A contact center (sometimes also called a customer interaction center or e-contact center) is a central point in an enterprise that manages all customer contacts. The contact center usually consists of one or more online call centers but may also include other types of customer contact as well, such as postal mail catalogs, e-mail newsletters, Web site inquiries and chats, and the collection of customers’ information during in-store purchasing. This center is usually an integral part of company’s overall customer relationship management - methodologies, software, and usually Internet capabilities that help a company manage customer relationships in an organized way.
Usually the contact center is an integral part of multichannel marketing – offering customers to purchase goods in several ways, for example, in retail stores and through Internet. Such contact center is often provided with the sort of software that allows routing the contact information, tracking the contacts and gathering data.
Self Service Contact Centers
Study the difference between the inbound and outbound call centers.
Self-service contact centers are a new generation of inbound centers that are becoming very popular. The communication between the client and the center in traditional contact centers is carried out by human agents.
In self service centers a lot of work is done by non-human systems, such as automated response or even speech-enabled systems. Shifting to such systems helps reduce expenditures and increase the speed of answering the clients’ inquiries.
Automated response systems enable the client to use the keypad of their phone in order to get answers to their questions by pushing buttons. Pushing the buttons gradually advances them to the necessary information.
People are familiar with automated response systems for many years. Getting access to simple and common data, such as addresses, account balances, procedural instructions we often use such systems. They are also used in routing calls to the proper call center agents who are able to give the full information.
| 
