplier is cheapest?

Whatever you do, security should be an important consideration. The data emanating from the switchboard can reveal all sorts of detail. What call logging data is available to whom is an important, and sometimes neglected, consideration.

Before you start you need some sort of perspective before you get dragged in.

Most suppliers of call loggers concentrate on the economics of the operation and presume that this will be the overriding interest for everybody. This is not always the case. Even a small break of service for organisation has the potential of losing his organisation thousands of pounds while his traders sit idle.

For commercial organisations, which areas you focus on will depend on the circumstances you find yourself in. It could be that you are involved in a cost cutting exercise and the economics are vital to you. On the other hand if business is booming you may be less interested in costs and need to focus on questions such as "Do I have enough capacity to deal with the current level of traffic the business is generating?" "Are we missing potentially valuable calls?"

The essence of call logging is simple. It is made complicated by the constructs that are placed on it by the user and the carrier.

The following animated graphic depicts call logging and how the various parties contrive to complicate it.

Step. 1 The PABX collects data on the elements depicted in this diagram. When a call is made it records which extension is connected to which trunk line. The PABX also records the digits that were dialled and the date and the time of the call and the duration.

Step. 2 Not many organisations describe themselves solely in terms of extensions. Most organisations describe themselves in terms of the people that work for it and to to an organisational structure as simplistically depicted here.

Step. 3 Extensions are then related to the people.

Step. 4 - Step. 8 The carrier uses the dialled digits to interpret the nature of the call. These digits are used as one parameter to cost the call. Calls can be broadly classified into Local, National, International, Special Rate and Mobile calls

Step. 9 The Carrier further complicates the call costing by varying charges depending on time.

The PABX (or switchboard in common parlance) has some processing capabilities. It is able to switch traffic and keeps track of time. It is essentially on the labelled elements in Step. 1 that that the PABX generates Call Detail Records (CDR's) also known as SMDR's (Station Message Detail Records). It captures the dialled digits and may, depending on the make of the PABX, be able to capture the Calling Line Identifier (CLI) for incoming calls. The telecommunications company can pass these details to it. The routing of calls in the above diagram is not always from extension to trunk or vice versa. There is also the possibility of extension to extension, an internal call. Some PABX's also allow trunk to trunk calls - this is the mechanism used to perpetrate large-scale frauds. Calls can also be transferred either by the originator or the receiver. Add to this the possibility of conference calls and even the definition of what a telephone call is becomes elusive.

The PABX normally generates records as calls are made and received. It sends the details out on, usually, a serial port. This data is then captured by the call logging system.

This is the simple single site model.

The million and one details that we spoke of earlier derive from the constructs that are put on the end of the lines and complexities that have been imposed by telecommunications companies on the passage of time.

The majority of extensions, in most organisations, relate to people. The people in turn are related to an organisational structure. Most call loggers require you to import this detail, thereby giving them the capability to generate reports relating to people or organisational entities. Some extensions are fax machines, while others may be modems - yet more detail that you may choose to report on. Internet access is also an issue; it will depend on the nature of your network whether your PABX generates call records corresponding to your internet access.

The cost of a call is determined by a number of factors. The destination of the call, be it local, regional, national, international, mobile, pagers, personal numbers, special rate services or premium rate services is one factor. The carrier and the service chosen within a carrier are others. The day of the week and the time of the day at which the call is made are yet others. It may be a particular number that attracts a special discount. It could be that with this carrier you have exceeded a certain threshold value for the charge period and all calls are now subject to some discounted rate.

Within each of the factors that affect a call charge that we have identified above there is yet more detail. To illustrate, consider international calls - there are 43 different rates in one carriers service.

If you're going to run a call logging system the description of your organisational structure, together with employees and their extensions are going to have to be input to the system. Furthermore your external network needs to be described, what trunk lines are connected to which carrier. The system will also need costing tables. You should also recognise that this data needs to be maintained or it will get out of date.

Not All Call Loggers Are The Same!

The essential functions of a call logger are

1. To collect raw data from the PABX

2. To cost the call and add missing details such as destination or origin

3. To provide some sort of reporting capability.

Call logging has been around for a long time - over 20 years. In those days it wasn't just the 2 bytes of the date that they thought about making savings on; processors were a lot slower as well, and this meant they weren't as adept at multi-tasking.

The result was that the 3 functions above were often separated, and extra hardware was sometimes added - such as buffer boxes.

The whole ethos of traditional call logging systems has been for the system to sit there and collect data, and then wait for someone to dream up some questions to ask it. This is too passive a role for such systems.

The e-logging philosophy as embodied by Telecost is to act, not as a passive agent in monitoring your telephone system, but to act as an active agent. It monitors the performance of your telephone system in real time and actively informs you, via e-mail or other mechanisms, rather than waiting to be quizzed the much sought after but so rarely attained shift in the paradigm! They'll all be trying to copy it soon, but we're not worried we have a significant lead and we'll be building on it for at least a year

Quality monitoring systems

According to statistics a majority of call center companies still actively 'live monitor' agents or use cassette recorders. Now this is designed to move these call center operations into the 21st Century.

Call center quality monitoring , random sample call recording, VoIP recording and 100% call logging are only reliable way to ensure a positive customer experience and now with Many call center size doesn't prohibit purchasing a solution due to budgetary constraint. They continue to offer the mid to large call center the advantage of quality monitoring at thousands of dollars less than the competition

Quality monitoring systems have reached such sophisticated heights that a customer’s voice can register certain decibel levels indicating anger, foul or harsh language, and even the use of a competitor’s name. This type of call monitoring system alerts a manager so they can intervene and save the call-and keep a customer happy. Call monitoring can run the gamut from recording and evaluating call strengths and weaknesses to calibrating to limit variation in the way performance criteria are interpreted.

Call monitoring is an essential tool to help hold a call center to certain quality standards and to help both parties view those standards the same way. Call monitoring is subjective with many factors having to be considered when judging quality.
Quality monitoring systems Include Screen Capture and eLearning technology
Now call center quality monitoring software measures agent performance and skill levels with scheduled recording and monitoring. The system includes QA recording, screen capture, comprehensive and customized agent scoring for total agent evaluation with extensive, management reporting.

Quality includes the following:

• Callcenter record server software
  
• Callcenter Supervisor Record on Demand (ROD)
  
• Callcenter agent evaluation with user definable scoring
  
• Screen Capture for agent desktop video recording (synchronized to audio)
  
• eLearning Management Technology
  
• Remote installation
  
• Remote training

Research shows that the process of monitoring calls in its self is not enough to produce results. Feedback needs to happen in a timely manner and be perceived by the person receiving the feedback as relevant, unbiased, practical and objective.

Added to this the theory taught on training courses does not translate into practice, or tangible results. The primary reason for this appears to be that agents and supervisors have difficulty in adapting and applying the skills developed on training courses into practical everyday situations.

For More Informations
Call Centers India Inc.
Posted by:
Sales & Marketing Team

Voice response systems

A figure of speech synthesis in which sentences are shaped by concatenating pre-recorded words from a database. Unlike a CCI System, which uses speech synthesis to form impulsive sentences and/or phrases based on human phonetics, a voice response system operates with a limited expressions in situations where the sentences and/or phrases that are formed follow a strict predetermined pattern. For example, a train station may use a voice response system to notify passengers of schedule information or a trains status.

Efficiently accommodate participant queries about their account values, their requests to change investment options and deferral amounts, to request a loan and check loan balances, or simply to change their Personal Identification Number. Eliminate hours of manual entry with a voice response unit (VRU) from Edify. Relius Administration's Voice Response System add the services the market demands without adding additional burdensome manual work.


The voice system gives you:
All control of the VRU performed from within the Relius Administration system. Setup of the VRU for a new plan and any modifications for existing plans is simple, and requires no extra waiting or cost. There isn't any need to be an expert on another software system.
Minimal maintenance. Periodic hard disk backups, and updating your Voice Clips to the database when your options change are all you need to do.
Customizable menu format. You pre-set the options on a per plan basis. For example, Plan A may allow a participant to request a loan, whereas Plan B may not. Or, for each plan, you can decide how many business days are allowable for a change to be initiated, the service/transaction fees, who gets billed, and more.


The synthesized speech is created from a pool of words that are strung together based on the input of a human operator, and the pool only contains a limited number of words as there are a limited number of combinations of words that are necessary for the train station's purpose; financial institutions also use voice response systems to aid customers in getting account information over the telephone. The same principle applies here -- since the financial institution only needs to provide the caller with a limited amount of information, it does not need to be able to generate spontaneous sentences in response to customer inquiries.
For More Informations Contact Us
Posted by: Sales & Marketing Team
Call Centers India Inc.

Virtual Call Center Technology

CCI specializes in technology for today's contact centers as well as for call centers of the future (Virtual Call Centers). A remote agent and telecommuting workforce is made possible by faster and more reliable internet access. Our products provide the controls and monitoring capability needed for these modern call centers. Our telecommuting software allows agents to work anywhere an internet connection exists. We provide both voice and data access to remote agents in this virtual call center environment. Our Virtual PBX office phone system can link office and home based employees together as a cohesive support team.



If there is one item of exciting technology that has come about in the past few years it is the introduction of the Virtual Call Centre.
In the second part of our blog we explore technology that has driven the virtual call centre.

Virtual Call Centres – Part 2 - Technology
By : Marketing Team
In the second part of our look at virtual call centres we take a look at some of the technology driving virtual call centres.
Up until recently virtual call centres had been held back by three main concerns - voice quality, security and reliability. But in the past 12 months there has been a significant shift in the take-up rate of virtual call centres.
But are people really deploying virtual call centres, or are they just hedging their bets and buying a technology that is more future proof? “I think that many people are deploying IP Contact Centres in the way that they have deployed traditional TDM systems,” says Mike Thomas, Group Contact Centre Architect for the power company Centrica. “The cabling is often completely separate from the data network”.
There is no doubt that there has recently been an increase in confidence in IP technology that has fuelled the take-up in IP contact centres. But what has come of the three main concerns - voice quality, reliability and security ?
Voice quality
As more people have started to implement IP-based voice systems they have discovered that the voice quality is not as big an issue for end users as they had originally expected. “IP voice systems can now deliver full quality business telephony audio, but ironically, if you look at GSM, for example, people have become very tolerant of poor voice quality in business when using mobile phones.In fact, the voice quality is so good that many of the new generation of SIP (Ethernet) IP phones are having to inject a low level 'comfort noise'. This background noise is used purely so that during pauses in the conversation, callers know that they are still connected.

Reliability

The other issue that has now largely been resolved is that of reliability. Servers and PCs have become much more reliable in the past three years. Server technology and processor power has increased by leaps and bounds and so has the reliability of the operating systems. It is now possible to buy highly redundant and highly scalable Linux servers which can be backed up across the WAN.
The reliability of voice quality has also improved as more companies have built IP networks that support Quality of Service (QoS). QoS based networks allow business data and real time critical voice IP packets to co-exist on the same network, but ensure high priority voice packets get to their destination first - so there are no glitches in audio quality. “People were trying to cut corners by running IP voice on the existing non QoS data network - which caused the bad voice quality problems, even though the basic IP telephony system worked fine,” says Nigel Jones. “Now they have built a complete new IP network and have upgraded it to include Quality of Service”.
The network is now typically segmented so that both voice and data are carried on separate VLANs.

Also the general perception of reliability has changed as desktop PCs have become more reliable. It was not uncommon for a Windows 95 or 98 PC to lock up on you - often several times a week. With the higher power PCs and Microsoft's XP operating system - it is rare for a PC to completely lock up. This improvement has tended to lessen the overall perception of reliability as an issue.
Linux is also used by some telephony vendors for communications voice servers which can provide proven 99.999% availability - comparable with legacy PBXs. Another advantage of Linux based systems is their resistance to worms and viruses which can often infect Windows based operating systems if the appropriate anti-virus measures are not in place.

Security

Security of IP systems has also improved considerably over the past few years. Companies that are concerned about security are using encryption systems such as Talis. For those companies that need security in their network There is nothing to fear anymore.

But simply adding encryption onto a network is not all plain sailing. “It makes things such as voice recording much more difficult,”
Obviously the more people who have the key, the less the secure it becomes. This has led to the IP system providers like Avaya and Nortel acting as the security systems’ integrator and managing the deployment of the voice recording systems.
“You can’t just put a pair of crocodile clips across two wires and start recording any more”. When the voice traffic is encrypted you have to be able to either record at the gateway level, as calls come into the call centre, or you have to be passed the key. This need for multiple vendors to have the security key is causing its own security problems.

Where Next for the Virtual Call Centre ?
In the next issue we will be exploring SIP and finding out where this will take the virtual call centre.
There is one area where the virtual call centre has yet to go – and this is in the field of presence enabled applications using SIP technology.

Posted by: Sales & Marketing Team
Call Centers India Inc.

Use predictive dialers; you’ll increase agent productivity within your Call Centers.

If your employees are still manually dialing their telephones to contact customers, you're not driving maximum revenues per agent. Predictive Dialers have been used in world-class businesses for years to increase sales, live contacts, or collections – anywhere from 150% to 300%.
Predictive dialer, an automatic telephone dialing system that dials from a list of numbers and turns the call over to an agent when a human responds. It increases productivity in a call center, because the agents can spend their time talking rather than waiting for calls to go through as well as hanging up on busy signals and answering machines. The couple of seconds of pause you often hear when you answer a call from a telemarketer is the time it takes for the system to determine that you are a live person.

Predictive Dialers help in doubling the sales per hour per agent. A 50% increase in sales could give a 100% increase in profits.

The system predicts when agents will finish the current call, and the system will dial out another phone line while agents are still talking to customers. The phone call is passed to an agent instantly after a customer picks up the phone. It takes 30 seconds to manually dial a phone number and let it ring four times. If the customer doesn't answer the agent has to remember this and call the customer later.

But with a dialer, detection of disconnected phone numbers, or fax machines and passing only live calls saves a lot of agent’s time. The system allows the agent to talk to at least two people in the same time it takes to manually dial and reach one person and agent productivity increases by 150% to 400%.

Predictive Dialers help in saving management time too. The program maintains do not call lists, organizes data like sales, leads, call-backs etc. This can help agents to decide which times of day work best to call, finding the best lead etc.

Predictive Dialers help control leads. Once a number has been called by the system, it will remember what time the call was placed, outcome of the call, and will not call the customer again until asked to.

Predictive Dialers give a real-time feedback and the manager can monitor and maintain optimum performance and productivity.

The real-time displays give information about inbound queues, current status and statistics, dialer statistics, and list performance. It helps to identify agents who have exceeded preset goals, monitor and train an agent for immediate corrective action and feedback.

Predictive dialing removes the remedial tasks of manual dialing and frustration on not achieving the target calls and figures. It boosts the agent morale.

Most companies experience return of investment within six to twelve months.

Typical Features
Features of a hosted predictive dialer are generally derived from the hardware versions.

Outbound Calling
• Call List Management
• Answering Machine Detection
• VoIP/PSTN Blending
• Screen Pops Support
• Automated Caller ID
• Agent Worksheets and Scripts
Compliance
• Do-Not-Call Support
• Abandon Rate Management
• Call Recording and Playback
Agent Productivity
• Multi-Party Call Conferencing
• Call Transfer
• Call-Back Scheduling
• Session History
• Customer Lookups
• Remote Agent Support
• Agent Customization
• Live Internal Chat

Quality Management
• Training Mode
• Agent Monitoring
• ACD Status
• Agent & Campaign Statistics
• Performance Statistics

Reporting
• Call Log Reporting
• Campaign Reporting
• List Performance Reporting
• Agent Performance Reporting
• Disposition / Call Completion Reporting

Posted by: Sales & Marketing Team
Call Centers India Inc.
http://www.callcentersindia.com/

IVR Technologies are perfect for businesses looking to boost their productivity and achieve cost savings.

IVR stands for Interactive Voice Response, and represents software applications accessible from a telephone. Simply put, an IVR system lets callers obtain, exchange, or input information with a computer via touch-tone phone without a human intermediary. IVR systems automate the input and retrieval of information. IVR systems are perfect for businesses looking to Boost their productivity and achieve cost savings. Telnet uses innovative IVR solutions to supply its customers with easy-to-use interactive voice response applications.


IVR systems provide the basic software which allows the use of voice self services. In contrast to assisted services, which require the active involvement of a call center agent, IVR systems will pre-qualify the caller. This can be used to relieve the agent or to create a fully automated voice application. At the same time, they form the basis for call-center independent value added services such as ring tone downloads location-based services, lotteries or contests. IVR’s provide customers with 24-hour a day, 7-day a week access to business information and various services through a simple touch-tone telephone.


Below are just a few of the Industries were IVR application technologies are used.


Financial Industry: Tele Banking Solution, Mutual Funds, Credit Card Account information, Stock Trading, Financial Bank Transaction.

Call Centers: Call center employee screening, Customer satisfaction surveys, Client survey/questionnaire administration, Panel data collection.

Corporate Organization: Order entry and status, Training center, Automated Attendant, Call Centers

Education: Course Registration, Student Registration

Entertainment/Sports: Ticket Sales, Sports Schedule, Interactive TV, News Clipping

Government Organization: Vehicle Registration, Tax Office, Ticket Citation Payment

Health Care Organization: Appointments with Doctors, Clinical research surveys, Bed Checking, Time and attendance verification, Home Care Check-in

Manufacturing Company: Certification and Testing, Component availability, Order Entry and Status

Telephone Company: Third Party Verification, Conferencing, Cellular Feature Activation, Cellular Roaming, Line Testing

Transportation: Airline Fly Status, Airline Scheduling, Shipping line global checking

Retail: Dealer or Store Locator, Order and shipping tracking, Directory Assistance, Order Processing, Market Research (surveys and polls), order entry transactions

Telemarketing: Automated Dialers

IVR technology can support analog and digital telephone systems, although the latter can process many more calls at the same time. The voice board that processes each call has only between 2 and 24 ports in analog systems, but between 30 and thousands of ports when digital. Since the number of ports determines the number of simultaneous calls the system can handle, an analog system can only process a maximum of 24 calls at any given time.

Requirements for IVR Technology

1. Easy telephone access for clients
2. Affordable telephone charges for the client or MFI
3. Centrally-stored data accessible to the call flow application
4. Frequent data updates so clients can access accurate account information
5. Secured databases to prevent unauthorized phone-based access

Now a days IVR technology makes phone a powerful business tool for Organization, the simple telephone instrument becomes a powerful input/output device through which all kinds of transactions can be performed with assured security and data integrity.

e-mail ! Most useful way of communication in respondents business.

e-mail ! Most useful way of communication in respondents business.

Electronic mail (e-mail) is a store and forward method of composing, sending, storing, and receiving text messages, graphics, sound and video messages over electronic communication systems.

Email is now one of the fastest ways to gain or lose potential customers because of its ability to deliver information fast to an enormous amount of people. After sending an email you are no longer in control of the effects of the message and can only wait in suspense.

For example: an employee of your company started off his/her day in a bad mood. A potential customer emails them with a trivial question and they reply with a brash tone. Do you think that the recipient will use your company? On the Internet word travels fast. It takes me 3 minutes to send email to 50-100 people. Therefore your company can lose 100 current or potential customers with the brash email sent out by your employee. This can happen in a matter of minutes.

What's the difference between writing personal e-mails and business e-mails? Personal e-mails only represent you. Business e-mails, though, represent you and the company you work for. People who receive them not only form opinions about you but also about your company. So, business e-mails require careful writing, editing and proofreading.

Using Email Effectively:

Email is an effective means of communication for business and personal use but it also has some disadvantages.

Advantages are:

1. Email is effective in providing quick answers to yes and no, type questions.

2. Email is effective in finding the right person in an organization or company to answer your question.

3. Email is good to make appointments for busy people.

4. Email can distribute information quickly to many people for the time it takes to email one person.

The disadvantages are:

1. Email can become time consuming for answering complicated questions and misunderstandings can arise because cultural differences in the interpretation of certain words. The telephone is much better for providing detailed answers or if you feel that the question is not absolutely clear.

2. Email can compromise the security of an organization because sensitive information can be easily distributed accidentally or deliberately. Email should be entrusted to well trained and trusted staff members.

Email can become impersonal or misunderstood so consider these points:

1. Be concise and to the point.
2. Use proper spelling, grammar & punctuation.
3. Make it personal.
4. Use templates for frequently used responses.
5. Do not attach unnecessary files.
6. Use proper structure & layout.
7. Do not overuse the high priority option.
8. Do not write in CAPITALS.
9. Don't leave out the message thread.
10. Add disclaimers to your emails
11. Read the email before you send it.
12. Do not overuse Reply to All.
13. Mailings > use the Bcc: field or do a mail merge.
14. Take care with abbreviations and emoticons.
15. Be careful with formatting.
16. Take care with rich text and HTML messages.
17. Do not copy a message or attachment without permission.
18. Does not use email to discuss confidential information?
19. Use a meaningful subject.
20. Use active instead of passive.
21. Avoid using URGENT and IMPORTANT.
22. Avoid long sentences.
23. Don't send or forward emails containing libelous, defamatory, offensive, racist or obscene remarks.
24. Don't forward virus hoaxes and chain letters.
25. Keep your language gender neutral.
26. Don't reply to spam.
27. Use cc: field sparingly.

Posted by: Sales & Marketing Team
Call Centers India Inc.
http://www.callcentersindia.com/

Call Center Technologies

Today, companies are recognizing that being able to deliver a high-quality customer experience through call center technology is of major strategic value to the organization. Technology has played a vital role in customer service outsourcing. Rapid advancements in information and communication technology have led to a boom in call centers across the world. Call centers use a variety of technologies to support contact with a customer.

Call centers have been aided by a range of telecommunications and computer technologies, including automatic call distribution (ACD), interactive voice response (IVR), and computer telephony integration (CTI), which allows the actions of the computer to be synchronized with what is happening on the phone. The latest internet technologies allow "virtual" call centers to be established across a company's telecommunications network without physically putting all the people in one office.

Technology is transforming the traditional call center, allowing staff to be in contact with customers in a number of different ways.

Technology Usage Level in Call Centers

Technology ----------------- Percent of respondents
1. Email -------------------------------------- 62
2.Voice response systems ----------------- 61
3. Quality monitoring systems ------------ 53
4. Computer telephone integration ------ 51
5. Call logging systems -------------------- 49
6. Contact Management tools ------------- 46
7. Workforce management tools --------- 43
8. Wallboards / reader boards ----------- 42
9. Advanced network services ------------ 38
10. Knowledge-base tools ----------------- 35
11. Predictive dialers --------------------- 18
12. Web-enabled call center -------------- 8
13. Multimedia queues ------------------- 13
14. VoIP ------------------------------------ 9
15. Speech recognition ------------------- 7

Finding the right technology is not an easy task, but the first steps must be to determine the organization's needs, and to link customers with the information and services they require quickly.

Various technology options are available to an outsourced customer service center and the selection of technology that will be used by the center needs to be done intelligently. That should provide the following six essential requirements:

1. Availability: The applications and services should be available during the specified time of operations. The system should also be available to the customers without making them wait for a long duration.

2. Manageability: The system should be easily reconfigurable and should enable the center to quickly customize the applications for any new services and scripts requested by the client.

3. Quality of Service: The voice and data services should be reliable and should have a pre-specified quality level.

4. Redundancy: There should be adequate protection against system failures and data loss. Adequate back-up plans in case of any system failures should be made so that the operations are not hampered.

5. Scalability: Modular increments in the system capacity should be feasible.

6. Security: Technologies used by the center should ensure prevention of loss and theft of client data.

Posted by:
Call Centers India Inc.
http://www.callcentersindia.com/