Call Center vs Contact Center: Understanding the Key Differences

Are you struggling to know the difference between a contact center and a call center? Let this article guide you through the key differences so that you can make an informed decision for your business needs.

Contact Center vs. Call Center: Understanding the Key Differences

If you want to up your customer service game, the key is keeping in contact with your customers. Call center services can do this for you — but you might be able to go even bigger. That’s where a multichannel call and contact center comes in — these services allow for better communication across mediums. It offers better customer service and accessibility for more customers and leads, creating more business.

Are you confused about the difference between a contact center and call center services? Your friends at TeleDirect are here to explain everything you need to know — and how to choose the best option for your brand.

What is a Contact or Call Center?

Contact and call centers might be different, but they achieve the same goal: helping a business serve the needs of more customers and leads. Contact and call centers are centralized points where consumers can contact a business if they encounter issues or questions about their product or service. Many also help organize customer-related administrative tasks, like making appointments.

Contact and call centers can be operated by the company it represents or a third-party business specializing in communication and customer support. Many companies outsource their call or contact center to improve customer service without adding pressure to their internal team and deliver more cohesive support.

Call Center Fundamentals

A call center is a centralized platform that offers customer communication through the phone. There are several different types of call centers. Some are fully automated, so customers press buttons to hear prerecorded responses. This can be great for some brands, but many businesses, like hotline call centers, tech support, or healthcare services, require real people on the other line. That’s where live, inbound, and outbound agent services come into play. They offer personalized telephone support from real people. At TeleDirect, these live agents are available 24 hours a day and are trained extensively in your company’s values and branding. It allows you to ensure quality customer support around the clock.

Contact centers are a lot like call centers, but with one big difference: they cover more ground. While call centers offer complete customer support over the phone, contact centers can go further. They include other channels in their services, like web chat, email, and social media DMs. A contact center can also help a business with more complex communication and organizational needs, like appointment management, lead response, and customer experience surveying.

Key Differences Between Call Centers and Contact Centers

Outsourcing a BPO call or contact center can be a great option for your business. It helps improve your customer satisfaction levels, which leads to an improved reputation, increased sales, better client retention, and an overall better bottom line. However, choosing between the two services is hard when you do not know their differences.

The key difference between call centers and contact centers is in what they offer. Contact centers provide communication and support services across multiple channels, like telephone, email, web chat, and apps. Call centers offer communication and support services through inbound and outbound telephone coverage. This means that, technically, a call center is a type of contact center.

Choosing the Right Solution for Your Business

Unsure about what your business needs? By recognizing that you want to incorporate a great contact center into your current strategy, you are already on the right track to choosing the solution for your unique needs. We recommend that your team gets together and considers the following questions:

• • Who are our customers?

Your customers’ needs will be different depending on their demographic. For instance, many young people prefer to communicate through text, social media DMs and web-chat services rather than speaking to an agent on the phone. If your brand is mostly targeted at youth consumers, a multichannel contact center might be a better way to serve your client base.

• • What do our customers need?

Don’t ignore feedback. If your customer satisfaction surveys and online reviews consistently indicate a recurring problem, you must address it. Often, these problems come from unsatisfactory communication issues, like being unable to get through to any live support for complex problems or long wait times. Finding these weak spots can help you decide where to incorporate new channels and strategies to support their needs.

• • What type of communication is required of our industry/product/service?

Some industries require more forms of communication than others. A call center might be best for your company if most of your customer communication revolves around simple queries (like checking opening hours). Industries that demand more complex or involved communication may choose a contact center model instead, as it offers more support channels for clients.

Transitioning from a Call Center to a Contact Center

Transitioning from a call center to a contact center might sound tricky, but taking the BPO route is super simple. By outsourcing a dedicated American contact center service (like TeleDirect), you don’t have to worry about any of the technical details. We take care of those elements for you. Once we have learned about your company, values, and branding, we will become an extension of your business. We can handle communication across channels, whether on the phone, through email, or web-chat feature. This will give your team more time to perform their actual skill sets and jobs while we perform ours.

Ready to improve your customer service experience? Call TeleDirect about turning your call center into a full-fledged contact center today. Call (800) 776-1081 at your convenience to discuss your brand, goals, and how we can help your company thrive. We can’t wait to learn more about your business.