Making the decision to use inbound call center outsourcing

When companies look to better manage customer interactions, improve customer response times, and improve the customer experience, they often turn to inbound call center services. Call centers can help handle high volumes of inbound calls, including everything from managing incoming leads and conducting surveys to dispatching incoming calls to the right department or person and or providing critical product and service support. Inbound call centers are quickly becoming an important business process outsourcing (BPO) option for today’s businesses.

Companies use inbound call center services to outsource customer service. While a large percentage of call service centers are structured to handle high volumes of calls, others are scaled down or have services that handle smaller volumes of incoming requests. Not a one-size-fits-all solution, inbound call center services are a potential solution for small, medium, and large businesses needing to reduce costs and improve service times.

Call centers rely upon software to ensure customer wait times are minimized and agent response and talk times are maximized. Automatic call distribution (ACD), interactive voice response (IVR), and customer relationship management (CRM) / computer telephony integration (CTI) are just some of the many solutions call centers may use to ensure customers are promptly serviced.

In more efficient call centers, machine-learning solutions like artificial intelligence (AI) are leveraged to ensure customers get the right answers. In other instances, it’s about ensuring customers can speak to the right person in the right department at the right time without having to wait endlessly on the line.

Conversational AI solutions in call centers use natural language processing to quickly provide customers with important information while prompting them to provide additional inputs to route each call to a specific available agent. These systems are designed to give customers answers without inundating call center agents with customer questions that can quickly be resolved by AI, which helps to reduce call center workload while improving service response times.

Whether it’s using AI to disseminate information from chatbots, using different language processing to better route incoming calls, or providing call center agents with better information to help them make more informed customer service decisions, AI has quickly become a preferred resource for companies needing call center outsourcing.

Inbound call center services help businesses by improving the customer experience, generating faster customer response times, eliminating lost calls, generating leads and new opportunities, improving customer service, and reducing the costs associated with servicing customers.

Today’s audience has short attention spans: it’s evident in all interactions customers have online and on the phone. In a world where impressions are made in less than seven seconds, companies can ill afford to have customers waiting endlessly for someone to answer the phone. This is especially true when customers feel anxious or nervous because of a particular problem or issue. Call center services are a type of outsourcing solution that can dramatically improve how your company generates long-lasting and more rewarding customer relationships.

If your company is thinking of using a call center service provider, then there are some important considerations and questions to ask to ensure you’re choosing the right outsourcing partner. First, make sure you have a clear understanding of why you need an inbound call center. This is an often-overlooked first step.

Second, develop a list of problems your company and customers are having with your existing customer service. This will help you develop a must-have list of needs. Finally, do your homework. This includes researching the call center’s reputation, asking for references (if they can provide them), ensuring they have experience in your market or a similar industry, and understanding how their services can improve your company’s performance.

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How do you manage a high volume of incoming calls?

Your chosen call center should be able to provide you with a list of the solutions or software they use to manage the number of inbound calls they receive. The call center should be able to provide metrics or statistics that speak to how many calls they handle. While everything is relative, it’s important to choose a partner that can handle your needs.

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What tools do your agents have to help them resolve customer problems?

The ideal situation is for agents to have an interactive dashboard or user interface that provides them with all the customer information before the agent answers the call. This is where AI and machine-learning solutions come into play. These solutions gather actionable intelligence and initiate customer responses. When the customer needs to speak to the agent, that agent has everything needed to help.

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What is your average wait time on incoming calls?

There will be delays at times. However, the goal is to work with a call center that has proactive solutions in place to minimize those delays. Your chosen call center won’t be perfect, but they must strive for perfection.

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How do you train your call center agents?

Most call centers will use software that has a call monitoring feature. This allows managers and supervisors to review calls with agents later. The best call centers proactively train their agents and always adopt a continuous improvement mindset.

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What type of reports, metrics, or key performance indicators (KPI) do you track and provide?

Your business must receive analytics and data that speaks to the success of your chosen call center. Make sure you receive daily, weekly, or monthly reports that allow you to measure the call center's performance. In most advanced call centers, this data and intelligence are often available to you in real time.

While outsourcing customer service to a call center can provide customer service improvements and help you save money, it’s important to make the right decision for your business, customers, and your market. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and ask yourself if the call center can effectively service your customer.

If your business provides a me-too product or service offering where speed of response wins out, then outsourcing to a call center is a possible option. However, if your product is more technical or custom-made and customers require technical assistance or technical problem-solving, then outsourcing to a call center may not be an ideal solution.

Connect with XtendOps – we can answer any questions and provide more information about how inbound call center services can help your business.