Overview

Customer support centers are, on the surface, no different than many other types of call centers in their application of call and contact handling technology. They must take or make the calls, receive and transmit e-mails, route inbound contacts to available reps and to special groups of reps trained and qualified to support certain products, and maybe dial-up outbound calls.

Because customers requiring support use whatever channel is convenient for them at the time, support centers must be ready to handle calls, e-mail, chat and faxes. That means you will need tools such as automatic call distributors (ACDs), call and contact routing software, interactive voice response (IVR) units, middleware and, for sophisticated support, remote diagnostic and healing software. You also need tools to track where customers have been on your IVR and Web self-service sites so that your reps won't waste their time and yours asking needless questions like 'did you do X' if the customer already answered that question via the IVR interaction.

We strongly recommend that you read The Call Center Handbook, by Keith Dawson, A Practical Guide to Call Center Technology by Andrew Waite and The Telephony Book by Jane Laino, to give you a firm background in call center technologies. Co-author Brendan Read's book, Designing the Best Call Center for Your Business gives some very savvy and unique tips when deciding on and sourcing technology. If you're a true technoid at heart delve into other CMP books such as The Computer...