Before learning about outbound call center services, let’s discuss the types of call centers. There are 3 types, such as inbound, outbound, and virtual. Further, these three are categorized as Domestic and International depending on whether they serve within the country or outside.
When agents are employed to attend calls from customers and provide services such as technical assistance, solving issues, or guiding them with certain instructions it is an Inbound call center.
Outbound call center services employ agents to make calls to leads or customers rather than receiving calls as in Inbound call centers. Businesses use Outbound call center services to enhance sales and promote their business.
A combination of both inbound and outbound is a virtual call center. It is easy to avail of their service since these centers are cloud-based and work remotely. An added advantage of virtual call centers is that they could integrate with a business’s existing CRM tools.
India’s Top call center service providers
Customer satisfaction is the key factor for any business to be successful. And an effective way to achieve that is by providing the customer with timely information.
Some of the topmost call centers in India are TCS BPO, IBM Daksh, WNS Global Services, Wipro BPO, Genpact Limited.
These above-mentioned companies have a global presence offering top-notch quality service in areas like product sales, technical support, and customer care. Since these companies have a multinational presence and provide standard service, they charge high when compared to other outbound call center services in India.
What to choose, In-house or Outsourced call center?
It is purely the business’s decision to choose whether to have an in-house call center or to outsource depending on the functionality and need of that business.
Both these types have pros and cons such as :
In- house Call Centers
Pros :
- In-house call centers are efficient in a way by allocating enough time and attention to deal with focused brands.
- Customer data is safe since there is no third party Intervention.
- The agents could be trained with call centers’ quality assurance program and with some personal touch of the business to provide more customer satisfactory service.
Cons
- Costs high to the business since it involves taking care of every aspect from training the staff to implementing the same.
- After Implementation, period monitoring on the staff strength is required, and also maintaining the technology updated also comes under the business’s responsibility.
- Any change in the internal or external environment would interrupt the business and thus affecting the quality of support delivered to customers.
Outsourced Call Centers
Pros
- Unlike in-house call centers, outsourced call centers are cost-efficient and could save a lot of amount to the business.
- Increases the productivity of the business since the business gets more time to concentrate on its core activities such as sales, promotion, and distribution.
- Outsourcing provides scalability to the business. Once outsourced they don’t have to worry about how to ramp up the size of the team when there is a considerable spike in the business volume.
Cons
- As these call centers serve several clients, they lack the focus for a specific client, unlike In-house call centers.
- If the outsourced call center partners have poor communication or lack of language proficiency, it could lead to miscommunication.
- Sometimes sensitive data gets to be shared with the outsourced call center which could lead to greater risk for the business. Hence should have a constant check whether data is safe and not misused.
- Personal supervision is not possible with outsourcing call centers since it would be away from the business premises.
Things to consider while choosing a Call Center
Services they Offer
Analyze the business needs and ensure that the call center provides knowledgeable and professional services that satisfy those needs.
Security Feature
Businesses requiring a large number of agents in multi-sites would mostly prefer cloud-based vendors since it is faster and cheaper compared to in-person offerings. However, ensure that the security measures are in place with features like disaster recovery and redundancy.
Integration Compatibility
One of the important aspects to check while outsourcing an Outbound call center service provider is the integration compatibility. It should possess the capability to integrate with any business tools and share information between the tools used in different processes comfortably.
Scalability in Volume and Location
Scalability in the number of staff and the locations offered by the call center would play a major role in the success of the business while it hits a huge sudden spike in the volume of customers. This helps with avoiding the interruption of service provided to the customer by the business.
Customer Friendly Support
The call center service must be compassionate, which is an important and major reason for choosing a call center. The agents should be able to access account information easily and provide the customer with accurate guidelines in a customer-friendly manner.
The primary purpose of an outbound call center should be to initiate various types of outbound interactions, such as sales calls, customer follow-ups, market research, lead generation, appointment scheduling, and customer surveys.