Things to Know Before you Choose a Call Center

Businesses spend a lot of money in marketing and advertising their products and services. Unless the right call center is chosen, all those efforts and dollars will be wasted. Most call centers function just like an answering service even for sales calls; they simply do NOT convince callers to buy the product/service. The right call center will ultimately get the best bang for your buck and also reduce your need to manage the campaign. It will give you the time and energy to do what you want to do - focus on YOUR business.

Most importantly, the right call center will represent your business in a professional way and build your brand name in the market. Just like IBM® or Microsoft®, your business brand identity will be synonymous with quality and trust among your customers. Whether you are big or small, your brand name will bring you repeated and word-of-mouth business.

Beware of outbound and inbound call centers that focus just on low prices. You may save a few bucks upfront but ultimately your sales will be lost and you will lose money. Choosing a call center based on the price will not result in the company achieving their sales goals or profit projections. Invariably, this only results in a mediocre performance similar to what you get with a basic answering service. It is simply too dangerous!

With the right call center partner, you will get more sales and more net profit at the end of the day. You customers will also be happy and your brand name will be represented by the right people.

Here are the things you need to know before you choose the right call center for your business:

Experience in your domain:

* Must have a proven track record
* Must have agents and personnel who will work to ensure high sales ratio, customer service and support
* Must be familiar with innovative ways to generate and save sales
* Must have excellent references in the industry
* With the right call center:
o knowledge transfer will be easy,
o set up and executing time frame will be shorter,
o performance will be at its peak and
o the agents and managers will be able to identify and solve critical issues

Top notch infrastructure:

* Excellent Phone system with top notch voice quality
* Fully secure network for your business data
* Customizable Telephony System and IVR
* Call recording facility
* Inbound, Outbound & Blended campaign handling flexibility
* Ability to expand and add more resources as needed
* Must be able to set up everything required for the operation with as little help as possible from client
* Must be able to provide phone, e-mail and chat support for the hours of operation as per clients’ needs, even provide 24X7 support if required
* Must be able to provide support in different languages such as English, Spanish, German or French

Payment Plans & Contracts:

* Flexibility to bill you based on your budgetary needs
* Flexibility to switch between an hourly and a per-minute plan on short notice
* Must be transparent with the client - No hidden cost
* Must always work in the client’s best interests and provide a cost-effective strategy so as to create the best possible ROI
* No round-off billing

Qualified and Experienced Personnel:

* Project Managers
* Floor Managers
* Agents
* Trainers
* Documentation Specialists
* IT Team
* Quality Assurance & Quality Control Personnel
* Reporting Analysts

All personnel, from Project Managers down to entry-level agents, must meet numerous educational and skill requirements in order to be assigned to a company’s campaign.

Script Writing, Training and Documentation:

* Must research the company, analyze competitor markets, etc.
* Must have killer script writers to improve closing ratio and performance
* Must be able to get the necessary documents for training
* Must provide on-going training and monitoring to ensure performance standards are met at all times
* Must send accurate reports and/or customized reports, if required
* Must send daily (or more frequent) reports whenever required

Call Center Performance Metrics:

* Critical for ensuring efficiency, productivity, and profitability levels
* These “metrics” focus on certain critical issues such as how soon a call is answered and the duration of the call, as well as placing a strong emphasis on accessibility and efficiency metrics, as well as workforce management effectiveness
* Accessibility metrics target average speed of answering calls, the percentage of calls that get abandoned, and service levels
* Efficiency metrics measure agent occupancy and agent utilization
* Workforce management effectiveness targets agent adherence and compliance, forecasting accuracy, and scheduling accuracy
* Some of the key metrics are:
o End-Customer Satisfaction
o Abandon Rates
o Service Level (% Answered in seconds)
o Average Speed of Answer
o First Time Resolution
o Response Time and Resolution Time
o Average Handle Time
o Average Number of Interactions per Incident

Call Center Performance:

The following key performance points are what most call center vendors overlook --- not InSO. We feel these duties and tasks are necessary to your business in order to operate productively and profitably. InSO insists providing our clients with the following:

* On-going and frequent feedback to clients via phone and email about campaign performance, customer feedback, customer issues, etc.

* Allocation of the right number of agents per campaign (Agents are not allowed to handle more than 3 campaigns at a time)

* Ability to adapt to campaign changes on-the-fly without downtime as well as be able to provide the special services when required

* The right vendors for clients where credit card processing, customer service, order management software, and fulfillment are necessary

* Agents must be dynamic, energetic, and understand what is required to close sales at a higher ratio than what was previously achieved

* Agents must ask questions about products and/or advertisements on every call, then provide that valuable information from your customers to you at no extra cost

* Allocation of vanity 800 numbers for clients

* Transfer or assigning ownership of 800#s to clients

For all of these reasons and more, InSO continually proves that we are the "one-stop outsourcing center" for all our client's needs.

Call us now at (626) 531-6080 or get a free quote here. click

Let InSO be your call center provider... You will be glad you did!