Outsourcing operations partially have become a commonplace trend in companies- including midsized ones to MNCs. Popular companies belonging to niches like retail, finance, IT, healthcare and hospitality are outsourcing customer support operations to specialized third-party entities. The findings of Deloitte’s ‘Global Outsourcing and Insourcing’ survey show that most companies are treading this path for economic reasons.
Outsourcing customer support to offshore countries, notably those in Asian subcontinent helps these companies save a significant amount of money. The companies offering quality outsourcing services have fully fledged call center software setup for serving their clients.
Learning about various benefits of call centre service
Thousands of companies located in the US and Europe are outsourcing their customer support to third-party entities offshore for availing myriads of benefits. There are two types of call centre service providers. Inbound call centres receive calls to offer support for their clients.
Outbound call centres make calls to promote and sell products of their client companies. Prior to outsourcing your brand’s customer support to a call centre entity or use it for selling the services and products, you should know about the main benefits.
Following are the main advantages business can avail by seeking services of a call centre company:
#1 Savings companies cannot overlook-
No matter you own a midsized or large company, keeping the operational cost within the limit will be necessary. When you outsource services to a call center agency, plenty of expenses are cut down effectively. This has been shown by a number of studies. After outsourcing, it is no longer necessary to spend after technological setup, the salary of support agents, training etc. The amount spent after recruitment and HR operations also go down. You have to pay a fixed amount to the call centre agents on monthly or yearly basis for the task. A Duke University study throws light on the savings possible by taking this path. Several Fortune 500 companies have been able to save more than 30 per cent by switching to outsourcing.
#2 Selling gets a boost-
Using the company staffs to sell products by tele calling may not work wonders! However, the same task can be performed with ease by skilled and veteran call center agents. These agents are well versed in using linguistic skills to impress different types of people. They are also adept in selling products by impressing enquiring callers.
#3 Better customer retention results-
You will definitely want to expand customer base of your company. However, your company will benefit by retaining the existing customers. Outsourcing the customer support tasks to a cell center agency can keep the existing customers satisfied. The skilled call center agents can analyze caller mindset without hassles. When the existing customers call for voicing grievances or fulfilling queries- these agents can satisfy their needs. When the customers are happy after interactions they are likely to stay loyal. So, you may think of outsourcing support operation to veteran call center agency to retain existing customers.
#4 Data availability-
When the company’s customer support operations are handled by a call center entity, you get access to the labyrinth of data metrics. All the calls – received or made, get recorded by the software. These saved call log actually reveals useful information about the customers and performance of agents. By analyzing the logs, you can figure out areas that need improvement and common customer preferences etc. Thereafter, you can introduce much-desired changes in service or launch new products to fulfil customer requirements. This keeps the customers happy and revenue gets a boost in the long run.
#5 No customer is left out-
Not all companies adhere to rotational shift based timing and 24×7 workflow. Deploying such shift timings may not be prudent and you do not want the operational costs to escalate- for sure! At the same time, you will not want some customers as well as prospective buyers left unattended. Some customers will surely call to inquire about products or lodge complaints outside work hours. When you hire a call center agency to outsource support service- this is not a problem! All the calls made by your company customers will be attended as top notch call centres operate round the clock. This helps in keeping the customers happy.
#6 Making existing customers feel good-
The call center service providers make use of feature-laden software solutions and these are typically linked to the customer database. So, the agents receiving the calls understand when existing customers contact. Then they can greet such customers in apt ways and that makes the customers feel better. The agents can also fetch the previous records of such customers within a few seconds. This way, time is saved and the customers are satisfied.
#7 Call handling in the best way-
The veteran agents of a call centre can handle customer calls way better than your workforce. These agents are trained to receive all types of calls including those made by irate callers. They can figure out the best ways to handle different types of callers and their efficacy in wrapping calls is very good. This helps in boosting productivity as well. Some of the senior agents have skills in various languages which can be handy. Moreover, all calls made or received in such setups are monitored. This ensures the agents try their level best.
#8 Data security-
You may feel somewhat weary about data security when outsourcing operations like customer support to a third party service provider. The agency will be responsible for handling company data as well as storing confidential customer data. Top notch call center setups rely on cloud services for data storage and backup. So, the data is encrypted and cannot be leaked or hacked easily.
#9 Added flexibility-
The call volume does not remain the same over time- in any company. The number of calls in peak business hours will shoot up and at other times, it can be near normal level. At your company, handling fluctuating call volume may not be easy. However, call center setups are designed to handle varying inflow of calls. They can handle the surge in call volume easily.
#10 Cutting edge software-
In most of the top and veteran call centers, sophisticated and feature-rich software solutions are used. Usage of such advanced software and setup enable the agencies cope with customer’s calls in an efficient manner. They use IVR solutions, have call conferencing and call forwarding in place. The software solutions also support call recording facility. Most of the recent software solutions are cloud-based and they are quite easy to operate. This ensures workflow remains at an optimal level at those setups.
Selecting an apt call center
Resorting to services of a call center agency can be profitable for almost all types of businesses. However, it is also necessary to pick the apt call center agency for outsourcing customer support operations of your venture. A few factors should be analyzed carefully.
At first, you have to learn about infrastructure used by the call center agency. Top notch call centers have provisions for power and data backup. An agency with several agents having multilingual skills is desirable over the others. At any rate, make sure your queries are resolved before you select the agency for outsourcing company operations.
