When you want to communicate with your customers effectively and efficiently, it’s worth considering implementing a call center in your business and following the best call center compliances. 

These call centers can handle a variety of tasks, from calling customers to promote and sell your products or services to receiving calls to answer customers’ questions and solve their problems and providing customers with valuable and relevant information. Ultimately, you’ll be able to serve your customers better, sell more products, and generate more revenue.

The problem is that there are several types of call centers that perform different functions and have varying benefits. So, the question is which one you should choose. Fortunately, we’re here to help. In this post, we’ll look at the six different types of call centers in more detail.

Inbound Call Centers

As the name implies, inbound call centers receive calls coming into your business. These call centers are typically used to provide customer service. As such, they’ll often provide customers with information about your products or services. 

Also, inbound call centers are effective in helping customers when they experience problems, and your call center agents may provide solutions or help customers identify any potential sources for the issues they’re experiencing.

Apart from this, inbound call centers often also deal with order processing by assisting customers to place their orders and confirming their payment details, answering and transferring incoming calls to the right people within your business, and providing dispatch services by monitoring the progress of any shipments or deliveries.

Did you know that the global call center market will grow to $496 billion in 2027 and, as such, more businesses will implement call centers to help them serve their customers better and grow their businesses? 

Outbound Call Centers

In contrast to inbound call centers, outbound call centers make calls to prospective customers. This makes them a valuable tool in your outbound marketing strategy and they are a cost-effective way for you to create awareness about your brand, products, or services.

With that in mind, one of the most common responsibilities for outbound call center agents includes selling your products to potential customers. Here, you’ll typically provide your agents with a list of potential leads, which they’ll then call to sell or promote your products. 

You can also use an outbound call center in a customer outreach role. When you do, your call center agents will phone customers to tell them more about your products or conduct customer surveys of existing customers that will, in turn, help you determine if there’s a demand for your product.

Automated Call Centers

Automated call centers use computer-based systems to answer incoming calls and, sometimes, make outgoing calls. They’ll commonly be used to answer calls and take messages from customers. They’re also helpful in providing customers with information like giving them directions to your closest store or location. 

More advanced systems can answer incoming calls and, by using natural language processing technology that can understand the caller’s words, guide them through a menu, provide them with the information they need, or transfer their call to a human agent.

One of the major benefits of automated call centers is that they allow you to reduce your labor costs. This is because, when you use an automated call center, you don’t need many human agents and you’ll typically only need staff to maintain the system.

Multichannel Call Centers

Multichannel call centers, like inbound and outbound call centers, provide voice calling capabilities. However, they also expand their features by including other communications channels in one platform. This can, for example, include sending and receiving emails, faxes, and order fulfillment capabilities.

This allows you to have a system that provides for all modern forms of business communication while, at the same time, having phone capabilities which are still an important part of a business’s communication processes.

Virtual Call Centers

Virtual call centers provide the features that other call centers provide. The major difference, however, is that they allow you to provide these services virtually. In other words, your agents can provide their services and perform their tasks, no matter where they are. This is especially helpful nowadays, when remote working is becoming increasingly popular.

Virtual call centers have several benefits. For one, you’ll rarely need any hardware. As such, you don’t have high installation and maintenance costs. This, in turn, allows you to achieve a return on investment quicker for these systems. Another benefit is that these call centers don’t tie you to a specific location. Also, for example, if you want to move to a bigger facility, you don’t need to move any hardware which makes these systems more scalable flexible.

Omnichannel Call Centers

We’ve already seen that a multichannel call center expands basic phone services by including several other communication channels. Omnichannel call centers take this approach a step further. Here, all these communication channels are integrated. As such, a specific customer’s information is available across your entire business.

This capability allows you to improve your customer experience because you’re able to take a more personalized approach when dealing with a customer. In turn, this helps you to attract new customers and retain existing ones.

On average, 49% of consumers use three to five communication channels to contact business’ customer service departments. 

Choosing the Right Type of Call Center for Your Business

A call center can help your business generate more revenue, save more costs, and serve your customers better. However, it’s vital that you choose the right one for your specific needs and preferences since each type of call center has different metrics and KPIs. Hopefully, this post helped illustrate the different types of call centers in more detail, so that you can make this decision a bit easier.

And if you’re looking for a call center solution for your business, ULTATEL provides the perfect option. Our cloud contact center solution gives you everything you need to manage your customer calls efficiently and effectively, while, at the same time, allowing you to save costs.