Sunday, January 23, 2011

Blessings from a Gratifying 24/7 Customer Service Support

I have a friend who has been employed in a call center for a couple of years now. He is part of the technical support of an outsourced inbound contact center in Asia. When we have the chance to make a conversation, he always spills his encounters with some of his callers. Occasionally, there have been humorous experiences. Few of the times did he provide assistance to those who have problems in their products. He confessed that 95% were solved either easily or after a toil-worn affair. The best parts were on the moments when he was able to make a sale while satisfying the customer, who mostly had been Western citizens.

With those small chitchats, I have extracted that the potential of customer care in improving goodwill and revenue of a company is high. A delightful 24/7 customer service support is a blessing both for a business organization and the public it is serving. It is like hitting many birds in one stone.

Among the graces that a gratifying customer care is going to bring is customer satisfaction. No sales will ever flow to any firm without first supplying delight to the buyers. This pleasure must not be limited during the buying process alone. It ought to extend after or before a sales takes place. Valuing customers is the best way to gain profits.

Another gift is it increases customer retention. When an individual is being nurtured by a firm, there is a good chance that he/she will continue his/her purchases. This good reputation will spread like wildfire through the word of mouth, written materials and online connections.

This basket of fruits will be multiplied when outsourced to the right inbound call center. Aside from the aforementioned benefits, outsourcing can increase cross-sell product penetration, elevate revenue growth by up-selling and cross-selling and minimize operating costs.

Monday, January 3, 2011

The Returns and Rewards of Outsourcing An Inbound Call Center

When you outsource an inbound call center, this generally means that you are passing the responsibility of improving customer service support to the hands of a service provider. However, news about outsourcing is gross and disappointing. Offshore inbound call centers are prejudged as lacking the skilled workforce, who does not know how to properly communicate, and the standard requirement for technological aspect. This is perhaps true to some but not to all. In fact, there is this so-called best-in-class contact centers that provide the necessary services to improve customer service support.

Best-in-class contact centers commit to provide inbound services for the development of customer care. Services including order taking, 24/7 answering service, reservations and bookings are being offered through their competent live operators and order takers and with the access to incomparable practices, methodologies and technology.

If done appropriately, outsourcing can produce incalculable fruits. A snapshot of the benefits includes the following:

• cost minimization without compromising quality of services
• improved customer satisfaction
• eliminate costs of infrastructure, IT products and services, operators' salaries
• concentrate more on a firm's core competencies
• lower risks compared to building an in-house contact center
• removes the necessity of supervising daily operations
• wide market coverage
• faster results of campaigns
• enhanced response ratio of callers

These generalized views of the myriad benefits of outsourcing can be broken down into bits of advantages. The bottom line here is that you must make sure that when you outsource, the chosen contact center ought to provide services more than what an in-house solution can offer.