Call Center and Contact Center Software Difference Complete Guide

Customer service is an integral part of the business. In the time of online retail and social media, most businesses realize the hidden value in customer service and its positive correlation to business success. Over 50% of customers across all age groups prefer phone communication to reach out to a service team, making it the most-used channel for customer service, a survey by Zendesk found. The ongoing covid-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on the function, largely underrated. Many global companies are now focussing on ramping up their customer service business, due to a spike in demand. So what is driving this demand? What are the essential tools used for managing customer expectations? What is the difference between call and contact center software? Let us delve deeper and understand. Companies make customer interactions through two essential ways– call and contact centers. For many, call center and contact center are interchangeable terms. Any operation concerning customer service is viewed as a call center.  Whilst, they both aim to iron out customer issues by servicing them, there are key differences in their approach and engagement. Let us understand the differences in detail.

What’s your calling: Customer Call Center or Customer Contact Center

A call center follows the basic principles of servicing customers over phone calls only. The agents in a call center are known as customer service representatives, who handle customer inquiries, provide technical support and address customer service issues. Some call centers provide other services such as billing, reminder or payments due, sales and telemarketing phone calls. The focus is on key performance indicators such as average calls per agent per day, average talk time, and the number of tickets resolved among others.

Inbound and Outbound Operation

Customer call centers are categorized based on the type of operation—inbound and outbound.  An inbound call center software is a gateway for incoming calls from customers. Most of the calls primarily belong to existing customers who typically call for queries and issue resolution. Whereas an outbound call center is used for making outgoing calls to existing and potential customers. An outbound call center is valuable for marketing campaigns for cold calls, pitching products, market research, and sales calls.  Contact centers, on the other hand, represent an integrated channel for customer communications. They cut across multiple channels including phone, email, chat, and social media for customer engagement on their choice of platform. The biggest advantage of a contact center is a single platform for handling all interactions taking place on multiple channels. 

Key Differences Between Call Center and Contact Center Software

We break down the key differences for easy comprehension below:

• Phone versus omnichannel platform

As mentioned earlier, the most fundamental difference between a call center and a contact center is the communication channel. Call centers rely only on phones for interaction whereas contact centers use a variety of channels including phones. 

• Engagement level

The level of engagement in the contact center and call center varies significantly. While contact centers use omnichannel platforms, cutting across multiple channels. 

• Self-service feature

Call centers primarily use IVR for directing the customers to a particular function as per the issue. Contact centers, on the other hand, use chatbots, IVR, and other advanced functions to self-serve customers.  

• Information access

Contact center software can pull up data from various sources upon integration, including third-party tools such as CRM. This makes them a warehouse of information. Call centers offer the ability to access real-time data from phone operations, through filtering, grouping, and sorting among others.  Both contact centers and call centers are widely used solutions for customer communication. It is, however, the nature of the business and requirement which should be used as a yardstick for making the choice. 

Read Also: What is ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) and Its Importance For Today’s Businesses?

HoduSoft offers both products under the brand name HoduCC, which incorporates a host of features and advanced techniques used in the industry. HoduCC call and contact center present an innovative solution for call centers and contact centers, which can be customized as per the business needs and industry standards. 

Key Features of HoduCC Call and Contact Center Solution

• Auto dialer 

Auto dialer increases operational efficiency and productivity of agents by automatically managing call flow. It detects busy signals and unanswered calls to transfer only the connected calls to the agents, reducing call drop rates. 

• Predictive dialer

A predictive dialer automates the dialing of outbound phone calls by using an algorithm to predict agent availability. It is beneficial to predict the average call answer time and agent availability, which helps to modify the dial rate, accordingly. 

• WebRTC Phone

HoduCC call and contact center software allows to securely converse with customers through in-built web phones based on WebRTC technology.

• Multilevel IVR 

Multi-level interactive voice response (IVR) takes your inbound calling system to the next level. It acts as front office staff by offering self-help features, they guide the caller through a series of self-service prompts. 

• Call Recording

Call recording lets you monitor calls through recordings. The recorded calls are securely placed on your server or backup server, and they can be retrieved when needed. 

• Real-time analytics and reports

The feature helps in accumulating the vital data of your business. It generates various reports that assist in making informed decisions through live dashboards. 

• CRM integration

All the popular Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software can be easily integrated with HoduCC contact center software for maximizing RoI on marketing campaigns.  

• SMS integration

Whether you need to send emergency alerts or generate reminder notifications, connecting with the customers is easier than ever with HoduCC’s SMS channel.

Add-on features of HoduCC

• IVR and agent survey

IVR Survey presents a set of survey questions to get feedback from potential customers. Once the conversation between an agent and a customer is over, the agent can transfer the call for the IVR survey or even run a campaign for the survey.

• Quality Analysis

The QA (Quality Analysis) is an add-on module that ranks the agents based on predefined criteria; voice tone, language proficiency, quality of query resolution and many other parameters.

• SMS Broadcasting

SMS broadcasting functionality allows admin to create and set up an SMS campaign and broadcast the information for the customers.

Exclusive features of HoduCC Call center software

• Preview dialer 

A preview dialer helps the agent to view crucial records before getting into the call. It features marketing campaigns that were targeted at different customers.

• Progressive dialer 

Progressive dialers lie between manual dialing and advanced predictive dialing options. A progressive dialer lets the agent wind up the current call before dialing the next number on the list. 

Exclusive features of HoduCC Contact Center software

• Single-tenant and multi-tenant version- Single-Tenant version is used by the end customer for their usage. The customers can be banks, insurance, call centers, BPOs, healthcare, manufacturing, or any company that wants to streamline the customer engagement and increase customer satisfaction.

While multi-tenant is used by Internet Telephony Service Providers (ITSPs), Internet Service Providers (ISPs), telecoms, and VoIP providers for offering hosted call centers or contact centers as a service. They host the software on their server and provide it as a service to the end customers who are called “Tenants”. They can host multiple tenants on a single server with unique login credentials and data security.

• Skill-based mapping– This feature lets you transfer the calls to specific agents or departments based on predefined routing rules. 
• Automatic call distribution– Automatic Call distribution is an efficient way to respond promptly to incoming calls by routing them to the best available agent. It enhances call response rate and call handling time, thereby improving customer satisfaction. During high call volume periods, callers can choose a call-back option rather than waiting in the queue. Hence, with the systematic immediate response, you can streamline the working process.
• WhatsApp for businesses 

There are inbuilt feature allows an agent to access WhatsApp in the contact center window itself. It has the following features:

• WhatsApp Based Ticketing 
• Two-Way communication 
• Alerts & Notifications 
• Rich Media Support 
• Seamless integration

• Facebook integration 

The seamless integration in world’s most popular channel Facebook helps to locate and control new customers through HoduCC contact center software automatically and in real-time. The direct mail feature helps in gauging customer interest and highlights curated information accordingly.

• Video chat 

Advance-designed HoduCC Contact Center can provide personal touch to interactions with its face-to-face video chat feature. It allows customers to engage with customer care agents at the click of a button. The customer is able to voice concerns and seek redressal from the comfort of his home. Video chat has also been made feature-rich with capabilities such as: 

• Screen Sharing: The software allows screen sharing, which helps in improving video communication efficiency.
• Document Sharing: Through a video chat solution, customer care representatives can easily share presentations, MOUs, and other important documents.
• Call Recording: The software makes it easy to record calls to analyze business conversations.
• Confidentiality: Conversations can be kept confidential with the help of a video chat solution.

Pandemic has driven many business interactions with phones. However, many organizations were caught ill-prepared to react to a sudden increase in call volumes during the Covid-19 pandemic. A survey by Accenture found that 57% of customers prefer call support as their initial channel of communication. Understanding the needs of customers, HoduCC has ingrained work-from-home tools for continuity in business operations and seamless customer support. 

WFH or remote: HoduCC Call Center has got you covered

• Remote Agent– Allow your agent to work seamlessly from anywhere and run the business operations smoothly.
• Inbuilt WebRTC Phone– Use advanced audio and video call features to assist customers in a better way.
• Browser-based Access- Easy access through a web browser without software installation on the device. 
• Call Forwarding to mobile- Reduce the chances of unattended calls through call forwarding to mobile and improve customer satisfaction
• Call Bridging– Improve the communication through efficiently connecting agents to customers and vice versa.
• Call recording- Record calls for monitoring, supervising purposes, and boosting customer support services.
• Highly secure- Converse with customers and deliver the best assistance to them through the highly secured system.

HoduSoft allows your agent to work seamlessly from anywhere and run the business operations smoothly. Providing unhindered customer service will likely multiply your brand value and bring a band of loyal customers.  Whatever be your need, HoduSoft can help you in delivering the best support at affordable costs.