What's the difference between call centre and contact centre?

It really is a coin toss, but Elodie's comment explains it well. Most people still think of this in terms of calling in to a toll free number and chatting with an agent on the phone. That's why virtually every image you see of an agent on a website or TV is wearing a clunky headset. That tells you she - and it's almost always a "she" is open for business, ready to take your call.

That's the traditional model, and many companies are still married to that concept, and more importantly, all the sunk costs that go with running a call center. The world is changing though, and while voice is still the best way to communicate with someone who can help you, today, you're just as likely to do this via email or chat, and in some cases, video. These channels are cheaper, just as effective, and with the right infrastructure can be seamlessly intetgrated with voice. That makes it s a true contact center, and companies that adopt these tools simply won't go back to the classic call center model. It's too costly, and provides fewer options for communicating.

In the days of yore, the term "Call Center" was used because the telephone was the only channel of communication between customers and the sales/service reps. With the advent of e-mail and chat, the term/concept was broadened to "contact center." In 2003, I co-authored the book Managing and Motivating Contact Center Employees and at that time the publisher was adamant that "call center" was quickly becoming antiquated so we used "contact center" in the title. Here we are in 2010 and at least half the clients I work with still say "call center."

I agree with the other comments. We actually started out as a Call Center and have since changed over to using the term "Contact Center". The primary reasons are those already mentioned. It is related to the communication architecture being utilized. Is the center limited to simply telephony communication or is it more open and allowing for email correspondence, click-to-chat, and video chat, etc.? If the latter is true, it more closely resembles a Contact Center. Another aspect that should be noted is the negative connotation associated with the term "Call Center" as a result of negative public sentiment as well as an abundance of legislation stipulating compliance regulations associated with outbound dialing. This has also led to several organizations adopting the term of "Contact Center" as it tends to lend itself to less negative sentiment..

I definitely agree with the comments above. It is very similar with the move from "help desk" to "service desk". No longer does a help desk just take inbound calls to resolve a technical issue. Today's service desk takes technical calls, requests, and provides full escalation management and ownership of issues reported whether in their control to resolve or not...well beyond the days of "How to I underline a word in Microsoft Word".

You're right. They're interchangeable with call center being more prevalent. Technically, a call center would just handle phone calls and a contact center would handle calls, e-mails, chat, etc. A lot of "contact center" started out as call centers and just keep referring to themselves that way.