What is a Call Center?
A call center (often referred to as a contact center) is a function which provides customer service and support. Companies staff call centers with agents who are trained to assist with a variety of service requests. A call center can typically handle inbound calls and outbound calls.
A call center will typically utilize some form of telecommunications software such as an automatic call distributor (ACD) to route calls to the appropriate agent. This call center software is fundamental to delivering a positive customer experience. Companies looking to modernize operations and transform their ability to deliver exceptional customer experiences are increasingly turning to cloud call center software solutions as they offer greater agility and flexibility to meet rapidly changing customer expectations.
What’s the difference between a call center and a contact center?
It is not uncommon for the terms to be used interchangeably. However, there is a difference in that a call center focuses on telephone-based interactions with customers whereas a contact center supports multiple interaction channels including voice (telephone), chat, email, messaging and more. Contact centers that can support multiple channels are often called omnichannel. In an omnichannel contact center, customers can interact with an agent using the access method of choice – phone, chat, email, etc. and agents can seamlessly manage interactions across these multiple channels simultaneously..
How NICE can help
NICE is the market leader in providing customers the call center software they need to deliver consistently exceptional customer experiences. Whether your call center or contact center is focused on a single channel, multichannel or omnichannel interactions with customers, NICE provides innovative call center software, called NICE CXone, that includes:
Omnichannel Routing – contact routing and interaction management that empowers agents to positively and productively interact with customers in digital and voice channels. These solutions include an automatic call distributor (ACD), interactive voice response (IVR), interaction channel support and proactive outbound dialer.
Workforce Optimization – unlocks the potential of your team by inspiring employee’s self-improvement, amplifying quality management efforts to enhance customer experience and reducing labor waste. These solutions include workforce management (WFM), quality management (QM), recording, and performance management (PM).
Analytics – turns insights into results by making data relevant, easy to consume and actionable to drive measurable improvements and understand the omnichannel experience customers receive. These solutions include interaction analytics, customer surveys, reporting and performance management.
NICE CXone is designed for businesses of all sizes, scaling from call centers with 30 agents up to many thousands. One of the advantages of a cloud call center software solution such as CXone is that it easily scales based on the needs of your business, allowing you to pay only based on your actual usage.
