In our little interconnected world, customer loyalty and market share are in proportion to the number of nodes of connectivity a business establishes with its customers. Businesses that leverage multiple modes of engaging with their customers grab the meat of the market from their competition. Modern technology has made customers competent about the markets and cognizant of the vast number of options they have. Customers are just one bad experience away from switching loyalties and going over to the competition.
Any business has to bring their A-game to win in this red ocean of competition. The moment a customer or a prospect starts evaluating your value proposition, your entire business is under the scanner on all dimensions ranging from quality to customer experience. In such a scenario can you afford to have fewer contact points with your customers and make it harder for them? Not really! Yet many think that the days of Call Centers are gone. Nothing can be further away from the truth. Instead of vanishing, Call Centers have simply augmented themselves as Contact Centers. Let’s look at how these Contact Centers are contributing significantly to the bottom line.
The face of the Business
Call Centers act as the face of your business providing a single point interface for customer engagement and interaction. If you think about it, your call center or Customer Service department is the only part of your business that is visible to the customer. Call Centers provide quick resolution for customer complaints or problems, by having a dedicated team of professionals with the required skillset and using technology to deliver a more personalized customer service.
Customers can call in for help with the products or service, seeking customer support. Most customers prefer discussing their problems with another human being who can understand and humanely respond to their needs. Having a dedicated team and providing a quick resolution to customer queries improves brand image. Call Centers also add a personal touch to your Customer Service that resonates better with the Customers, enhancing the quality of Customer outreach.
Generate new business
Modern Call Centers provide a variety of business services. An important one among them is the Customer Outreach to prospects through cold calling or other tools in the sales arsenal. Sales processes require professional skills that may not be a part of the core of the business.
Call centers can be engaged in initial prospect outreach effectively, through various channels like SMS, calls, and email marketing. Call Centers have a team of dedicated professionals who are better at managing your sales and growth targets. You can outsource the execution of sales plans to Call Centers while you focus on the core business areas of product or service design, marketing, and branding.
Customer Support 24x7
Businesses can't be available 24x7 to support their customers. However, that is not the case for Call Centers. A company can create a round-the-clock support system for their customers by strategically engaging call centers that provide them. Availability and accessibility are at the core of a good Customer Support strategy.
In many cases, having a Call Center located in a different time zone helps in creating a 24x7 support system for your customers. For instance, a company in the USA having a call center in India can easily support their customers 24x7 as either their office or the call center is always live. The follow-the-sun strategy can cater to customers across the globe giving your business a wider market reach.
Insights
If you have a Call Center, you can record the calls and queries inbound. Analyzing these calls and queries can lead to insights about customer pain points that need to be addressed in your product or service design. All aspects of Customer service get measured and monitored in Call Centers. Information collected from customers has the potential to generate new business ideas and product lines.
Important parameters like Average Call Abandonment Rate, Percentage of Calls Blocked, Average Time in Queue, Customer Feedback, and many more get recorded on a real-time basis giving you the ability to monitor customer support and customer goodwill in real-time. Smart businesses can use the insights gained from this data to create products and services that address customer needs.
Growth
A noticeable trend of recent times has been that a business can grow rapidly. In such a scenario, flexibility becomes a vital consideration in business work processes. Attempting to do everything in-house might constrain your business from growing and steal that flexibility. Variations in workflow volume can be handled more effectively by outsourcing.
Outsourcing is a more agile strategy here. By outsourcing your call center services, your business creates a scalable solution that can easily grow with the business. Be it expanding into new markets or a new product line, having a separate call center offers you the flexibility to focus on important decisions of your business and leave aside the distractions. Flexibility is crucial for business growth in uncertain times and makes a business more resilient.
Cost-effective
Call Centers are cost-effective as compared to having an in-house customer service team. Call Center bears the costs of hiring professionals, training, retention, and any overhead costs involved. Call centers work on targets and performance metrics that are monitored for effectiveness.
Having a Call Center also enables you to fix the cost of customer service even with variations in the workflow. As your business grows, the call center cost metrics remain steady and that is one less thing you have to think about while scaling your business.
A few last words
Call Centers are the potential first line of communication with your customers. Customers still prefer calling in to seek help, and it feels great to have a human on the other end of the call, responding to your queries and questions. It makes them feel important and taken care of, and customer service is all about creating that feeling in customers.
At Wolken, we offer customer service solutions for businesses across the globe that are market leaders in various segments. Our team has delivered high-end customer service solutions to Clients that enable their customer service strategy. Get in touch with our team to explore more about how we can help you.
