Diversify through Call Center Services

Business firms have to continuously expand their domain in order to prevent stagnation. Expanding business areas would mean that they need to carry out additional areas of work. For example, a consumer-oriented firm will be able to broaden their consumer base through the help of the Internet. In other words, they need call center services to help them out. A business firm cannot add infrastructure and skill sets overnight to handle the extra work load. A call center can step in and take over the work.

The most common form of diversification is to graduate from telemarketing services to online lead generation. Business firms have found out that the use of telemarketing calls is not a good option because of the restrictions clamped by telecom watchdogs like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The switch to online sales lead generation will help them bypass the restrictions and promote their products/services to a wider base of consumers.

Diversification also helps brands conduct market surveys for better product placement and branding. For a business firm, these are aspects that need professional help. Hiring a call center is the best option for these business firms.

Answering Services in Call Centers

Business owners are now hiring call center services for offering them answering services round the clock. The customer service representative at the call center is provided with the right training for offering business seeking assistance over telephone.

The call center provides the client a telephone number where the client can forward their phone lines; the call center agency then receives the call that is made to the company and answers customers on the company’s behalf. The well trained staff at call centers takes the message and delivers it to you through your chosen channel.

The call center agents should be polite and patient when dealing with customers and clients for a company. The image of your company will depend a lot on the way an agent talks and answers to customer queries.

The answering services offered by call centers include alert monitoring and notifications, customer support, appointment scheduling and confirmation, and even emergency dispatch. Other answering services on offer include order entry, event registration, survey, remote receptionist, voicemail and other services.

Call center agents talk to customers on a friendly tone and try building a rapport with your customers and client. This in turn helps your business expand. It is also true that availing the services of a call center can be very cost effective and save your time to be engaged in core activities.

Workforce Management in Call Centers

There are several things to consider when selecting a workforce management solution for a call center of any size.

The workforce management solution should discuss different shift patterns, skill levels required in different job profiles, inclusion of agent exceptions into schedule, and production of performance management reports as part of the key capabilities in a call center.


Time and resources also need to be implemented well to determine how long it takes to benefit from workforce management solution. It must also be decided how many people are required for implementing the solution.

It is also important to have a clear idea of the total costs of purchasing, functioning and maintaining the workforce management solution. This includes cost of software, hardware, monthly or annual costs of maintenance, subscription costs, upgrade fees, as well as other costs.
The workforce management solution should be easy for non-IT people to use, this way a call center can get the most out of it. Remember every workforce management solution comes with a risk in a given work environment; call center companies should evaluate that risk. Remember the workforce management solution should be such that if it does not work for your call center, you can turn it off without causing your company any financial risk.

The workforce management solution should help a call center reduce operational costs and in also help business expansion.

Pull Up Call Center Quality

No matter what the geographical location of your call center is, you cannot surge ahead in terms of revenue unless you are improving your quality. The benchmark of call center services is measured in terms of quality. This trend is fast catching up for call centers across the world, especially in the third world countries. The general perception is that the telemarketing services of these countries are inferior because of the cheap labor that they employ. That may work for the cost models, but modern business is not cost-only endeavors. There is the question of sustaining the brand reputation. Unless you pull up the services that you provide, there is little that you can do to survive in the market.

Quality in call center services can be fixed overnight. You have to work closely with the managers and supervisors of the BPO unit to make changes. Start off with the manpower. Conduct an evaluation that will separate the better performers from the others. Assign them to the top priority projects and deploy the best agents on the peak times of customer services. Ensure that your technology is updated and in sync with the best practices. You will need to spend more time in the training room with your employees so that they may learn more about the work that they do before stepping on the call center floor.

Role of Emails in B2B Lead Generation

Emails are effective ways of communicating for B2B lead generation. Emails become necessary in this context because the call center is contacting with busy professionals. Telemarketing calls may not do the trick as you may never get them on the phone. You will have to email your call center services offer and other details. This email is just the opener. You will have to make follow-up calls, preferably on the same day that you send the email. Delays will make way for the email to be buried under piles of emails that they receive on a daily basis.

The emails that you draft for lead generation in B2B projects have to be well-written. The design, the template and the copy have to be professional. It’s the brochure that can get the call center sector the project. Make sure you personalize the email for the contact. Keep special attention to the kind of message that you are drafting. It must be written in a way that can grab and keep the attention of the reader. To make the email more authentic, include links to credible sources. You must pack the email with information that is relevant to the needs of the project. Include easy-to-find contact numbers so that they can easily get back to your inbound call center agents.

Websites for Lead Generation

Websites can be really useful as lead generation beds. But are the BPO units getting the most out of them? Seems that the answer is no! Let’s take a quick look at the ways in which call center units can work towards better sales lead generation through websites. To begin with, get the content right. Content drives not just traffic into the website, but also makes it possible for you to get repeat viewers. When the users like what they see on the website, both in terms of writing and designing, they will come back to know more. Keep adding fresh content every other day to keep the interest soaring.

Other ways to get lead generation going on the websites is to check up on what other features you can support. You can get online chat facilities that pop up on the website’s more popular pages. Your BPO agents need to be vigilant at all times to answer the chat enquiries that come in. Pack your website with action words like ‘Download Now’ and ‘Free Trial’. These help sales lead generation in that they call the user to action. You can also upload white papers and case studies of work that you have done in the telemarketing services chapter. These case studies are often the main reasons why a company would hire your call center services.

Tracking Metrics for BPO

The BPO industry has to develop flexible metrics for tracking their progress. For the traditional call center services like lead generation and telemarketing, they can continue to use the tried and tested formula. But for the new additions to the kitty, like online sales lead generation and customer service satisfaction, they have to work out different metrics. For example, you cannot measure customer satisfaction by checking out how many calls were received at the inbound call center desk. To estimate that, you will need to check for the number of first-call resolutions and hold time, etc. In other words, you will have to look at fresh perspectives to old processes.

As the case is, online lead generation is another area where the BPO units are not using their usual stringent tracking. It could be because the call centers are not comfortable with using the tracking tools like Google Analytics. However, the fact remains that much of the traffic coming into the websites is not being tapped to their potential. Similarly, the sales lead generation team is also losing out on more leads because they are not responding to the trends that work. It could be that there is a pattern that can get them more users, but the pattern lies in the wilderness because no one is keeping track of it.

Call Center Services on Different Channels

There are different channels on which call center services function these days. It’s not about the voice calls anymore. Telemarketing is now just a division of the call center. It’s not everything about the business process outsourcing. Non-voice methods like online lead generation and marketing through websites and emails are also prevalent. These new methods are taking BPO service towards fresh new territories. Clients want this multi-prong approach because that brings down the rate of failure. If they cannot tap the customer on one medium, they always have a second and third chance.

The ideal way to conduct call center services across the different media is to bring them all on a single platform. Make the different media complementary to each other. If you are making telemarketing calls for lead generation, back it up with the use of websites and emails. Similarly, when you are using websites and search engine optimization (SEO), you can direct the calls of the customers towards the inbound call center. When all of these different divisions are working in tandem, you have a better chance of generating rich revenues for the firm.

BPO Question Keeps Popping Up

The question of America’s attitude towards offshore BPO outsourcing kept popping up during President Barack Obama’s visit to India. The Indian contingent was much interested in knowing what the President had in mind about offshore call centers in India. If you rewind the clock back, Obama was primarily vocal about banning any form of telemarketing outsourcing to offshore destinations like India or the Philippines. He was compelled to take such a step because he wanted to bring back jobs to the American shores. The unemployment percentage is now just under 10% after alarming riding over that panic button.

During the President’s visit, the Indian call center delegates were much interested in knowing how things are going to change. The protectionist measures of Obama were severely criticized by the Indian businessmen because they thought that the telemarketing services sector would be hit hard by such measures. In the coming months, the BPO sector across the world is looking forward to the developments in USA. The primary reason for their concern is that the American market is the single largest provider of telemarketing and customer service projects. The European sector has provided only sporadic work over the years and is always regarded as a sort of bonus. The bulk provider being USA, these measures set off alarm bells for call centers across the globe.

Security Concerns: Virtual Call Center Agents

Call center agents working from home can become security concerns for the BPO unit hiring them. In case they are hiring freelancers, the risks of danger can be quite high. To avoid getting into sticky situations, the call centers must take care to conduct checks and verifications before hiring anyone. Criminal records must be looked into as well. You can never rule out the chances of a scam hitting home when you are working with employees that don’t show up in the office. You read about telemarketing agents duping people all the time. You wouldn’t want that to happen when your brand name is associated with the matter.

Call center recruiting managers have a role to play here. When you are planning to hire someone, check out on the professional references. Make calls to previous BPO units that this prospect has worked in. Talk to the managers who hired them on previous occasions. Once you have established that they have clean records in telemarketing services, you can go ahead and hire them. Even then, you must take care always to monitor them. There is no certainty that telemarketing scams won’t happen or your data will not misused. In this context, call centers have to be vigilant because their reputation depends on this as well.

Special Customer Service

Customer service doesn’t always mean getting billing information or other enquiry details. Sometimes people call the answering service department to resolve serious issues that need a thorough knowledge on the part of the call center agent. For example, if the BPO is handling a tech support project, the agents have to be aware of the domain. They have to know the innards of a CPU well. Since general telemarketing agents will not know such technical matters, call centers hire technicians that double up as agents. They receive calls and resolve the issues of the callers on the first call itself.

There is a simple business sense in recruiting technical professionals for these projects. When the calls made at the answering desk are passed around to get someone capable to answer the call, the callers get frustrated. Their time is valued and the BPO unit has to respect that. That is exactly what happens when you hire technicians as customer service personnel. They resolve the issue immediately, making the caller realize that your phone answering desk is efficient and capable of attending to complicated issues. Clients want this sort of a professional behavior at the inbound call center desk. Call center units, on their part, pay a higher salary to these technicians and get them onboard.

Customer Services through Twitter

Twitter is one website that offers multiple opportunities on multiple fronts. Just when call centers were thinking that this micro-blogging site could be the ideal launch pad for online lead generation, experts have found out a way to use it for customer service. When you are creating a Twitter page for your client or the brand, you will have customers on the list of followers. When they have certain issues with their purchase, they can leave tweets on your page. The proactive BPO team can source out these tweets and act on them instantly. A simple phone call would make a lot of difference to the disgruntled customer. Once you have made the connection, try to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

Such methods of customer service do a world of good to the brand loyalty of your customers. They know that you are around to help them whenever they need you. Call centers have to work hard to establish this bond of trust. That comes from action rather than just promotional material written by your BPO writers. To make the right kind of brand loyalty, you will have to be there for the customers. Twitter is just another way to do it. If you have the intent of doing so, you can source more ways.

Training Costs: Justifiable in BPO?

This is one question that the BPO units often ask themselves: how justifiable is the amount of resources that they spend in training? The answer is simple. It depends on how efficient you want your call center services to be. If you want your telemarketing agents to go for the jugular right from Day 1, you have to train them well. Agents have to be acclimatized with the project, and they have to know exactly what their role is going to be. To make them conversant with that, call centers need to impart training. Training modules have to be extensive and all encompassing. You cannot curtail the days of training because you want those agents to start working on the floor. The time spent in the training room will be beneficial in saving resources on the floor.

In the present day, you cannot afford to send your call center agents to training sessions and conferences that often. There are travel and other expenses to be borne. That is why more call centers are relying on in-house training facilities to help them get equipped with what is expected of them. Training modules can be project-specific or just call center services in general. When you hire fresh grads, you will need to put them under some generalized BPO training to bring them to the industry standards. No matter what kind of education they have received, working on a regular call center floor is a different experience altogether.

Business Swelling in BPO

The BPO business is comfortably hitting the high marks of success. The Republicans in the Senate shot down the bill to roll back tax evasions and other benefits that the American firms receive for outsourcing their work to offshore BPO units. The Obama administration has dubbed it as a move to destabilize the economic prosperity of the country. The bill was primarily prepared with the intention of brining back telemarketing jobs to the American shores.

However, the experts of the business process outsourcing in the third world countries feel that the swelling telemarketing services business would not be hurt even if the bill was passed.

These call center experts have their reasons. To begin with, the telemarketing projects can still get done with less amount of money if the business firms outsource them to the offshore BPO destinations. The American business houses are recovering from the dampening effect of the recession. They are cash rich today, but not enough to pay for the overpriced call center services that the domestic call centers offer. The delegates of offshore telemarketing services have lobbied hard against this bill. And now they have tasted success. This deals a heavy jolt to the Obama administration. At the same time, it’s good news for business process outsourcing.

Telemarketing Expression Matters

Communication skills are important for telemarketing. This fact was always known to the call center agents and to those who hired them. But surveys have revealed that it’s not just the communication skills that make a difference in telemarketing services. The agents have to be clear in their expression when they are talking to the customers residing in the USA and Europe. As it is the agents working out of call centers in countries like India and the Philippines have a problem with the accent. That makes it difficult for the customers to hear what they are being instructed. Without clarity of expression, call center agents have no chance of making a sale or even getting the customers to understand what they are saying.

The BPO units have to be careful about the training of these agents. It’s important for the call centers to offer voice modulation and speech training. The telemarketing agents have to get their voice intonation right so that they can speak to the customers in the language that they understand. It makes no sense in trying to fake the American twang! That is not the solution to the problem of the answering service. Experts also feel that the phone answering agents have to be careful about being relaxed. If they are worked up about pulling off the sale, they will only sound grave and desperate. Smiling is one aspect of telemarketing services that cannot be seen, but makes a mean difference.

Revised Telemarketing Debt Laws

The debt consolidation laws that were grossly misused by telemarketing firms have been revised. The governing authority, the Federal Trade Commission, has tweaked the laws a little to make the call centers more accountable. Henceforth, the call center agents have to more transparent in their dealings. They have to clearly give out how they are going to consolidate the debt and how much the customers have to pay. There are times when the customers keep paying a sum every month but it does nothing to improve their debt consolidation. Let alone work towards paying off the principal, the money is not enough to even see off the monthly recurring interest!

Customers are unaware of the situation and the ground reality. This allows the BPO units to make some money through shady deals. The FTC wants to put a stop to it. With the new rules in place, the call center agent has to declare just how much money the customer needs to pay every month and for what duration. More often than not, customers are not aware of how their debt consolidation will reflect poorly on their credit records. The BPO service agents have to inform the customers about it. In the same vein, the customers have to be informed about the ‘dedicated accounts’ that call centers often use to consolidate the debt.

Rise of Virtual Call Centers

As many other industries, the concept of the office is about to be relegated to the sidelines in the call center sector. Thanks to the rising costs of holding an establishment, several BPO units in USA are going for virtual call centers. This idea is one that can cut down on costs comfortably. You can bring down the overhead costs by a huge margin if you are able to run your call center services without having a designated office space for that. All the telemarketing agents on your team works out of their personal spheres and so do you. You can appoint team leaders and supervisors to check up on reports. Have online reporting structures and keep them integrated on a solitary platform.

Working from a virtual call center has its advantages, other than the cost saving factor. The agents who work from home don’t have to commute long distances against a killing traffic. They save up on a lot of time that way. This can be utilized in doing something productive. They can get to their telemarketing jobs without getting distracted because of coworkers and peers. The practice of working with other agents in tandem often brings about a tension-laden atmosphere that has to be overcome so that they can hit the targets. Moreover, they also feel more responsible about their work because they know that their work is being monitored and tracked by supervisors.

Graduates Unemployable in Call Centers

Graduates passing out of reputed marketing courses are not employable in the call centers. That is the ground reality in many of the call center units in the developing countries. The condition is an alarming state of affairs, especially at a time when the BPO units all over these regions are in dire need of quality manpower. The absence of that is harming their prospects of providing quality call center services to a global market. The standard has been lifted with such precision and continuity, these BPO service units are finding themselves at a strict loss for something that they can do. They want to have a fresh influx of talent but find themselves tied because of the lack of quality in what they are digging up.

Some factors are responsible for the sad state of affairs. Finishing schools of marketing are mushrooming at street corners of these countries. But they teach little about telemarketing or call center services. Many institutions claiming to equip the young students with BPO technology and make them industry-ready are nowhere near the mark. They have no equipment or gadgets that the students can practice on. They have no trainer who is on par with what the BPO service industry requires. One could go on. But the problem remains there: lack of quality professionals is not a good sign and it’s time for change.

Call Center Coaching

When the experts say that the location of the call center has got nothing to do with their call center services, they are probably more correct than they intended to be. The quality of work done by a BPO unit is measured not by the latitudes and longitudes, but rather by the amount of training that the agents receive. Training in the art of telemarketing and lead generation makes more of a difference to the productivity of the unit than any other investment. You may argue that technology is more important for BPO service but the fact remains that without training in that technology, the agents cannot really exploit its benefits.

But the sad reality is that many call centers shy away from conducting proper training sessions. They curtail the training days to the bare minimum so that they can get the BPO agents to start work. This does not cut down costs by any means. Rather this sort of an approach puts more on the call center agent’s plate that you intend to. Lack of training leads to mistakes and also stress for the telemarketing executive. The BPO service managers find themselves hand-holding agents because they are not being to cope with what is expected from them. Finally you find that your project is racing against an impossible deadline!

Call Center for Overseas Workers

The Indonesian government has set up a call center to tend to the needs of the overseas workers. Indonesia, especially Jakarta, is a preferred destination for many overseas workers. Some of them also look for employment in the BPO sector. They rely on dubious sources for their information about the country and the employment scenario. The call center services will be able to guide them get through to the right employment pockets. Countries across the world are relying on these answering service units to bail them out of issues that need a knowledge sharing process. Such cases are best handled by the phone answering units. That is why governments build up an inbound call center desk or simply outsource the work to a BPO service unit.

This initiative will address a serious issue that prevalent among the overseas workers in the country. It is also a move that will make the country more suited to attract quality manpower. The BPO sector in the country is still in its nascent stages. They still have a long way to go in call center work before they can match up to The Philippines. The infrastructure and other facilities may not be looking good at the present for the country to do some world-class work, but if they can push their efforts, they can be right up there.