Call Centers
Call centers are places that manage the customer support operations of businesses. Usually, when we talk about call centers, we talk about a dedicated, physical complex that handles all the inbound and outbound calls of businesses.
The complex often consists of a setup of multiple computers and other technical hardware that are used to serve the customers with instant resolutions in a highly convenient way.
Unarguably, a call center is an effective tool to generate good customer experiences and floods in a lot of other benefits.
Functions Of A Call Center
The key function of a call center is to create a medium where customers can interact directly with a company/business. A team of talented agents is trained about the fundamentals of the business to handle customers’ queries and deliver the best solutions in a simplified manner.
Various kinds of call centers operate with unique features, but the main focus is to build an uninterrupted connection with the customers.
Different Kinds Of Call Centers
Inbound Call Centers
An inbound call center handles all the customers’ incoming calls and responds to the customers’ issues with instant solutions in the most comfortable way. The main purpose of inbound call centers is to give easy access to customers to find the information they are looking for.
It can be a pre-purchase query where the customers seek to get precise information about a product or a service. Or it can be and after purchase information customers seek regarding installation or any other problem they might face.
Service provided by inbound call centers –
- Order processing
- Dispatch information
- Help desk support
- And more
Outbound Call Centers
In outbound call centers, agents call the customers on behalf of your business to increase the reach of your business. It is a highly cost-effective way to directly market your products or services to the customers.
What Are Call Center Outsourcing Services?
A lot of costs come associated with the idea of building and running an in-house customer support team. For SMEs and startups, it is necessary to avoid the huge upfront costs of setting up customer support teams in-house.
Customer service outsourcing comes under the spotlight in these situations for small and medium businesses.
Companies that offer the service of call centers to businesses as a third party are said to provide customer service outsourcing. In simpler terms, it is called a customer support outsourcing service and adds a lot of benefits to the customers.
How Does It Work?
When you hire a company for customer service outsourcing, a team of skilled and trained agents manages all the customer support operations.
The company will add the power of customer care support to your business and bridge the gap between the customers and your business.
You can pick from a wide spectrum of customer service outsourcing facilities like – inbound call center, outbound call center, live chat support, etc. Improved customer care leads to a better customer experience and increases the revenue of your business.
This way, when you outsource customer support, you add extra propellers to pace the growth of your business.
The Shift From On-Premise Call Center To Remote Working
The recent times during the pandemic were hard on businesses, and remote working came as the first choice for companies to keep the operations running.
The Call Center industry also followed the same route and started hiring remote workers to keep the wires of businesses connected with the concept of customer service outsourcing. It led to the construction of call centers that are operated remotely and also promoted the trend of outsourcing customer support services.
Before we differentiate the skies of on-premise and remotely working call centers, it is essential to know the benefits of having good customer support.
Benefits Of Customer Support For Businesses
Great customer service experience leads to a stronger association between your company and the customers. It initiates a series of benefits that are mentioned below
Repeated Customers
The first and a sure outcome of having good customer support is that it attracts customers to do business with your company, with the best people wanting to do business more than once.
You can not expect to get repeat sales without delivering a positive customer experience. Businesses that fail in the subject of customer service are bound to lose their customers to some other brand.
One main advantage of having qualified customer support service comes in the form of strong personal connections with businesses. Building a better relationship with customers stops the customers from losing confidence in your brand and brings loads of sales through repeated customers.
Builds The Reputation Of A Business
Good customer service is a great tool for boosting a company’s reputation. A good interpretation of customers’ nature tells that customers often share their experiences of dealing with a business if it’s extremely good or bad.
Every business can definitely take advantage of this by providing excellent customer service. It would lead to a positive word of mouth advertising of your business, leading to more customers pipelined to buy from your business.
Customer service outsourcing paves the smoothest path for businesses to get free advertising from their happy customers.
Fight The Competition
It is challenging for small businesses to fight the competitive prices of their industry rivals. One of the key benefits of providing good customer care that stays under the carpet, unnoticed, is that by providing outstanding customer care services, you can distract the customers from your higher prices.
Once your company establishes itself as a reputed brand that provides world-class customer service, it leverages you to sell your products or services at higher prices because the buyers won’t mind paying a premium to be served as valued customers of your business.
Competitive Advantage
Your business might have a lot of competitors in the market selling similar products and services like yours. Along with the need to have a good selling proposition, your business also needs the support of good customer care.
Having defined contact support for your business prevents you from getting complaints from customers referring to poor customer services. Providing reliable customer service sets you apart from other industry players and builds your business into a credible brand with trusted customer support services.
Customer support deserves a place in the marketing strategy of your business to create a unique reputation for your company.
Remote Working Call Centers
The concept of working from home/ remote working is gaining momentum, and the reason is obvious – a significant benefit for businesses. The new working environment features flexibility, and the practice of operating from remote locations with the right tools no doubt puts businesses in an advantageous position.
Remote call centers connect the agents through cloud computing technologies that allow better coordination between the team and help in distributing the customers’ calls to the team. Also called cloud contact centers, remote call centers build a seamless path for the flow of information between the representatives and the customers.
Benefits Of Remote Call Centers
Improved Agent Productivity
On-Premise call centers require dedicated spaces for inbound customer support agents and outbound sales representatives.
The remote working module eliminates the problem of noise level issues and offers a good environment for the agents to function in an uninterrupted manner.
Better Customer Service
Working from home lets the call center reps provide a more focused environment to the agents. It helps the agent focus completely on the customers’ queries and finds the correct solutions in the least time.
An instant solution provided by a call center rep is always admired by customers and counts as better customer service. A focused customer support executive functions as a good listener, and the customers need not repeat their queries. It all adds to better customer service.
Large Talent Pool
Not everyone can fit into the on-premise call center environment. It restricts many talented candidates from entering the customer support industry. Onprimse call centers thus function with limited talent and fail to add the productive support of highly skilled staff.
On the other hand, the Cloud contact center lets the reps work from their comfortable space and therefore attracts more talented workers to get on board. For people with family responsibilities, cloud contact centers bring opportunities to work as a call center agent.
Flexible Operations
Homeworkers add a great advantage to businesses as they can be scheduled to operate based on the need. The call patterns change with seasons with fluctuations in the number of calls, and in such situations, remotely working call centers can provide flexible staffing options in such situations.
It helps businesses have a sufficient number of agents at any time and keeps the call center requirements fulfilled. As remote call centers are based on cloud computing, it is easier to add more agents at any instant without much hassle.
Cost Saver
Tradition on-premise call centers have higher operational costs. They require dedicated spaces to build the whole setup, and getting an office space alone adds a lot of expenses.
Remote Call Centers fade away the need to have a physical office and save a big chunk of the expenses. Moreover, a physical office restricts the number of employees working at a time, and it’s hard to accommodate more agents if required.
Cloud-based contact centers help you expand the functionality with no constraint in the number of employees working at a time.
Agent Monitoring
The advanced cloud-based call centers provide real-time insights and visibility into the activity of agents.
Just like in the office, remote working of agents can also be monitored, and any unusual/abnormal activity can be flagged as soon as detected. Also, home workers are found to have a higher sense of ownership.
More Benefits To Employees
Following the remote working call center module, you can add more benefits to the pockets of your employees. It helps in inducing a better work-life balance in the routine of call center reps and takes them closer to satisfaction.
It further leads to reducing the turnover rate of employees, which lowers the talent acquisition charges.
Managing A Remote Call Center
Customer service outsourcing has crossed the threshold for becoming the mainstream option of companies, and remote call centers are leading as the first choice of companies.
But managing a remote call center can be hard for inexperienced professionals. Thus, it is also necessary for businesses to choose customer service outsourcing from companies that know how to manage and monitor the working of remote workers.
Get World Class Call Center Outsourcing Services
Remote Call Centers and traditional on-premise call centers perform the same tasks but in different manners.
Not just for call center companies, businesses that hire remote customer service outsourcing also benefit a lot. The savings made by call centers in operating and managing the company also flow to businesses, and it makes the whole customer support service highly cost-effective.
Koala Customer Care provides the best customer service outsourcing facilities and is known to run strategically aligned remote call centers. Our core responsibility as a call center services provider is to add the best customer support to businesses and deliver world-class customer experiences.
Being functional as a call center company for several years now, we have simplified the process of providing call center services and providing both on-premise and cloud-based remote contact center support to our clients.
We are an advanced company with all kinds of customer service outsourcing in our range including –
- Live chat support
- Inbound call support
- Outbound calls
- Social media support
- And more
Hire Koala Customer Care for your business and get full-fledged customer service outsourcing that will bring a flood of sales and revenue to your business.
Tips To Manage Remote Call Centers
Following are the best practices to ensure proper management of remote call centers
Define The Purpose
Remote managers must convey to the reps what they expect from them. It requires the remote managers to actively monitor and coach the reps to improve their performance.
Designing the purpose helps the reps to function with a mindset of delivering expected performance. Also, remote managers must track the deliverance of reps and give feedback on areas that they need to improve.
Ensure Quality Checks
Monitoring the performance of individuals and the team as a whole is a must to find the quality leaks and fix them actively.
Collect the data of customer and representative interaction and assess the quality of resolution provided to the caller. The assessment’s goal would be to give personalized coaching to the reps to improve their technical skills and behavior towards treating the customers.
Review the interaction and make sure to find the loose ends that reduce the quality of customer service.
