Looking to boost call center productivity and performance?
Our selection of call center trends in 2023 will help you adopt the best ideas for your business.
Surprisingly, even the best call center software isn’t enough to refine your types of call center services nowadays. A lot is happening in this field, and unless you endeavor to stay ahead of the pack, excellent call center service will remain elusive.
But even so, going above and beyond to keep customers happy and satisfied is an arduous challenge these days. Why?
Because it’s a big, crowded, and uncertain marketplace out there exemplified by constantly changing customer expectations. Customers are now the focal point of customer service but unfortunately, their expectation keeps changing.
Businesses see all kinds of change, from new hires in management to the adaptation of new software-based solutions to full-fledged organizational changes like business process re-engineering, where businesses rethink the fundamentals of how they do things with the goal of dramatic improvement.
Hence, doing business in today’s world is not that easy. From the past 20 years multi-channel marketing and customer support has evolved rapidly in IT enterprise and cyber-security concerns.
In this blog, we’ve culled the most dominant trends that we predict will continue making a significant impact on call center service. Having a deep understanding of these trends will help you realign your strategy to deliver the customer experience your callers expect.
What is Call Center Outsourcing?
Instead of your employees working on customer support through a customer service department, there’s an outside group of experts that would make it more professional and worthy of running all necessary operations for you. You can outsource specific tasks or have them take over everything that has to do with customer calls.
Call Center Outsourcing refers to handing over your customer service outsourcing tasks to an external call center or contact team, which handles calls, surveys and other customer service operations on your behalf. The third-party team might be in your locality or offshore.
Outsourcing call center services allows businesses to focus their resources on the products and services for which they were set up. It avails you more time for product development, marketing, sales and other essential business operations.
Looking to enhance customer interactions?
Contact AM2PM Support now for call center outsourcing services.
What is Business Process Outsourcing(BPO)?
Business Process Outsourcing is a business plan, where different companies hire call center service providers to handle various call tasks in their organization. It involves the transfer of call-related operations, such as customer support and operations, such as customer support and telemarketing from an internal department to an external call center service provider.
Many companies outsource their call center operations to save expenses of hiring and training call center agents. This deliberate move allows your business to focus on their competitors while attaining cost savings at the same time.
Opportunities and Obstacles of outsourcing call center services
Opportunities
The benefits of outsourcing services provide lots of help by saving your precious time and cost and enhancing customer satisfaction, which in turn improves customer retention. Let’s take a look at some benefits you’ll get while outsourcing call center services.
It is cost effective
Outsourcing call centers has helped you to save your money that you spend in paying your office rent, infrastructure costs, purchasing equipment, facility maintenance, investment in technology, hiring and training customer service agents. Hence, an outsourced call center manages all your call operations.
It is more flexible and scalable
Even when your business is closed for the day, call center outsourcing ensures you don’t miss out on opportunities.
Customers enjoy getting their queries answered and issues resolved whenever they want. Since there’s a dedicated team to serve 24/7 customer service throughout the year, customers get round-the-clock support, which local businesses can hardly handle on their own.
Access to Latest Tools and Technology
Call Centers have access to data and advanced tools for analytics, which can aid your customer growth and general business development.
Call Center Outsourcing comes with a network of well-trained support staff that can handle customer needs. These agents are trained with the technical ability to enhance customer relationships and they can handle queries with speed.
Improved Customer Experience
Since call center agents are more available and sometimes indigenous to your customers, you will be able to attend to more customers in a manner they expert, which improves your customer service management and keeps customers loyal to your brand. Also, you will gain more qualified leads and increase your profits as a company.
Obstacles
Call Center Outsourcing will help you to save money and enhance customer satisfaction, but it also faces some obstacles. Mentioned below are some of them.
Loss of control
Call Center Outsourcing tends to interfere with support teams and collaborates with these teams, such as sales and marketing teams. Since the agency hires whomever they deem to fit, you lack control over those in charge of your customer service outsourcing since call center agents are not within your organization.
Lack of Company Knowledge
Outsourced call centers often attend to various companies, so they may not specialize in your industry.if they need to work at your company, they often have limited knowledge about your company’s values and goals. If your call center agents require special knowledge to serve your customers, outsourcing may be a risk. You need to ensure that anyone speaking to your customers can give them the technical support they expect.
Language Barriers
If you are outsourcing your call center overseas, it is possible that agents in these countries may lack the cultural knowledge and language fluency to communicate effectively. As a result, special consideration is needed when choosing an outsourcing partner to ensure that these agents are trained well and can communicate at the necessary level.
Lack of Feedback
When customers share their feedback, many businesses find ways of improving their products. Call center outsourcing gives you the statistics of processed queries and resolved issues. A lot of rich feedback gets lost. You may see numbers about queries handled and maybe specific cases, but you don’t get the same wide-bandwidth information flow as you do with an in-house team.
Find an outsourcing firm that resonates with your culture
Organizations should define how they want to interact with their BPO provider. Should they be hands-on and communicate frequently, or would executives rather set it and forget it? Each outsourcing firm approaches this differently, and getting stuck with a company that doesn’t match with management styles could spell disaster down the road.
Where will the BPO services be delivered from? This is critical for many industries where customer service is a very high priority. A BPO provider’s location impacts the available languages, the accent neutrality of the agents, the skill sets and labor costs. Additionally, with the Safe Harbor nullification in 2015, businesses need to consider what the data privacy laws of the BPO service’s jurisdiction are, as well as what certifications it has received.
Is your company traditional, entrepreneurial, team-spirited, progressive, sales or customer-centric?
This is especially important for organizations that want a partner they can work with for years and decades to come.We have already determined that you must fully understand your outsourcing needs before you research BPO services,and of course, those requirements should align with your overall corporate strategy. If you can no longer support processes that aren’t mission-critical, without a massive investment of time and revenue, then it’s time to find an external partner to do the job. Lastly, when it comes to choosing a BPO service, businesses must find a firm that is compatible with their corporate culture.
Want an outsourcing partner that understands you & your business?
Book a call with AM2PM experts to explore our call center outsourcing services!
Outsource your call center services: A detailed strategy
If you turn to external financial and accounting services, your outsourcing partner is directly impacting your organization’s revenue. For these reasons, you must have an outsourcing strategy, complete with benchmarks and goals for continuous improvement.
When should the business outsource?
If you’re taking a significant amount of time to do a minor task, it may take less time and expenses if you outsource that service to someone who specializes in it. That way, you can focus your energy on the bigger tasks that can direct the company to even greater heights.
Services you need to outsource
If you are working at a small business, you can easily scope by outsourcing things like call center services.
Here are some ideas for what you could be outsourcing:
You can outsource all types of customer contact, including both inbound and outbound call solutions. Customer service that supports multi-channel communication methods through a contact center will meet a wider variety of client needs.
An inbound call center typically focuses on customer service. By contrast, outbound services often focus on sales and must achieve practical targets in this area.
Workloads vary between inbound and outbound services, and you can choose business process outsourcing to outsource either or both.
Telemarketing
When dealing with large calls, telemarketing is the right approach for your business. Few companies have considerable enough resources to cover ongoing and successful telemarketing campaigns. Therefore, outsourcing can sometimes be the most viable solution..
Lead generation
Generating demand has been made easier by following call patterns and collecting relevant sales call data and reporting. The right contact center solution can help you track specific data, identify keywords, and perform sentiment analysis. Lead generation focuses on creating demand and producing consumer interest. You need to identify the most likely possibility for future purchase.
Technical Support
Employ a company that specializes in support services to provide your technical support. Often, these experts will answer questions at a faster rate because they already have all the tools necessary for the job.
Signs your business is ready for outsourcing
If you want to succeed in your small business venture, it pays to remember you cannot do it alone. You will reach a point when you need a hand, especially if you want to grow your business. Outsourcing entails assessing your budget and considering how willing you are to let someone in to help with business tasks.
But, how do you know when it is time to outsource?
There is an increase in demand and you need additional capacity
If your onshore staff has difficulty delivering results due to an increase in consumer demand, then it is about time you tapped the services of an outsourcing company. Your outsourcing partner can help streamline your processes, improve your business efficiency, and increase your organizational productivity. These benefits are some of the main reasons why companies outsource.
Expand Globally
Working with an outsourcing company is a strategic route if you plan to expand globally. Besides delivering an integrated solution to your business needs, your outsourcing partner can also help you build and manage a global team dedicated to scaling your business. Leveraging their expertise will help you stay ahead of the competition while getting the most from your outsourcing endeavor.
Spend too much time on non-core functions
When you spend most of your time working on non-core business functions such as accounting, administrative tasks and logistics consider this an indication you should seek the support of an outsourcing service provider. It would be best to focus on tasks that directly generate revenue, like business development and networking.
Call center outsourcing: Key to a tip-top customer experience
Call center outsourcing is a smart way of handling inbound and outbound calls in a way that keeps your customers satisfied yet doesn’t keep you from losing focus on your primary business operations. It is, however, important that you consider its opportunities and Obstacles in deciding whether or not your company needs it, and look at the popular ones available for businesses. Whatever you choose to outsource, whether it’s a whole department or part of an existing in-house service, the most important thing is it shouldn’t affect your customers’ perception of your service.
With AM2PM Support communication platform you can opt for outsourcing and can be sure you will be benefited from all the advantages that outsourced call centers can provide.Now for a free consultation and gain the experience of propelling your business growth with smoother integration, reach out to AM2PM Support.
