Contact Center vs Call Center – What’s the Difference
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Contact center and call center, both operate within customer service departments but have different meanings and perspectives. “Call centers” have come first with the purpose of handling streams of calls on the phone. Since new technologies have emerged over time, it is causing a change in the ways an organization initiates communication with customers.
That’s when call centers morphed into “contact centers” that are treated as a better option for communication analytics. No doubt, both call centers, and contact centers help in delivering outstanding customer experiences. Learning the differences between the two is essential for a decision maker as there are pros and cons of each option that you need to know.
What is a Call Center?
A call center is a legacy on-premise system used by customer service professionals for managing inbound and outbound calls. The communication channel for call centers is mobile phones on which interactions related to tech solutions, billing, or tracking details are communicated to customers. They have different support functions such as operations, quality assurance, and workforce management.
Lately, call centers have developed a bad reputation due to long queues on an endless IVR that never provides customers with what they seek. This problem is solved with contact centers that are evolved as sophisticated tools which use a data-driven approach for dealing with customers and are never short of KPIs for measuring performance.
What is a Contact Center?
On the contrary, contact centers provide support to customers with multiple communication channels which are unified in a single place. It integrates email, SMS, social media, voice/ video chats, or other channels to facilitate an omnichannel customer experience. This means customers will get seamless interaction over multiple channels. Since customers want innovative ways to interact with customers, contact centers are making justice to the evolving needs of customers.
Today’s contact centers are well-integrated with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools wherein information is not only recorded but also shared in a unified manner. Organizations have therefore begun to transform call centers into contact centers as a proactive approach for beating competitors by being a major player in the customer experience.
Call Center vs Contact Center
Call center and contact center are not identical terms as both have some differences that an organization needs to know. Let’s look at some of the key differences between them:
| Parameter | Call Center | Contact Center |
| Channel of Communication | Phone | Email, Text msg, voice/ video chat, social media |
| Purpose | Optimizing inbound and outbound calling on telephonic communication mode | Communication is not confined to the phone. Customers can choose their preferred channel |
| Usage | Technical support, telemarketing | Customer relationship management |
| Essential Feature | IVR system | Real-time Omnichannel Communication |
| Queue Management | Call Distribution | Omnichannel routing of calls |
| Workforce Management | Communication depends on agents | Reduces dependence on agents |
| Proactive Vs Reactive | Reactive | Proactive |
- Channel of Communication
It should be noted that the basic difference between call centers and contact centers is defined by how they engage with customers. Call centers use phones as a communication channel for handling a high volume of calls. Whereas contact centers utilize multiple digital channels for delivering fast and good customer experiences. Agents can handle two chats or conversations parallelly which reduces the workload of agents.
- Purpose
The purpose of a call center is to streamline communication between agents and customers through inbound, outbound, or a blended process. Moreover, contact centers provide the convenience of choosing a preferred mode of communication that ultimately offers more customer engagement touchpoints.
- Usage
Call centers simply focus on managing incoming and outgoing calls that can be for telemarketing or sales along with technical support. In comparison to call centers, contact centers offer an omnichannel customer experience by making a connected communication.
- Essential Feature
Traditionally, there was an IVR system for self-service management where customers find it difficult to hold themselves in long queues. But today, customers seek answers for their solutions themselves which is possible with contact centers where embedding chatbots in self-service portals is key for managing customer service. The communication is real-time which makes interaction personalized as agents already have prior knowledge about the issue.
- Queue Management
Contact center solutions are equipped with advanced queue management capabilities for routing calls to the right agents at the right time. Automatic call distribution is one of the features of modern contact centers that take into account customers’ history, agent skills, and previous conversations to make communication seamless and improve efficiency. On the contrary, call centers communicate only via phone and there are limited chances of routing calls.
- Workforce Management
Call centers are manpower focused and require agents’ bandwidth for doing interactions. Businesses make the staffing leveled up and make the seasonal workload outsourced. Contact centers being operated on the cloud gives an opportunity to agents to provide assistance to customers from anywhere. Also, it integrates different channels in a single place by which agents can handle two or more chats at the same time, enabling them to enhance resolution rates.
- Proactive Vs Reactive
Contact centers are definitely a proactive approach toward exceptional customer service. The availability of data offers a complete view of customer details that leverages consistently good experience. On the other hand, call centers use a reactive approach because issues are not predicted as in the case of contact centers.
Sum it Up!
There are differences between the call center and contact center that any business needs to analyze for making sound decisions. With digitization, call centers are transforming into contact centers to deliver good customer service and retain customers consequently. I would say contact centers are the needs of the future if you want to create a consistent brand image. With the latest functionalities, contact centers are becoming the future of the digital world, keeping in mind the seamless integration of the physical and digital worlds.
