What Is An Inbound Call Center?

When people talk about call centers, they often ask if it is “inbound” or “outbound.” The difference between one and the other simply refers to who makes the call. If a user makes an incoming call, it is “coming” to the call center. If an agent makes a call that is outgoing, it is “leaving” the contact center.

Actually, most call centers are a mixture of the two types. This is called a “combined” call center. However, almost all contact centers can be considered combined, so they usually identify with which address, incoming or outgoing, most of their calls are directed. Entry and exit designations also tend to align with certain types of sectors or businesses. For example, outgoing call centers are often very involved with telemarketing or collection operations.

What Is An Inbound Call Center?

A big challenge for incoming calls is that the company has very little control over when a user decides to make a call. This lack of control makes it difficult for a company to know how many agents must have working at a given time to meet the expectations of users and avoid long waiting times. The contact center activity itself helps mark some general trends.

For example, not many people call at night. The peaks of calls, which are the times when there is more demand for communication by users, usually occur early in the morning, at breakfast time and at dusk. This fact makes sense, since that is when most people have a little free time. There are also other causes that cause calls spikes. A power outage of an electric company, storms that cause damage to insurance companies or sales of fares for an airline.

Fortunately, the history of call volumes is a good predictor for facing similar future situations. A common call center application, by administering the workforce, does just that. Use call history patterns to predict future call spikes. Even better, you can automatically schedule available agents based on those forecasts to make sure there are enough of them working throughout the day to avoid excessive waiting times and ensure user satisfaction.

Workforce management (WFM) used to be something that only the largest call centers had access to, but WFM cloud-based solutions have made the technology affordable for small contact centers and medium. Cloud call center solutions also offer the possibility to automatically adjust to volume changes and pay only for the services that are used. These types of solutions save a lot of money, since an airline does not have to pay for the maximum capacity it needs in holiday periods, when the business may be lower in other months of the year.

A successful incoming call center has become the cornerstone of transforming customer service into a competitive advantage by offering a truly different user experience. Contact center technology in the cloud makes this possibility available to companies of all sectors and sizes.