Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Top Solutions For Customer Interaction

Web based call centers form one of the top solutions for customer interaction using the latest technologies. These are call centers utilizing web based technologies to advertise products or services provided by a company. They are mainly focused on incoming calls.

Call centers transformed into dot com companies or engaging in web-based customer care solutions is the cheapest solution for web based trading or e-commerce. As the name indicates, call centers communicate mostly via telephone. Nevertheless, many centers realize the importance of using the web. Together with call center facilities, web sites can handle trading services smoothly. It is seen that 40% of call centers partially or completely use web based customer care services.

One of the benefits of web based technology is that the Internet provides endless business transactions, regardless of incoming and outgoing contacts. In most virtual relationships, a customer and a service consultant usually end up telephoning each other. Using the web can link them in a consistent and continuous manner. Reliability and speed make web based call centers a more convenient resource for obtaining business information. The Internet allows companies to meet customer expectations and bring about rapid solutions to their demands. Instant answers are a major benefit of using the Internet. Here, every customer has the privilege to comment on customer services. Many companies receive at least a quarter of a million hits a week on a web site. It helps firms to search for the status of orders and respond to client requirements or comments in a quick, cheap and fair way.

For financial companies, highly secure, web based call centers are key solutions to their operations. Web technologies allow segmentation facilities for their parent business establishments. Banks that employ web technology can build an intelligent routing path that directs each client call to particular representatives. It is also useful for developing a systematic customized delivery. Also, downloadable fund reports and marketing kits save a web based company from spending on the mailing of paper copies.

The Web Technology

W3C stands for World Wide Web Consortium. The forum was pioneered by Tim Berners-Lee at the prestigious MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at Florida. It was executed jointly under the aegis of Keio University in Japan and European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) in France. W3C serves as a universal platform to ascertain conformity, congruence and compatibility between web vendors across the globe. It works to standardize a set of fundamental ethics and knowledge values pertaining to the internet and is mutually agreed upon by all the players of the internet industry. W3C serves as a yardstick against which the features pertaining to web-technology will be followed upon globally. A few of the web features recommended by the W3C are

•W3C is an endeavor to develop knowledge pertaining to Web and Internet. W3C as a system of guidelines help this knowledge move systematically in a unidirectional order instead of getting lost to diverse scattering forces.

With markets turning customer focused, attention has now shifted towards making web technology up graded and is attuned to Web 2.0. The W3C has improvised the existing technology components so as to make the web page more user-friendly and interactive. It is increasingly being adapted to cater and serve user-user. The content is provided by the user and availed by the user. The user can be an entrepreneur, a student, a professional or a mere amateur desirous of contributing a concept or information by publishing it on the net. Another user at the other end will make use of it or dismiss as per his need and requirement. User generated content contributes as well as shares information between user-user. Webmaster plays no role in this interface.

• Attachable software modules that help editing the web page when imbued in the website in the form of message boards, weblogs, mass mailers, content management systems, wikis help users put across their idea. There may be an idea which may have the potential to translate into big business and revolutionize the existing scheme of thing.

• Use of audio/visual digital files in the form of Pod casts, RSS feeds, social book markings when incorporated in websites have helped social information travel faster to the end-users.

• XML the extensible mark up language. Its tags can be designed by the end users making it more user-friendly and interactive in nature. XML is a universal database structure that all the major databases support worldwide. It allows structured data to be shared across different data bases through the mediation of the internet.

• The W3C calls for the use of Ajax based framework in web application development. Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML and is instrumental in creating interactive web applications. The relevance of Ajax is that it makes web pages to respond better to the browser by displaying only the relevant data instead of reloading the entire web page every time the users apply for a change. Since total page is not loaded, Ajax helps reduce unwanted burden on the net. Only that data is retrieved from the web which is related to the control. Rest of the web page stays as it is. This enhances the functionality, usability, speed and interactivity of the web page making it more dynamic in its course.