Although call center services have not always enjoyed the best reputation many small businesses are turning to call centers to reduce customer service costs and increase profit streams.

In the late nineties, the lack of professionally trained call center agents and inadequate call center infrastructure had made call center services a business liability. However, the initial rejection of offshore call center outsourcing by customers in western countries has resulted in many large enterprises investing in virtual call center infrastructure projects and professional call center training for reps in countries like India, China and Asian countries to bring them upto par with the customer service call center standards set by  US, Western Europe and Canadian call centers. These call center investments have paid dividends for businesses as it has helped them  expand their virtual call center operations to offshore locations resulting in overall call center services industry growth, from $22 billion in 2002 to $26 billion in 2009.

Organizations have implemented two key measures to have call center outsourcing be an asset instead of a business liability:

• They have integrated call center software with customer relationship management (CRM) systems so that call center service agents can easily access customers account and history while resolving customer service issues. This has helped increase the call center performance and has significantly increased customer satisfaction by reducing the time spent on the phone by call center reps while resolving customer service issues.
• Professional customer service call center training is required of all call center reps to develop effective communication skills and ensure quality assurance. This has resulted in a very positive and rich customer experience.

Inbound Call Centers

An inbound call center service is essentially the company’s first line of defense in resolving consumer complaints and issues. Customers rarely call to express product satisfaction and joy. However, companies are always looking at effective ways to turn around their unsatisfied customers into loyal customers and reduce the number of customer complaints.

Companies have observed that quick resolution to customer complaints have resulted in high customer satisfaction ratings, directly attributing to repeat customer visits and purchases. Therefore, call centers are helping businesses,  both large and small,  with customer retention, which is a much cheaper and easier way for companies to generate incremental revenues than roping in new customers.

Outsource Inbound Call Center
Many businesses cannot afford to invest in building their own internal call center operations due to the high upfront setup and overhead costs. It is no surprise that more than 80 percent of North American based businesses have decided to outsource their inbound call center needs while focusing investments on their core business.

Two important things to be kept in mind while considering call center outsourcing:

• Triage using call center software: Using a multi-dimensional call center system by which the customer service calls are systematically distributed and assigned based on urgency, level of customer support and the time required to resolve the issue helps streamline and improve call center efficiency and customer satisfaction. While the basic calls can be answered immediately, the more complex customer service calls need to be routed to the appropriate group or call center agent so it results in a very positive customer experience.
• Call Center Tracking and Analysis: Call center service reps should not only have access to the customer contact information within CRM systems but should also be able to analyze and track customer service issues so they can resolve the issues instantly while they are live on the phone with the customer. This will most definitely translate into incremental revenues and profit streams for your business as your call center outsourcing efforts will result in high customer retention resulting in repeat customer visits and purchases, and positive word of mouth thereby reducing your cost of sales.

Small Businesses can take advantage of the virtual call centers with minimal upfront investments as the call center industry has matured over the last 10 years. Furthermore, call center services have become more affordable for small businesses as the virtual call centers are now able to offer pricing models based on number of customer service calls. Thiese new models enable small businesses to outsource their custome service call center needs and reduce their overead costs. In addition, small businesses can now compete with larger enterprises by providing the same high level of customer service, resulting in increased revenues and profit streams.

Tags: Call Centers

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