The Virtual Call Center - courtesy of the VoIP PBX

The Virtual Call Center - courtesy of the VoIP PBX

by Chris Brown

Imagine working in a call center that handles customer service duties for several major lending institutions across the country. Out of millions of clients, there will surely be a tens of thousands that miss a payment. It means that hundreds of thousands of outgoing calls must be made monthly. Many clients will not be contactable on the first, second or even third call and experience tells us that they don't return calls from debt recovery agents. Over ninety percent of these calls will be long distance calls.The duration of some calls may exceed 30 minutes such as when details require clarifying or payment arrangements negotiated. Now imagine what the monthly phone bill would be for such a call center. When one takes this information into consideration it becomes clear why so many businesses have installed a VoIP PBX or signed up with a VoIP virtual call center.

All businesses must do their best to eliminate unnecessary costs where ever possible. But, in some instances there are costs that are unavoidable. In years past, a call center could not operate without incurring enormous line rental and call charges associated with long distance calls. A VoIP virtual call center equipped with a VoIP PBX and soft predictive dialers provide an alterative model that delivers relief from the burden of long distance calls over the PSTN.

For those not familiar with VoIP, it stands for Voice over Internet Protocol. In laymen's terms, a VoIP system allows two or more parties to speak with one another over a packet switched IP network. Voice communication is effectively carried across networks as packets of data in the same way as data associated with IT applications. This means that long distance telephones conversations can by-pass the PSTN and instead use the Internet or private networks to carry voice over expensive long distance legs. As a consequence, VoIP has dramatically cut the cost of business communication and VoIP business solutions have emerged as the new de facto standard business telephone system.

Originally, VoIP started as an extension of internet messenger services but now it has been integrated into various business software programs. The use of VoIP PBX software is a huge money saver for businesses; particularly those businesses that make extensive use of the telephone. Needless to say, a virtual call center using VoIP as its primary communication service will make enormous cost savings.

The common denominators that characterize today's virtual call centers include: (1) Application integration and convergence. (2) The ability for software to connect customer service functions through a web interface. (3) The use of packet switched communication protocols for all voice communication. (4) The ability to route calls quickly and efficiently to their proper destination. (5) The ability to scale up or scale down operations without significant capital expenditure commitment.

The VoIP PBX makes this possible since it uses IP based software applications that are more flexible and adaptive than hardware centric circuit based solutions.

A VoIP based virtual call center makes numerous options available to SMBs that need to expand their operations, but do not want to invest huge amounts of capital. Then again, even large corporations benefit from the streamlined approach that a VoIP virtual call center offers. That is why such systems are gaining in popularity every day.