What is a contact center?

A contact center is an enterprise business unit which acts as an interface between a company and its customers. The term is an extension of the classic call center, which used to be the major channel through which customer interaction was performed. Thus, the traditional contact center used almost exclussively telephony. During the past few years, with the rapid technological advances in the field of unified communications, the contact center gradually encompassed alternative methods of customer interaction, such as e-mail, web chat/instant messaging, SMS and video. The inbound and outbound information that flows through the contact center is typically managed by a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

A typical contact center consists of two major entities: a complex ecosystem of interconnected communication systems which automate most tasks, as well as a group of people responsible for managing and refining the customer interaction process when technological limitations apply. The general trend of the past years is an increase in the size of the automated ecosystem and a decrease in the number of people required to fill in the gaps.