Title:

Call Centers - A Backgrounder

Word Count:

521

Summary:

The call center business has become one of the fastest booming industries today. In the era of customer-oriented services, the provision for accessible support is now a priority. With many companies trying to cope up with their customers’ needs and demands, the concept of the call center was born.

A call center normally operates with all its agents (or customer service representatives) in one central location. It is equipped to handle a large amount of transactions between...

Keywords:

business, call centers, internet, online business

Article Body:

The call center business has become one of the fastest booming industries today. In the era of customer-oriented services, the provision for accessible support is now a priority. With many companies trying to cope up with their customers’ needs and demands, the concept of the call center was born.

A call center normally operates with all its agents (or customer service representatives) in one central location. It is equipped to handle a large amount of transactions between customers and the call center agents. Transactions may be carried out through a variety of media. The telephone is the foremost form of communication in call centers today. However, transactions are also carried out via email and the live chat through the Internet.

Call centers offer a wide range of services. The first thought that comes to mind for many is support - product information, technical support, and all sorts of after sales services. However, call centers can offer more than that. They also deal with marketing and sales. Telemarketing is an aggressive form of selling your product and can yield very good results. Call centers cater to businesses which aim to increase their sales as well as provide customer services. One example would be credit card companies.

While aiming to provide information and assistance to customers, they can also increase their revenue through sales spiels given by their agents. Another service that can be dealt with by a call center is debt collection. Credit bureaus also make use of call centers to provide information on a person’s credit rating. In effect, basically anything that has to do with your customers can be done through call centers.

What is the typical set up in a call center? The term call center brings up images of wide open work spaces, with small workstations containing a computer, headset, and telephone dialer. The practice is increasingly turning to the linking of data and voice in one pathway. This integration makes for more efficient work practices and is called Computer Telephony Integration (CTI). Individual agents are normally managed by a floor supervisor who also takes calls when the need arises.

Setting up a call center requires certain technology to be applied. There is a wide range of available technologies for call centers today. More often than not, different types of technologies are combined in order to achieve the most effective and efficient set up. The Computer Telephony Integration has already been mentioned is one of the trends in the business today. In fact, CTI is used to combine most applications used in call centers - voice, email, fax, and web. CTI provides many functions such as caller ID, on screen dialing, on screen phone controls (conference calls, hang up, hold, etc.), and agent status control (whether agent is available for calls or not).

With all these advances in technology and developments in consumer-oriented practices, the call center has emerged as an ideal solution for many companies. The call center provides standardized service to customers and helps cut the cost. In addition to that, the separate entity of the call center subtracts from the actual operational considerations of the company.

Title:

Who was it that Invented Electricity

Word Count:

311

Summary:

Electricity is a naturally occurring form of energy found in nature, and human beings did not invent it. Natural forms of electricity are found in lightning and in all electro-chemical impulses within living beings. For instance, the heartbeat is controlled by a micro-impulse of electricity. All forms of thought are electro-chemical impulses traveling within the neural network in the brain.

Keywords:

Invented Electricity

Article Body:

Electricity is a naturally occurring form of energy found in nature, and human beings did not invent it. Natural forms of electricity are found in lightning and in all electro-chemical impulses within living beings. For instance, the heartbeat is controlled by a micro-impulse of electricity. All forms of thought are electro-chemical impulses traveling within the neural network in the brain.

Human beings only ‘discovered’ the existence of electricity and found ways and means of using it for constructive purposes. Westerners seemed to know around 600 B.C that amber can be charged with static electricity by rubbing it. But it was not until William Gilbert, the father of modern electricity appeared on the scene in 1600 A.D that much progress was made. He discovered the electrical properties of many substances, and it was he who coined the term ‘electricity’ from the Greek word for amber.

While advances by early pioneers were mainly experimental in nature, Henry Cavendish and Charles Coulomb began quantifying the results through mathematical equations. By the mid 1700’s a crude form of battery was invented. This enabled to standardize all forms of electrical experiments. Later Ohm and Kirchhoff used batteries to power various electric circuits and discovered the Ohm’s Law and Kirchhoff’s Law of electric currents respectively.

It was Hans Christian Oersted who discovered that a wire carrying an electric current was surrounded by a magnetic field. D.F. Arago developed on it and invented the electro-magnet. André Marie Ampère developed mathematical equations for electromagnetic laws. Michael Faraday invented the electric motor as well as the generator. Within half a century, engineers were able to construct power plants that could supply electricity to the consumer. All of these inventors and other unnamed ones contributed towards the discovery of the laws of electricity and electromagnetism and invented ingenious means of using it for the benefit of mankind.

Title:

Better Online Communication Makes Business Sense

Word Count:

561

Summary:

How you communicate with your online customers will make or break your company. What are you doing to improve your customer relations?

Keywords:

customer, relations, communication, online, email, tech support, business

Article Body:

Many companies are now doing the majority or even all their business online and foregoing the “Brick and Mortar” storefront. It is easy to see why that trend has happened. For one thing, the cost of setting up such a business is relatively inexpensive and easy. There is no need to pay for the overhead of a physical building. Also, the cost of maintaining a Web site is minimal. Moreover, the Internet provides a convenient and efficient way of marketing products. As more and more people are spending time on the Internet, the market of online customers continues to grow.

But when businesses shift from face-to-face customers to anonymous online customers, there is a loss of personal connection and trust. All the online spamming and scamming hasn’t helped the matter at all. That has eroded the trust in E-commerce and the credibility of many companies. How are you gaining and maintaining customer trust? What are you doing as an online vendor to communicate to your customers?

In an online world, business just doesn’t stop after hours and on weekends. What are you doing to answer your customer’s questions? Here are a few things that you can do to improve communication with your customers:

1. Offer a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page and online product support information. This is an excellent way of answering basic questions that may otherwise flood your support email. For example, our voice-changing product, MorphVOX, has a FAQ on the common issues that customers may come across. We also have provided detailed online documentation on topics that users may want to explore more. This takes care of roughly 95% of the questions people may have.

2. Add a support email link on your Web site for issues that can’t be resolved by the Web support. At Screaming Bee, we try to answer our customer questions within one business day. More often, we’ll answer questions within an hour of receiving the email. I believe that we have gained many loyal customers because of our aggressive efforts to meet needs in a timely manner.

3. Provide a message board or forum for customers to voice their opinions, add comments, and interact with each other. Remember that people are social creatures and like to be heard. This also helps to build up a community of users that are empowered and have a say in the products and services that you provide.

4. Write a personal email to each customer. Have you followed up on your customers after they have made a purchase of your products or services? This is essential, not only from the perspective of getting feedback on how to improve your offerings, but more importantly, maintaining the trusting, long-term relationship with your customer. Send them an email within 3-4 weeks of the first purchase. In this way their experience with your products and services is fresh in their mind. Remember, a customer who is ignored is a customer who is lost.

Spending time and effort on better communication with your customers will pay off. Your company will rise and fall not on the customers you gain, but on the customers that you don’t lose. Loyal customers will be the ones that give you the best testimonials. They also provide you with the richest, organic, word-of-mouth marketing. Remember that every happy customer is a testament of your company’s success.

Title:

Proxy Lists

Word Count:

181

Summary:

A proxy list is a list of all the working proxy websites. A proxy website is a website which lets you surf anonymously and it allows you to access the websites which have been blocked by a content filter.

Keywords:

Proxy Lists

Article Body:

A proxy list is a list of all the working proxy websites. A proxy website is a website which lets you surf anonymously and it allows you to access the websites which have been blocked by a content filter.

How does this work –

A proxy website allows you to enter the URL of the website which you wish to surf and once you’ve entered the URL, the proxy website displays the target website in a special window. In this way, your real IP address, location are not revealed to the website and you can access it even if it is blocked by the network administrator. You can interact with the website in real-time just like the way you would have interacted with it if it was not blocked on your network.

The only known problem associated with the proxy websites is that they’ve a small life as other websites block the proxy websites to avoid anonymous surfing. So, it’s important to maintain a regularly updated proxy list in order to get the information about the working proxy websites.