Inbound vs. Outbound Call Centers: What Should You Know?

An inbound call center and an outbound call center are two very popular terms. In this blog post, we will share more details about these two terms, so you can understand them more clearly.

What is an inbound call center?

A call center that receives more incoming calls is referring to an inbound call center. Usually, the customer care center, technical support center, etc. are inbound call centers.

What is an outbound call center?

A call center that makes more outbound calls is known as an outbound call center. Usually, this type of call center runs cold calling, sales, and similar campaigns.

Differences between inbound and outbound call centers

The difference between these call centers is defined by the nature of calling as briefed in the definition of both of these types of call centers. The call center software providers also mention that the inbound and outbound call centers differ from each other by campaign types.

Here are some points that define the difference between inbound and outbound call centers:

• In an inbound call center, customers approach the agents.
• In an outbound call center, agents approach customers.
• The inbound call centers use some specific features of a call center solution like ACD, skill-based call routing, sticky agent, IVR, callback requests, etc.
• The outbound call centers use different features available in a contact center solution such as the predictive dialer, power dialer, preview dialer, progressive dialer, etc.
• Some of the major applications of inbound call centers are customer care, technical support, onboarding process, incoming lead nurturing, inbound inquiries, etc.
• Some of the major applications of outbound call centers are collection, cold calling, sales, lead generation, market research, survey, feedback, customer success, etc.

Do you need different tools for inbound and outbound call centers?

Along with inbound and outbound call centers, you must have also heard about inbound call center solutions and outbound call center solutions. It is sometimes confusing for some people with the fact that, are these two different call center solutions. Do you need different software for inbound and outbound call centers?

Let us answer all these questions.

Ages ago, there were stream-specific call center solutions, which offer more features to empower any one type of call center, inbound or outbound. However, now in the 21^st century, the same call center software supports all three types of campaigns:

1. Inbound
2. Outbound and
3. Blended

Yes, it is possible that some contact center solutions have more features that empower inbound call centers and vice versa. But, you can always add add-ons and modules to add missing features in your software.

In a nutshell, you don’t need two different call center solutions to run a call center of any stream. The modern contact center solutions are more advanced and customer experience-centric than just feature centric.

We offer an advanced call center solution at a fair price to our global customers. We also have multiple add-ons to offer to empower our software users. Contact us to book a free demo session to explore all features of our call center software that can be used in inbound, outbound, and blended call centers.