6 Tips for Finding the Right Inbound Call Center For Your Business

In our digital world, 47% of customers prefer to communicate with businesses via email — even if they’re local businesses. But even then, nothing beats the direct and personal way telephones can connect with your clientele. For this reason, you see a lot of businesses outsourcing and employing call centers to take care of their entire customer communications.

But before you think about investing in another company to handle the heavy-lifting for you, there are a couple of things you should consider closely and think about.

How to Find the Right Inbound Call Center

An inbound call center specializes in using customer experience software, capable of carrying out communications across all possible channels. And aside from making or receiving phone calls, today’s inbound call centers engage with customers through multiple channels, like SMS, live chat, emails, social media, and the web.

Call Center Philippine, in Australia, in the United State, Australia, Canada, etc know the value of a good right inbound call center.

This magnitude of customer experience is a great investment for your business, especially if you operate your products and services on a large scale. It goes without saying that conducting business with a third-party who ends up being a fraud is a bad idea for everyone involved.

So how do you find the right and legitimate outsourced inbound call center to cater to your customer communications’ needs?

#1 Find references and speak with their current clients

Contact a specific inbound call center’s clients. Talk to them and inquire about the services and how their partnership is working. Also ask them if they would objectively recommend a call center to others. That’s because what you need to look at and what you need to see is a proven track record in your industry and with other type of clientele.

And if you see that they’re doing an excellent job, then that’s a sign that you should consider their services more closely. Find out if they have dedicated agents that would be working for your company alone, and if they would be willing to send agents over to your location for training that’s specific and tailored for your business.

#2 Make sure they have the right people to handle your customer support

The outsourced provider’s staff need to have the required skill set to meet your own requirements. They should meet yours’ and customers’ requirements. These include language proficiency, technology certifications, or even prerequisite experience in your particular field. Don’t forget to consider how these inbound customer service personnel would also fit in with your organization as a whole.

Remember, you’re outsourcing a crucial part of your company. So think about it. 

Do they manage their customers and own employees competently?

Will they be representing your brand well?

#3 Ensure that they deliver excellent customer services

Inbound call centers should cater to customers’ needs 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. That means competitively handling phone calls and redirecting customers to the right representatives when needed. There’s also the need for reduced call-waiting time, and consequently, better customer satisfaction. Features you should look out for are:

• Customized call queues: Configured call queues help avoid waiting callers. These have customizable options to play music or relay promotional offers, and also provide customers with an estimated waiting time, or give the option to call back at a better time.

• Interactive Voice Response (IVR): IVR interactions make up 30% of the overall customer experience. This enables self-service solution for customers if they want it. It has customized menus to ensure that customers reach their desired department and the right agents in case of further assistance.

Customers also have specific needs. And your inbound call center agents’ jobs are to meet them. Simply put, customers will continue to use a service or product if it meets their needs. So, this is a win-win for you and your outsourced inbound call center if you play your cards right.

• Skill-based routing: Connects each customer to a specific agent who is appropriate for the interaction. Information is entered by the caller and it confirms whether they want to communicate with an agent that speaks a particular language, or is well-versed in one area of expertise.
• Click-to-call: This is a functionality that gives customers the option to reach customer support via the click of a button or tap on a website or on a mobile app. It’s the epitome of ease for placing calls.
• Call recording: Recording calls can give agents and you a better understanding of your customers. It’s easy to misinterpret things when you hear them the first time. But perhaps it would be different after the second time. You need this to better grasp customer expectations and behavior.
• Reporting and analytics: Reports are a structured source of business information. And you can use them to infer business insights.

#4 Check for omni-channel integration

Yes, customers have their preferences for channels to communicate. But if you want to provide customer experience that far exceeds that of your competitors, then you have to step it up. Make you customers feel like they’re just having another face-to-face conversation. They like it when they don’t need to go through the hassle of reiterating their concerns over and over again.

So if you’re outsourcing inbound customer services, then don’t forget to ask the company in mind if they have ways of reaching customers through telephone, SMS, live chat, video, and social media.

#5 Talk about policies, procedures, security, and privacy.

How the communication will be managed should be clear to you. From daily updates to overall planning, and even the design of the program. You, as this inbound call center’s client, should be in-the-know.

Don’t be ashamed to dig into a company’s security and redundancy of their processes and technologies.

• How is data stored and separated from other clients’ data?
• How do they protect from fraud or data corruption?
• Do they have a documented disaster recovery plan?

Ask to see samples of their reports. Inquire if they’d be willing to customize plans for you or give you data in formats that you need. Ask about the metrics they use to evaluate agents and ensure that they are in-line with your priorities.

The bottom line is that their technologies and processes should fit your business’s needs and regulatory standards.

#6 Know how you’ll be in charge

It’s going to be your customer service plan. Of course you should be in-charge. Before you sign contracts, fully understand how much you’ll be charged and why.

The Takeaway

Selecting the right inbound call center to cater to your business’ customer support needs is important. But with a clear idea of your own business requirements, it’s perfectly possible to choose the right company; all while outsourcing and managing your brand’s customer support like a real pro.