What is the Difference between Inbound and Outbound Call Centres?

Posted by Rahul Garg

Every company has a significant number of departments that interact with customers for different purposes. However, sometimes customers struggle while getting in touch with a company due to unavailability of representatives, which consequently, creates a negative brand image. From the business’s perception, this isn’t good at all.
Here, the significance of having a call centre outsourcing company increases as they help their clients by ensuring that customers always get the best possible assistance quickly. Generally, call centres get approached to handle two departments that are:

1. Customer service department

Usually, it is believed that a company’s reputation depends on how well the customer service department is operating. It is so because if customers are encountering issues while using products, it’s a company’s responsibility to offer satisfactory resolutions swiftly as that’s how a brand image can be kept safe. At this juncture, contacting established call centres could be a wise decision because they can manage customer service queries perfectly as they have a team of dexterous agents, avant-garde technology, etc. at the disposal.

2. Sales department

At the present time, it is believed that both business growth and sales growth go hand in hand. This is so because you can’t take the business forward if the sales of products/services are poor. Generally, potential customers hesitate while making a purchase decision due to doubts that they have in their mind.

Here, call centres India come to rescue because they have deft agents in the sales department that can handle sceptical prospects’ queries appropriately, which, in turn, leads to improved sales conversion rate.
Henceforth, if you are an owner of a company and willing to achieve business objectives without facing any trouble, you should contact a reputed call centre outsourcing company and avail prodigious services. In addition, if you want better insight about call centres, go through the following details:

There are two types of call centre — Inbound and Outbound. Both of them are in high demand because they help their clients to maintain the momentum of ongoing success.

Difference between Inbound and Outbound Call Centres in Infographic

What is Inbound Call Centre?

Inbound call centres deal solely with incoming calls, and this means they don’t make calls on behalf of their clients. Moreover, they always ensure that interactions initiated by customers always get responded in the best possible manner so that nothing can put their clients’ brand image in a jeopardy. In a nutshell, inbound call centres are mainly customer service focused.

With time, it is very crucial to avail services from inbound call centres as that’s the best way to meet growing customer expectations. Apart from customer support, inbound call centres offer some other astounding services that include ‘Help Desk,’ ‘Order-Taking,’ and ‘24 Hour Telephone Answering.’

What is Outbound Call Centre?

The functioning of outbound call centres is the exact opposite of inbound ones. Instead of waiting for incoming calls, agents in outbound call centres make calls to potential customers. In short, outbound call centres are principally sales focused.

Outbound call centres always make sure that their agents stay focused on a given list of potential customers so that the sales growth can be ameliorated. Willing to know what services outbound call centres offer to their clients? Here’s the list:

Difference between Inbound and Outbound Call Centres

After reading the aforementioned definitions, you probably get the idea what is inbound and outbound call centre. For better business’s productivity, firm owners are recommended to avail services from both inbound and outbound call centres.

“What is the real difference between inbound and outbound call centres?”

Outbound call centres’ agents don’t handle support requests as their primary job is making calls to potential customers and build a rapport so that the latter can stay on the call for some couple of minutes and listen about the merits of products/services. This, as a positive consequence, amplifies the odds of better sales. The prominence of outbound call centres can’t be taken for granted because business’s productivity always suffers owing to poor sales growth.

Inbound call centre agents, on the flip side, deal with existing customers who are in need of support service. During customer interactions, support agents try to do their best so that unmatched resolutions could be delivered that can wipe out products/services-related issues from the root. The job of inbound call centre agents is equally difficult as compared to outbound call centre ones.

Furthermore, inbound call centres always instruct their agents to do the best because the deliverance of lousy support service brings these problems:

High negative WOM (word-of-mouth).
Low customer satisfaction score.
High customer churn.

Well, we hope that you’ve perfectly understood the above-mentioned difference between inbound and outbound call centres. So, if you want to ensure a smooth growth for your business, bag inbound and outbound call centre services from call centre India as soon as possible. Why we are stressing on Indian call centres is because they have a history in offering splendid support and have boosted their services in recent times.

How do Inbound and Outbound Call Centres render first-class services?

Till now, we had been talking about the call centres’ prominence, types, and immaculate services. However, the question that can cross any business owners’ mind is ‘How do inbound and outbound call centres render top-notch services all day and night without any drop?’ Here, we would like to tell that both inbound and outbound call centres track some highly important KPIs (key performance indicators) that help to maintain high consistency. We are going to shed some light on such KPIs, so let’s get started:

Inbound call centre KPIs:

1.First contact resolution (FCR):

Generally, business owners avail services from established inbound call centres so as to ensure that impeccable solutions get delivered during customer service interactions. Whenever customers make contact regarding support service, they often seek satisfactory resolutions so that they don’t have to contact again for the same problem.

However, when issues don’t get solved in one go, it makes a negative impact on customers, which, in turn, leads to negative WOM. That’s why inbound call centres always strive to achieve high FCR rate. Even, support agents get trained in such a manner that helps to weed out issues in the very first attempt.

2. Average after call work time

Oftentimes, customers choose the voice channel in order to avail desired resolutions. To ensure that maximum customer calls go answered, inbound call centres keep a close eye on one KPI; ‘Average after call work time.’

Tracking this KPI is fundamental because if support agents take much time in updating databases, sending emails, etc. then they may not be able to handle call traffic. This can hamper the overall productivity of the business. Hence, inbound call centres always encourage support service reps to reduce after call work time as much as possible.

3. Customer satisfaction

CSAT is the most important KPI for inbound call centres as there would be no point to having adroit support agents or cutting-edge technology if customers aren’t happy with the provided solutions. If industry reports are anything to go by, 74% of customers decide to switch to another brand after having an unpleasant support experience.

Therefore, support agents are always told to serve the best during customer interactions. All in all, keeping customer satisfaction score high is paramount and by choosing call centre India, you will not compromise on the same anytime.

4. Agent turnover rate

Support service reps are the strongest pillar on which the stability of any inbound call centre depends. It is so because if the required number of support service agents isn’t available, there will be no way to deliver splendid customer service experience.

That’s the main reason why inbound call centres always try hard to reduce agent turnover rate as low as possible.

5. Average wait time

‘Average wait time’ is another crucial metric that helps inbound call centres in rendering prodigious customer service. Even, this KPI is directly associated with customer experience. This means if waiting time increases, support service experience of customers is more likely to be affected in a negative manner or vice versa.

Thus, agents often get directed to stick to the point during support interactions so that average wait time doesn’t go out of control.

Outbound call centre KPIs:

1. First call close

For outbound call centres, FCC (first call close) is one of the significant KPIs because it indicates the number of sales that agents have made after the first contact with potential customers. What’s more, this KPI is deemed as a tool that can help to assess the effectiveness of strategies which were made to improve the sales conversion rate.

2. Calls per agent

Tracking CPA (calls per agent) is imperative as it tells how many agents are utilising their time in making calls. By means of this KPI, furthermore, it would be very easy to identify which agents are working at their maximum efficiency and which ones are falling behind.

Keeping CPA high is very crucial as that’s the best way to ameliorate the sales growth.

3. Average call length

To improve the sales results, it is vitally important to ensure that prospects stay on the call for a couple of minutes. However, when the duration of outbound calls increases too much, it often results in the wastage of time and resources.

Therefore, outbound call centre outsourcing companies always monitor those calls that last for a long duration in order to make sure that agents aren’t wasting their time after making a successful contact with potential customers.
In brief, keeping average call length in check is vital to render unparalleled outbound call centre services.

4. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate shows the number of calls that resulted in a successful sale. In addition, if the conversion rate is poor, the business’s bottom line is more likely to suffer or vice versa. To ensure that clients’ business doesn’t come across any problem, outbound call centres always try to come up with some infallible tactics that can help to improve the conversion rate.

5. Total agent call connects

Keeping this KPI high is extremely important for outbound call centres because if it is low, this means agents aren’t connecting with enough prospects or potential customers. As a negative consequence, the hassle of poor productivity is more likely to take place.

To ensure that agents make contact with maximum prospects, outbound call centres use automated dialling system that plays a prime in increasing the number of successful contacts.

Final few words:

In today’s hyper-competitive world, business growth can be improved by only keeping existing customers happy and getting more patrons. With the help of this write-up, we have explained the prominence of call centres. Plus, we have clearly told what inbound and outbound call centres really are, the difference between them, and how they render phenomenal services with high consistency.

It is highly advisable for firm owners to avail services from inbound and outbound call centres according to business requirements as that’s the most effective way to keep experiencing the real taste of success.
If you have liked our write-up, please let us know in the comment section. Thanks for reading!!

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