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.

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.

Telemarketing Agents’ Safety

The safety of the telemarketing agent is function of the BPO unit’s responsibility. Though you cannot directly take the call center to task for safety lapses, the firm has to be accountable for the issues related to getting the agent back home. Keeping this need in mind, several call centers have beefed up their security regime in the recent past. Countries like India are a cauldron for nefarious activities when it comes to travelling at night. For women telemarketing agents, it is a nightmare unless there are some stringent actions taken. Sensing this dire need, BPO units have boosted up their security cordon.

Some simple steps taken by the call center can eradicate several niggling concerns. To begin with, the BPO units are arming the drivers of the pool cars with GPS cards. These cards will help the call centers to monitor the movement of the cars at all times. They can immediately wave a red flag when they find that the car has changed routes. Telemarketing agents are also provided with plastic cards that they can swipe with the driver. This will allow the security experts to find out when the agent was dropped off. Many BPO service firms also advise their agents to call up the phone answering desk and report when they reach home. Such steps doesn’t just ensure safety, they also make the agent feel good about working in the company.

Virtual Call Centers Add Value to Workforce

Virtual call centers have relieved the baggage of an office, a desk and the long hours of commuting. In short, it has eradicated the aspects of BPO work that do not add value to the work that is done. On the other hand, virtual call center units have brought back a lot of value to the workforce because it is getting the telemarketing talents back in the business. Many of these experienced call center agents quit working because the projects were erratic and there was either no job or if there were, they were not stable. With the BPO service sector coming in to its own yet again, they are willing to come back into the work pool, fueled by the flexibility that work-from-home offers.

There are certain advantages when it comes to call centers that employ agents working from home. The telemarketing agents can devote more time to the process because they are stationed at home. They have little pressure on themselves because they are working in isolation. They are willing to put in an extra effort because they know their little steps are being monitored by the call center supervisors. Finally, they benefit telemarketing services because they are generally more experienced that regular agents are. They add value to call center services in a way others cannot.

Politicians Not Telemarketing Agents!

Politicians in the USA are entitled to call numbers registered on the Do Not Call (DNC) list. These calls do not come under the violation of the telemarketing laws. The laws restrict the calls made by call center agents who are selling some product/service. Politicians and charity institutions do not fall under this law. Several citizens in the USA are pestered by the BPO agents who call to convince the citizens to vote for one candidate or the other. Generally hardcore supporters of one party issue complaints against the other for breach of privacy. But there are no laws to condemn the call centers making these calls. Insiders are happy that it is so, or fake complaints would have flooded the guardian body, Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Very recently, the FTC had slotted advisors and counselors under the telemarketing laws. If they call their clients at times of the day when the telemarketing services law prohibits them, they will be fined. Moreover, the FTC also made it clear that call center agents cannot ask the customers to pay for services that they have not rendered. This is particularly true for the debt recovery BPO agents. They demand payment even before the customer has been relieved of his debt. Their fake call center services add to the debt of the customer instead of relieving him! The question about the politicians calling for votes has been part of the American electoral process for decades.