Entry

What is "in-bound" and "out-bound" call center?

Will my experience as Tech. Support Representative count in the Software Sector?

Why do Call Centers ususally operate in the nights?

Mar 6th, 2007 21:45
Srujan Mishra, Nethra Chidura, Srujan Mishra

In Call Centers terminology, if we receive calls from the customers or 
our client and reply to their queries, then its called an "inbound" 
call center. Usually, customers call if they have any problem with 
their products or services. So a call center agent (Customer 
Support/Technical Support) attends the customers calls and tries to 
solve their queries.
Now coming to "outbound" call center, this works the other way. Here, 
the agents working for any call center(BPO) call the customers or the 
clients. This is the scenario when the company wants to sell its 
products or services over the phone to its targeted customers.
- Srujan
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Well, this was one of the quetions which was asked by numerous fresher 
candidates to me. Initially even i didn't knew the answer to it. But 
later i did a lot of RnD, met many people from different companies, 
approached my seniors... and came to a conclusion. The answer is... 
NO. 
Ok! let me put it this way. generally what happens is a Technical 
Support Representative[TSR] is trainned on certain questions which are 
likely to be asked by the customer. So he knows the questions and the 
answers. So there's nowhere he's applying his brain or skills to solve 
a problem. Everything is readily available to him. So where's the 
application of knowledge?
In software, experience means... you should have worked on any 
particular field or S/W, developed your own logic, implemented it, 
tested it, etc... This doesn't happen when you work as a TSR. Thats 
the reason, Software Sector doesn't consider the experience gained as 
a TSR.
But of course, if you move down to another BPO, then your experience 
as a TSR would be higly valuable.  
- Srujan
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See... its like, if the Call Center is a domestic call center, ie if 
the client is located in the home country, then its a Day Shift job. 
Where as, if the client is located in some other countries, then we 
have to tune our timings to suit their's. Usually the client is in the 
US or UK. So to match their timings, we have to tune ours. Thats it! :)
-Srujan