Companies looking to outsource the call center process often get confused on which type of vendor to choose for outsourcing their call center process. Selecting the vendor without proper analysis may lead to failure of the outsourcing process.

Here are major types of call centers based on different categories from which companies can choose the most suitable one as per business needs.

 Call centers on the basis of services offered by them

1. Outbound Call Center

This is one of the prime forms of call center services offered by outsourcing service providers. In this process, the call is being made by the representatives to the customers for different purposes. Telemarketing and lead generation are major services which are included in the outbound call center. Conducting surveys or asking the customers to complete a specific form associated with the product/service also comes under outbound process.

2    Inbound Call Center

In this type of process, the calls are received by the representatives from the customers. Customers call the representative if he/she wants to enquire about a product or while facing any issue related to product or service. Receiving of calls from customers for booking an order also comes under inbound process.

3.  Contact centers

These call centers provide multi-channel customer support services which comprise of live chat support, social media and email support. They are quite essential in today’s consumer-driven market as customers prefer using support channel of their choice.

4.   Blended call centers

These call centers have a blend of both inbound and outbound call center services. There are several projects in which these call centers offer telemarketing and customer support process in a package to clients.

 Call centers on the basis of agent models

 Shared agent call center

In this type of call centers, the agents handle multiple projects simultaneously. The call centers charge the client companies on the basis of duration for which the agent interacts with the customer. Clients choose this form when the expected volume of calls is less or invariable.

1. Dedicated agent call center

In this type, every agent works specifically to handle the customers of only single project. It is usually chosen by the companies which have large customer base and expect large volume of calls.

Call centers on the basis of size

  2.   Small-sized call centers

These usually have 10-200 seats in their centers. The agents in this type are more efficiently managed as the owners and top managers can personally analyze the working of agents. They are suitable for companies which do not have large very large operations like travel agencies, e-commerce startups, and restaurants etc. They may or may not offer multichannel support like email support, social media support and live chat support services.

1. Large-sized call centers

These are suitable for businesses with large scale operations. They often hire support staff like trainers, quality assurance specialists and auditors etc. for ensuring better quality of the processes. Most of the large-sized call centers offer multi-channel customer support to the clients.

 All these call center types have unique qualities which make them different from one other. A company must prepare a list of objectives before choosing the most optimum call center for their business.