TYPES OF CALL CENTER
The main types of Call Center are usually considered to be the following:
Call Centre: only call dispatching, no other activities done
Unskilled Call Center: call despatching, incident tracking, feedback mechanism to clients
Skilled Call Center: large number of incidents are solved at the Call Center
Expert Call Center: incorporates Incident Management and Problem Management (partly). Most incidents are actually solved at the Call Center
All types of Call Center may be outsourced.
TYPICAL CALL CENTER FUNCTIONS
Apart from the basic 'Call Center', all Call Center types perform the following activities:
- Receive all calls and e-mails on incidents
- Incident recording (including RFC’s)
- Incident Classification
- Incident Prioritisation
- Incident Escalation
- Search for Work Around
- Update the customer and IT group on progress
- Perform communication activities for the other ITIL processes (e.g. Release notifications, change schedules, SLM-reports)
- Perform daily CMDB verification
- Report to Management, Process Managers and customers (through SLM) on Call center performance
WHY CONSIDER OUTSOURCING?
Cost reductions are a necessity in today's economy and internal support groups are a frequent cost reduction target. Call centers and desktop support teams need to ensure that their services are clearly defined and aligned with business needs... sometimes outsourcing can help ensure this is the case.
The Call center is a single point of contact (SPOC) for end-users who need help. Without this single point of contact an organisation would face major losses in time spent on looking for ways to fix issues and get help. As it is often relatively self contained, outsourcing options emerge.
OUTSOURCING FACTORS
A whole range of factors and questions arise when a Call Center function is considered for outsourcing. The following pages outlines form of these.
