All That You Need To Know About Call Centre’s And Outsourcing?

Posted by Moin Khan

What Is A Call Center And How To Outsource A Call Center

Any growing business would eventually require call centre services to handle their customer queries. Most of the businesses with a huge customer base have already set up or hired call centres to manage their customer communication. To understand how a call centre works we must understand the definition of a call centre.

What Is A Call centre?

Call centres services are places where trained professionals handle customer queries over the phone. These experts are referred to as customer care representatives. These customer service representatives undergo a strenuous training process for a certain period before they are assigned the task of handling customer queries.

What is customer service?

Customer service is the post sale assistance offered by the company to their customers. Customer service plays an essential role in the growth of any business. It helps businesses to retain their customers for the long term. The main goal of customer service is to deliver a memorable experience for the customer.

What Is An Inbound Call centre?

In an inbound call centre the representatives receive calls from the customers through an integrated automatic call distribution (ACD) software. The software guides the customer through an integrated voice recognition (IVR) system where they can select the service that they need assistance with.

At the same time, ACD starts assigning the calls to the agents on the dialer based on their availability and skill set. This allows the agent to resolve the customer queries on time.

What Is An Outbound Call centre?

In an outbound call centre agents call the customers. The calls are generated through an autodialer and are assigned to each agent on the basis of their availability and skill set. This type of calling is also referred to as cold calling, and it is a common practice in an outbound call centre.

Customer Care Representatives Should Have The Following Qualities:

Communication Skills

A customer care representative should have flawless communication skills. Many call centres invest a lot of time and money in training the agents in voice and accent training. Excellent communication skills can help to deliver impeccable customer service and improve customer experience.

Technical knowledge

Agents should have in-depth knowledge and understanding of their process. Oftentimes customers stop using a particular product or service because the agent fails to explain the technicalities to the customer. Only those agents who possess the necessary technical knowledge should be allowed to handle customer queries.

Empathy

It is important to show empathy over the phone. There are times when a customer is frustrated and dissatisfied with the service. There can be plenty of reasons for that, the product might be damaged, or the customer might have been charged extra. In such situations, empathy can help to make the customer less irate.

Patience

It Is one of the most important qualities that an agent can possess. Handling customers over the phone has many shortcomings. There are times when you have to place the customer on hold or there might be a lot of background noise from the customer end. Patience can play a significant role in dealing with such situations.

What Technologies Do They Use?

Call centres use a desktop, dialing software, ACD, IVR and headsets to perform their daily tasks. Some call centres have also started to use customer relationship management (CRM) software. They allow businesses to seamlessly integrate their business operations and perform multiple tasks from a single platform. CRM helps to save a lot of valuable time and effort and increase efficiency and improve customer relationships.

Agents Are The Most Important Part Of A Call centre

The major portion of call centre expenditure is spent on recruiting manpower. It is since humans are more impactful than technology when it comes to developing long-lasting customer relationships. The number of people quitting call centres has increased recently due to the lack of proper training and poor salary structure.

Managers Play The Most Important Role In A Call centre

The manager plays one of the most essential roles in any call centre. He has to deal with a wide variety of problems such as salary, absenteeism, poor performance and much more. Managers should possess the necessary skills required to motivate the agents to give their best and meet daily targets.

Why Are Companies Choosing To Outsource Their Business Operations?

The task of delivering customer support with the help of trained professionals is no walk in a park. Such a massive task requires huge amounts of investments in software, manpower, management and maintenance. Companies that are desperately searching for ways to cut costs should seriously consider the option of outsourcing. There are plenty of things to keep in mind before you embark on this demanding venture.

What Is Outsourcing?

Outsourcing is the process of hiring third party resources to handle your business operations. Companies resort to the method of outsourcing so that they can focus on more important internal business matters. Outsourcing helps businesses to save a lot of money by hiring third party resources to handle non-essential facets of their business operations.

Advantages of Outsourcing

There is a long list of reasons for a company to consider outsourcing to deal with their labour concerns. Outsourcing helps companies to deliver customer-centric business solutions cost-effectively. Companies might not be able to afford to deliver similar customer services on their own. Outsourcing helps the companies to save a lot of money which can be later invested in other departments. Outsourcing allows businesses to hire experts that can deliver exceptional customer service at a reasonable cost.

On-Demand Service

One of the most prominent reasons for companies to resort to outsourcing is the great deal of flexibility that it provides. Companies have to scale their resources for different projects as per their requirement. Outsourcing gives companies the freedom to make such decisions in a short time.

Better Service Quality

An outsourced team of experts can deliver exceptional customer-centric business solutions. Even if the companies attempt to do the same on their own they might face significant challenges. Outsourced teams are experts in their field and possess years of experience in handling customers.

Language Barriers

Outsourcing teams come from different countries and there might be a language barrier between the outsourced team and the customers. This language barrier can have a serious impact on customer relationships. We would suggest that you hire a team that is fluent in the language spoken by the customers, so they can easily resolve customer queries.

Tips On How To Outsource

Look for Flexible Providers

Make sure that you hire a team that understands the complexities of handling customer queries. A competent team can do wonders for your business and provide you with a great deal of flexibility.

Make Customer Satisfaction Your Priority

Your number one priority should be customer satisfaction. As long as you keep that in mind you will be able to develop the best strategies to build long-lasting relationships with your customers.

Get Your Money's Worth

Most of the businesses compare outsourcing companies on the basis of their price. Instead, we would recommend that you analyze your business requirements and then look for an outsourcing company that can give you exactly what you are looking for within the limits of your budget.

Best Practices For Outsourcing

Keep Internal Information Confidential

You should keep your internal business matters confidential and not share them with the outsourcing company. Failure to do so can lead to legal problems and compliance-related issues. We would advise you to assign your dedicated team of professionals with the task to address such concerns internally.

Clear Communication

Companies often have to bear heavy penalties for not being compliant. This is why companies should provide outsourcing companies with clear guidelines describing their role and responsibilities in great detail leaving no room for error.