Customer Service calls are treated like nuances by most people. They can come at a bad time or maybe you just do not want to spend any time knowing about a product you are not interested in. However, customer service call center services are a valued asset for business marketers. Call center services can qualify sales leads and shorten the sales cycle considerably. Apart from that, call center companies and answering services can alleviate the pressure off business owners and executives by handling customer service calls, secretarial services, order placements and even provide technical support.

Though a call center call may be annoying to a disinterested audience, it is an excellent opportunity for an interested customer to get more information on the product or service being promoted, get better deals and contact information. A substantial percentage of such customer service calls result in additional sales, which is why this technique is popular in the business community.

Call center services and answering service companies understand that one size does not fit all. They offer customized services so that their trained personnel can provide better service to the small or mid sized business’ customers.  Businesses can provide technical trainings to call center services personnel, provide scripts for receiving customer calls, give them access to a database that contains pertinent information to help call center agent answer questions with confidence, instruct personnel daily, and keep them updated on expected and unexpected call spikes and customer issues during the day.

Remember, outsourced call center services and phone answering services is a reflection on your business. The better you train and educate them as per your requirements, the better for your customers and therefore, your small business.

Call centers are a powerful instrument that can impact customer relationships and bottom lines dramatically. However, you need to understand what call centers can and cannot do to get the most out of it for your business and consumers. Call centers are often perceived in a wrong light because of the many myths dogging them. Some of these are discussed below:

1. Call centers are meant for customer service.

If selling means badgering customers with calls and pushing products that have little or no relevance, then yes, selling undermines customer service. If your call center agents are tutored to push customers towards costly upgraded applications rather than resolving open issues, you are doing your customers a great disservice. However, if call center agents hear out the customer’s problem, work on it and guide the customer’s attention towards products that will help improve their financial health, surely selling is the best customer service you can render to your customers.

2. Customers are wary of buying from call centers.

This myth is the result of conflicting interests. Businesses often find themselves in conflict with call center outsourcing - trying to hold on to customers. The business managers belittle call centers directly and indirectly by making statements such as “the products are too complex to be supported by call centers.” or “the customers feel underserved because of the remoteness of call centers.” or “The turnover rate is too high to assure committed services.”

The truth of the matter is that if businesses treat call center agents with the same professionalism as their employees, they would have everything to gain – lower turnover, commitment, loyalty, high service scores and improved customer relationships. Customers want information and services that will help them financially, professionally and personally. As long as they get it from a well-informed and credible source, they won’t differentiate between the various channels.

3. Call centers have automated performance metrics tracking.

Contrary to expectations, the performance metrics that can be measured through statistics and automated systems in outsourced call center services have nothing to do with the quality of service rendered to customers. Many “customer oriented” businesses measure metrics such as average response time, average handling time, wait times (minimum and maximum), and average calls per hour to assess employees performance.  The limit for call times in call centers is 2 minutes. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this data is how much time the call center agent spends on calls and nothing else.

A business that aims to improve sales, customer satisfaction and referral rates needs to measure performance on different metrics – number of sales, callbacks, referrals, escalations, customer feedback. However, most call center companies don’t have the necessary framework to capture this data automatically. Very often, call center agents keep track of such information on paper. To measure the true effectiveness of call centers, these metrics should be captured as part of the main process rather than secondary.

Businesses that preach “customer delight” but measure call lengths are hardly sending their call center sice reps the right message. This counterproductive stand compels call centers to meet targets, often resulting in compromises on service quality. The quality of the customer call and not the duration is the important metric.

4. Call centers are call centers only.

Call centers are customer service centers of excellence that handle thousands of customer calls every day. Even in the internet age, customers look for contact with people to discuss urgent or critical issues. Call centers have hi-tech technology, processes and experienced personnel to resolve critical customer issues with professionalism and tact. The atmosphere is charged; the actions and conversations result oriented. New strategies are deployed and performances measured by recording employee competence and customer feedback. To think of call centers as simple phone answering services is undermining their potential and performance.

To maximize the potential of call centers, personnel should be trained not just in technical aspects but also communication skills and customer relationship building. Most businesses train personnel on using stock phrases, product jargon and glib talk to impress customers. Very few take the trouble to clarify goals, build capability and motivate personnel – three elements that can make ordinary call center employees perform extraordinarily.

Call centers are important links that strengthen customer relationship management. Businesses should understand that call centers are about customers, not metrics. Call centers are versatile in their approach as customer interactions must always align with prevailing economic situations. It is the business’ responsibility to train call center personnel accordingly. Every customer-employee interaction is an immediate or potential sales opportunity. With the expansion of businesses across geographies, call centers play an ever important role delivering consistent customer experiences remotely.

Call center services are labor intensive and costly, which is primarily why many businesses are outsourcing the function to call center services companies. Apart from saving costs, call center outsourcing frees up in-house resources to focus on reveune generating tasks. Experienced call center companies that have shared strong relationships with businesses bring in positive changes that enhance business productivity and efficiency. 

The quality of an outsourced call center is very important as the telemarketing call center agents will be talking to your customers on your behalf. Their pofessionalism will go a long way in shaping your brand that will directly impact your business’ bottom line. The cost of hiring a professional call center may seem high initially, but the returns on this investment will be significant.

Call center outsourcing helps small and mid sized business save. Here’s how:

1. Reduced employee costs

By outsourcing call center services, the small and mid sized business does not have to recruit or train call center agents for customer service and support.  No overhead costs such as health insurance and employee benefits to deal with. The business can direct its investments and resources towards other revenue generating and profit making initiatives.

2. Reduced infrastructure costs

In-house call center services involves the cost of procuring and maintaining communications equipment and network and office space. By outsourcing call center services, businesses tap into a pre-established organization that has the necessary infrastructure and skilled personnel. Typically, personnel use a hosted solution at the outsourced call center location. Many call center services use CRM solutions to manage customer service  information and activities.

3. Call Center Agent Skills 

Lack of call center agent training, especially in soft skills as well as technical know-how often leads to increase in customer complaints. Outsourced call center services recruit and train call center agents that have the required customer service skills to assist customers. Though some time is spent on training personnel to align them with your business’ strategies, the learning curve is short.

4. Scaling up and down

With call center outsoucing, businesses can meet their unexpected spikes and slumps in customer service calls. Call center services have several clients and they can manage the fluctuation in call volumes. This alleviates small and mid sized businesses from having to staff up or downsize based on seasonality of call volumes and still meet their customer service needs with affordable call center pricing.

5. Organizational expertise

Outsourced call centers use techniques such as target analysis and scripts to improve the effect of telemarketing calls. Personnel are trained to respect the potential customer’s time and drive the conversation towards a resolution or sale. A survey across industries reveals that professional call center services have helped businesses improve profits through up-selling and cross-selling by 25%, reduced complaints and errors by 50%, and enhanced quality control and compliance practices significantly.

6. Improved compliance

Outsourced call center services update their staff on the latest federal, state and regional laws governing telemarketing. Businesses that do not comply with these strict rules face severe penalties and can even have their license revoked. By having call center services take care of telemarketing, businesses protect themselves from possible fines or litigations.

Businesses that outsource call center services can improve bottom line by improving customer support services and marketing initiatives while keeping a cap on expenses. Professional telemarketing and call center services help organizations improve business practices for greater customer satisfaction and business growth.

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.

What is the one challenge that small businesses share in common with Fortune 500 companies? It is the conundrum of how to serve customers profitably.

Outsourcing customer service functions has become the business strategy for profitable growth. Examples include utility, catalog retail, e-commerce, travel and hospitality, insurance, credit cards, telecommunications, IT and computer hardware and software development companies. Some businesses even serve internal employees through call center services. Examples include help desk support, IT support, HR services and employee benefits. Call centers have thus become catalysts for business transformation : helping businesses of all sizes, both large and small, to serve customers profitably by enabling businesses to focus on their core activities and without having to incur overhead and infrastructure costs.

In the present-day avatar, call centers have evolved into one-stop shops with a wide collection of customizable value-added features. Call center advocates rave about the following call center outsourcing features:

1. 24×7 employee

Apart from being a nodal center to receive a company’s inbound calls and to make outbound calls, the call center has turned into a 24/7/365 employee performing an entire suite of critical functions for the company to help grow the business. Call center agents can also up-sell and cross-sell products and services resulting in incremental revenue streams. In doing so, they behave similar to employees of the company.

2. Automatic call distribution: This feature ensures that customers are not put on hold for a long time, listening to music while waiting for the next available call center representative. Calls are automatically distributed to the next available agent, improving the response time and ensuring high customer satisfaction.

2. Unified Communications: Call center agents are all equiped with unified data and voice communiations equipment  that helps them answer customer inquiries and make recommendations in real time.

3. Automatic dialers: The automatic dialers enable call centers to manage high daily call volumes and prioritize call center activities by segmenting customer inquiries.

4. Telemarketing Lists: Lists help outbound call centers eliminate the need for any paper work and the stress of finding the target segment for the appropriate offers, hence, streamlining the communication process.

5. Call Center Software helps increase efficiency: Call center companies had cumbersome beginnings with agents wielding a phone, a pen, a thick book of the yellow pages and an operations manual of the company. But advent of the call center software has combined all of these paper based tools into an efficient and intuitive digital interface allowing agents to identify, diagnose and resolve customer issues quickly.

6. Pre-written and rehearsed scripts: These scripts keep the agent from fumbling and groping for information. It not only ensures a consistent and high level of customer service but it also equips the call center representatives with a methodology to identify, diagnose and resolve cutomer inquiries.

7. Compliance with Do Not Call Lists: Outbound calls need to comply with the local, state and federal Do Not Call legislation. This system of checks and balances prevent businesses from crossing the line and getting into trouble with the law.

8. Fulfillment Solutions: All the customer information ranging from application forms to credit card processing needed by call center agents are pre-loaded into the respective templates to automate the entire process.

In summary, call centers can be effective catalysts in helping small and large businesses serve customers profitably by enabling businesses to focus on their competencies and eliminating any overhead costs.