So... What is a Call Center, Anyway?

By Brad Cleveland, President, Incoming Calls Management Institute 

Phone: (410) 267-0700, ext 958
fax: (410) 267-0962
email: bradc@incoming.com

Bio: Brad Cleveland is President of Annapolis, Maryland based Incoming Calls Management Institute (ICMI), an independent thinktank that provides call center management education, research and publications throughout the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, South Africa and the Pacific Rim.  ICMI can be reached at 410-267-0700 or at www.incoming.com.

So... What is a Call Center, Anyway?

"Tell me... what exactly is a call center, anyway?" 

Ever get stumped on that one?  You'd think we call/contact/interaction/whatever center professionals would have this one figured out, given the 75,000 (or so) U.S. centers, employing some 5 million (or so) of us.  And we've been at it for a good three decades (or so), depending on how loosely you define call center.  But darn if that one still doesn't get us.

Why is defining what a call center is and does so difficult?  Have you tried to find a definition you agree with, let alone are willing to use?  Here are some definitions we've all run into that don't work so well:

• "It's a customer contact center handling all non face to face communications."  Not bad, but too limiting.  E.g., where's the reference to creating value for the organization and customer based on what we learn from these dialogs?
  
  
• "It's a customer interaction center."  Same problem – too limiting.
  
  
• "It's the infrastructure that builds customer relationships through all forms of electronic contacts."  Hmm... it's succinct, which has merit.  But "building customer relationships through all forms of electronic contacts" can be broadly applied to many activities that have nothing to do with call centers.  
  
• "I don't know how to describe it, but I know it when I see it."  Sorry, only the Supreme Court can make such claims and get away with it.

For the record, ICMI's definition of call center is:

"A call center is a coordinated system of people, processes, technologies and strategies that effectively integrates organizational resources and multiple channels of communication to enable customer interactions that create value for the customer and organization."

Thinking through what a call center really does (and not just the results it's supposed to produce) may help explain the thinking behind this definition.  To use economic terms, call centers exist in a "demand chasing" environment.  At virtually any moment in time, there are either more contacts to be handled than there are resources to handle them, or there are more resources than there are contacts to be handled.  Demand must be "chased" with the supply of call center resources.  That is the basic fact of call center management.

At first glance, that statement has a rather operational, real-time feel to it.  But look again... therein is a strategic principle that will drive our careers, our organizations and our success in coming years.  Yes, the challenge of managing a call center is that it exists in a demand chasing environment.  But whether or not the call center exists, customers will increasingly demand right-now, real-time service.  Call centers don't exist simply because telephones, toll free service, ACDs or e-mail servers were invented.  Call centers exist because there is ongoing, variable demand for service and call centers are the most effective mechanisms on the planet for meeting that demand. 

In other words, what we do is not just about telephone calls, e-mail messages, or Internet transactions.  That's a limited perspective.  Besides, technology will, one of these days, meld these channels into all-in-one voice/video/data transactions that enable customers to see agents as they converse, exchange documents and view Web pages.  What we are about is matching up organizational resources with customer demands, both of which will evolve dramatically in coming years even as they remain dependent on the call center to be real-time matchmaker.  E-mail?  Telephone?  Voice over the Internet?  Multimedia, customer-facing, e-enabled, CRM-focused... whatever, we'll be matching supply with demand.

Further, the reality of matching supply and demand, coupled with the complexity of the multichannel environment and rising customer demands, places call center professionals in increasingly important positions within organizations.  We must be forecasting-, scheduling-, service level-, real-time management-, customer pleasing aficionados.  In fact, the responsibilities/opportunities of call center directors and managers keep rising because winning, keeping and serving customers is so important in today's environment.

The supply and demand metaphor may initially sound too transaction-oriented.  But think again.  It's more than throwing Web pages, VRU ports and agents at clamoring customers.  It's about matching supply with demand.  Demand is the driver.  So, supply is not just a matter of quantity – it's got to be the right supply.  The stuff customers want.  Yes, call centers improve customer loyalty (by ensuring that the organization is "easy to do business with").  Yes, they contribute to improved quality and innovation (by capturing a constant stream of data from individual contacts, and pinpointing quality improvement and innovation opportunities).  Sure, they enable more focused marketing (by tracking buying trends, capturing customer feedback and analyzing demographic information).  You bet, they improve efficiencies for both the organization and customers (especially as they help customers understand and use self-service options and work to prevent the need for contacts before they happen). 

These contributions go to the heart of getting the right type and right amount of supply in place, at the right times.  Which, I might add, dovetails perfectly with a definition ICMI has been using for years for call center management:

"Call center management is the art of having the right number of skilled people and supporting resources in place at the right times to handle an accurately forecasted workload, at service level and with quality." 

Will the call center management practices that got us to this point work in coming years?  Well, to a degree – at least where sound management practices are in place.  All of the immutable laws of call center behavior still exist (e.g., queuing dynamics still apply, customer behavior can still be measured, and the powerful pooling principle is still powerful).  Further, most of the principles behind effective call center management, e.g., those related to forecasting, scheduling, real-time management and quality, are intact.  But the stakes are higher, the challenges greater and the responsibilities at every level of the call center more demanding. 

So, what is a call center?  It's a lean, mean demand-chasing machine.  No wonder call centers are as important as ever in today's up and down, ever-changing economy.