Small Office Call Centers are BIG Business!

The term "call center" used to carry connotations of football field-sized offices with rows and rows of customer service reps frantically chatting away into their phone headsets.

From Industry to Feature Set

Today, thanks to the increased sophistication made available by IP PBX phone systems at costs affordable to almost any small business, call centers have evolved from that of a specialized industry into a sought-after PBX feature by businesses of all types.

And thanks to the increasing number of ways these types of businesses make available to their customers to contact them, whether it be phone, email, online chat, discussion boards, user forums, or otherwise, the more appropriate term preferred by many is "contact center."

Whereas contact center solutions and software used to be a specialized industry with a select group of vendors selling customized, enterprise-class solutions to large companies whose business is to be an actual call center, the introduction of IP phone systems and converging voice and data technologies have now attracted nearly every type of PBX vendor to enter the playing field.

The Most Common Contact Center Features Used by Small Business

So, what types of specific features and functionality make an IP phone system adequate for duty as a contact center platform?

A short list includes:

- call queues
- full featured ACD (automated call distribution)

- CRM integration

- skills based routing

- call monitoring, call barging

- detailed, real time graphical reports (ex. hold times, abandonment rates, average call time, etc.)

- on-hold music and customized on-hold messaging

- remote/distributed agents

- on-the-fly call recording

Big Business Call Center at a Small Business Price

Take Fonality's PBXtra Call Center Edition, for example.

For $1,000 more than their non-call center product version, a small business can harness all of the features listed above, allowing them to build a virtual mini-contact center in order to better service their clients, increase customer satisfaction rates, and improve support ticket resolution times.

To integrate that level of sophistication five years ago would have cost upwards of $50,000 - 100,000!

By utilizing affordable IP contact center software they can appear and sound much larger, established, and professional-grade to their customers, putting them on a level playing field if competing against Fortune 500 incumbents with world-class sales and customer service centers!