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A call centre or call center is a managed capability that can be centralised or remote that is used for receiving or transmitting a large volume of enquiries by telephone. An inbound call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product or service support or information enquiries from consumers. Outbound call centres are usually operated for sales purposes such as telemarketing, for solicitation of charitable or political donations, debt collection, market research, emergency notifications, and urgent/critical needs blood banks. A contact centre is a further extension to call centres telephony based capabilities, administers centralised handling of individual communications, including letters, faxes, live support software, social media, instant message, and email.
Telemarketing is a method of direct marketing in which a salesperson solicits prospective customers to buy products or services, either over the phone or through a subsequent face to face or web conferencing appointment scheduled during the call. Telemarketing can also include recorded sales pitches programmed to be played over the phone via automatic dialing.
Caller identification is a telephone service, available in analog and digital telephone systems, including voice over IP (VoIP), that transmits a caller's telephone number to the called party's telephone equipment when the call is being set up. The caller ID service may include the transmission of a name associated with the calling telephone number, in a service called Calling Name Presentation (CNAM). The service was first defined in 1993 in International Telecommunication Union—Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) Recommendation Q.731.3.
The National Do Not Call Registry is a database maintained by the United States federal government, listing the telephone numbers of individuals and families who have requested that telemarketers not contact them. Certain callers are required by federal law to respect this request. Separate laws and regulations apply to robocalls in the United States.
A predictive dialer dials a list of telephone numbers and connects answered dials to people making calls, often referred to as agents. Predictive dialers use statistical algorithms to minimize the time that agents spend waiting between conversations, while minimizing the occurrence of someone answering when no agent is available.
Telephone slamming is an illegal telecommunications practice, in which a subscriber's telephone service is changed without their consent. Slamming became a more visible issue after the deregulation of the telecommunications industry in the mid-1980s, especially after several price wars between the major telecommunications companies. The term slamming was coined by Mick Ahearn, who was a consumer marketing manager at AT&T in September 1987. The inspiration for the term came from the ease at which a competitor could switch a customer's service away from AT&T by falsely notifying a telephone company that an AT&T customer had elected to switch to their service. This process gave AT&T's competitors a "slam dunk" method for the unauthorized switching of a customer's long-distance service. The term slamming became an industry standard term for this practice.
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) was passed by the United States Congress in 1991 and signed into law by President George H. W. Bush as Public Law 102-243. It amended the Communications Act of 1934. The TCPA is codified as 47 U.S.C. § 227. The TCPA restricts telephone solicitations and the use of automated telephone equipment. The TCPA limits companies or debt collectors from calling clients or prospective customers using automatic dialing systems, artificial or prerecorded voice messages, SMS text messages, and fax machines. It also specifies several technical requirements for fax machines, autodialers, and voice messaging systems—principally with provisions requiring identification and contact information of the entity using the device to be contained in the message.
A do not call list or do not call registry is a list of personal phone numbers that are off-limits to telemarketers in some countries. Do not call lists may also be held privately by a company, listing numbers that they will not call.
Customer proprietary network information (CPNI) is the data collected by telecommunications companies about a consumer's telephone calls. It includes the time, date, duration and destination number of each call, the type of network a consumer subscribes to, and any other information that appears on the consumer's telephone bill.
Cold calling is the solicitation of business from potential customers who have had no prior contact with the salesperson conducting the call. It is an attempt to convince potential customers to purchase either the salesperson's product or service. Generally, it is referred as an over-the-phone process, making it a source of telemarketing, but can also be done in-person by door-to-door salespeople. Though cold calling can be used as a legitimate business tool, scammers can use cold calling as well.
Caller ID spoofing is the practice of causing the telephone network to indicate to the receiver of a call that the originator of the call is a station other than the true originating station. This can lead to a caller ID display showing a phone number different from that of the telephone from which the call was placed.
A robocall is a phone call that uses a computerized autodialer to deliver a pre-recorded message, as if from a robot. Robocalls are often associated with political and telemarketing phone campaigns, but can also be used for public service or emergency announcements. Multiple businesses and telemarketing companies use auto-dialing software to deliver prerecorded messages to millions of users. Some robocalls use personalized audio messages to simulate an actual personal phone call. The service is also associated to be prone to scams.
Telemarketing fraud is fraudulent selling conducted over the telephone. The term is also used for telephone fraud not involving selling.
Really Simple Systems CRM is a Cloud CRM provider, offering CRM systems to small and medium sized companies.
Cramming is a form of fraud in which small charges are added to a bill by a third party without the subscriber's consent, approval, authorization or disclosure. These may be disguised as a tax, some other common fee or a bogus service, and may be several dollars or even just a few cents. The crammer's intent is that the subscriber will overlook and ultimately pay these small charges without them knowing what it's all about.
The Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act is a federal law in the United States aimed at protecting consumers from telemarketing deception and abuse. The act is enforced by the Federal Trade Commission. The act expanded controls over telemarketing and gave more control to prescribe rules to the Federal Trade Commission. After the passage of the act, the Federal Trade Commission is required to (1) define and prohibit deceptive telemarketing practices; (2) keep telemarketers from practices a reasonable consumer would see as being coercive or invasions of privacy; (3) set restrictions on the time of day and night that unsolicited calls can be made to consumers; (4) to require the nature of the call to be disclosed at the start of any unsolicited call that is made with the purpose of trying to sell something.
An automatic dialer is an electronic device or software that automatically dials telephone numbers. Once the call has been answered, the autodialer either plays a recorded message or connects the call to a live person.
In the United States, remotely created checks are orders of payment created by the payee using a telephone or the Internet.
Michael McCafferty is an American entrepreneur, inventor known as the "Father of CRM", and programmer most well known for his work in presiding over Technitrol, Inc.'s subsidiary called Eastern Data Processing and for creating the software product TeleMagic. After graduating from college, he went on to work at IBM, which led to him getting employment at Technitrol, Inc. After an unsuccessful service called Product & Area Locator (PAL), he filed for bankruptcy on March 17, 1983, and went on to create TeleMagic under his company Remote Control International, which was met with positive reception both in terms of sales figures as well as customer reception. This success led the company and the software it created to eventually be purchased by The Sage Group. During his college years, he worked on entrepreneurial endeavors, including a birthday cake delivery service, a restaurant, and advertising. He currently works as a mentor to other businesspeople.
Help desk software is a computer program that enables customer-care operators to keep track of user requests and deal with other customer-care-related issues. It is what makes customer-care service efficient and enterprising.
References
- ↑ "Gryphon Networks: TeleBlock® Plus". Gryphon Networks. April–May 2004. Retrieved 31 May 2016.
- 1 2 U.S. Patent No. 6,330,317
- ↑ Patent Abstract Archived 2011-06-12 at the Wayback Machine
- 1 2 STATE OF INDIANA'S COMMENTS, Comments from Steve Carter, Attorney General of Indiana
- ↑ "Call Compliance, Inc. - State Regulations". www.callcompliance.com. Archived from the original on 2003-11-03.
- ↑ TMCNet, VanillaSoft Looks to CSC for Canada's Do-Not-Call Law Compliance
- ↑ Canada.com Archived 2012-11-05 at the Wayback Machine , Software helps with 'do not call' compliance