Today many companies outsource their inbound customer services to an offshore call center. Most of the business owners have a hard time to give up the responsibility to their own employees, let alone an outsider. Customers are lifeline of any business and most of the companies value their esteemed customers. Most of the large business houses outsource the non-core aspects of their business after much thought and extensive research.
Today, the companies have realized that, customer service outsourcing is an important tool to boost sales and gain maximum revenues. While there are still many who are reluctant to outsource their inbound customer services. The truth is that in today's competitive business environment inbound customer service is smart choice. It allows companies to handle the important aspects of their business. Most of the reputed call centers have skilled work force. They are professional and are trained to handle calls proficiently which are needed to manage a business successfully.
Inbound customer service is important for retention of customers. Acquiring a new customer is seven times more costly than keeping the existing ones. An inbound customer representative understands the importance of customer relations and manages those relations in most professional manner. The call center services offered by an outsourcing firm is tailored to place the importance of customer service.
The inbound customer service offered by reputed call center is focused to make each customer a customer for life. A professional call center agent makes sure that each phone call that he or she handles results in something positive that your business can build upon. They play a pivotal role in making sure that the customers are satisfied with your product and services.
By outsourcing inbound customer service, a company actually increases the level of customer service. A call center has trained operators that are always available to handle customers need,concerns and problems. They process the requests of the customers as well as answer the queries of the customers related to the product or services. They also take all necessary action to resolve each and every issue so that the customers have unmatched level of satisfaction.
Today running a small or a large business is a daunting task. This is due to labor costs, recruiting problems and ever changing telecommunication equipment. At this time inbound customer service provides the basic ingredient for a company's success.
The call centres in India providing inbound customer service are well equipped with good infrastructure, highly qualified agents, security solutions and cutting edge technology.
The call centres in India have state-of-the-art multimedia centers that offer multichannel interaction through voice email, SMS and fax services. There is no doubt that Indian call centres can handle a range of outsourcing services.
Some of the inbound call centre services have specialization in appointment setting, research surveys, lead generation, debt collection, consumer response, dealer locators, direct mail response, email management services, help desk solutions, inquiry handling, interactive voice response, product technical information and telemarketing in verticals like mortgage, insurance, telecom industries. The inbound customer service includes order taking, technical support, customer service, answering service and help desk services.
In today's business environment outsourcing is often not a decision that needs to be justified. Some of the non core business functions that are handled internally could be outsourced. Business process outsourcing refers to the rearrangement of entire business functions to some other BPO service provider. Most of the companies that look to outsource are multinationals or companies from the western part of the world. Most of the BPO units are in countries like India, China, Malaysia, Philippines, Kenya and even Russia.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Way to Get Your Needs Resolved When Calling a Call Center. By James Thomas Mcguire
In the recent time, call centers are a growing industry not only in the United States but also across the world. Call centers have millions of customer care representatives (calling agents) across the world to fulfill the needs of customers. When call center customer service representatives do their job correctly, the customer is satisfied and never realizes that their call is only one of hundreds that will be received in any given day. They have been made to feel as if they are the only customer at the moment and their needs are the only ones that matter.
The call center agents handle incoming, outgoing and telemarketing calls from disgruntled customers and are trained to do so in a professional manner. Unfortunately, when a call is started with many insults to the agent, often the agent does whatever necessary to end the call at the earliest. Sometimes this means giving the caller what he exactly wants, but not always. To ensure that you will effectively get their needs resolved, it is much more productive to stay calm and work with the agent.
Customer care representative (Call Agent) is required to ask some personal & confidential questions to verify account information and ultimately protect the client. Even if, you have entered information through the automated system, such as your social security number(SSN) or phone number, often the agent is still required to verify the information. Cooperating with the call center agent will speed up your call, and your precious time will save.
If you are calling to inquire about billing, the agent must take your call to resolve it as soon as possible. If you calmly explain about your problem, s\he will be more than happy to fix it out.
If you have problems with the service, the agent will need to do some research and / or set an appointment. Your patience at this point will enables the representative to understand of your problem properly and solve it once and for all.
The Call center agents are themselves customers, and most of them are truly dedicated to serving the needs of its customers. By establishing a friendly relationship since the beginning of the call, you can ensure that the agent will does everything in their power to meet their needs. If you truly feel the staff has not provided the service you deserve, ask to speak to the supervisor.
The call center agents handle incoming, outgoing and telemarketing calls from disgruntled customers and are trained to do so in a professional manner. Unfortunately, when a call is started with many insults to the agent, often the agent does whatever necessary to end the call at the earliest. Sometimes this means giving the caller what he exactly wants, but not always. To ensure that you will effectively get their needs resolved, it is much more productive to stay calm and work with the agent.
Customer care representative (Call Agent) is required to ask some personal & confidential questions to verify account information and ultimately protect the client. Even if, you have entered information through the automated system, such as your social security number(SSN) or phone number, often the agent is still required to verify the information. Cooperating with the call center agent will speed up your call, and your precious time will save.
If you are calling to inquire about billing, the agent must take your call to resolve it as soon as possible. If you calmly explain about your problem, s\he will be more than happy to fix it out.
If you have problems with the service, the agent will need to do some research and / or set an appointment. Your patience at this point will enables the representative to understand of your problem properly and solve it once and for all.
The Call center agents are themselves customers, and most of them are truly dedicated to serving the needs of its customers. By establishing a friendly relationship since the beginning of the call, you can ensure that the agent will does everything in their power to meet their needs. If you truly feel the staff has not provided the service you deserve, ask to speak to the supervisor.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Prioritize Projects - Move Many Things a Few Inches Or a Few Things Many Inches by Todd Gettelfinger
Today, I had a conversation with a client regarding process work that he's undertaking for his business. As a growing small business, the client has scaled to the point where the founders need to get out of the way and transition from doers to managers (and later to leaders). To make this transition, they are focusing on the importance of adding enough structure to the business to allow the team to own their work and deliver the same high quality service. The client is in the early stages of defining a consistent process, building tools to strengthen the process, defining the positions that own and support each process, and building performance measurements to drive quality.
As the client and I discussed their issues and ways to solve them, the client grew more and more concerned as the list of good ideas increased. The list contained work that ranged from small to medium sized projects. Even the small projects were several days of work time. The list drove real concern because everything is important and everything must get done, but the client didn't really know where and how to get started checking things off the list.
A common response to this situation is that we just start working on the whole list or at least many things on the list. We start brainstorming about everything on the list. We start working on everything on the list. This sometimes leads to what I call the "move many things a few inches" approach. This almost always leads to a freak out moment somewhere down the line. It also typically leads to crappy results because we just starting running a marathon without any training. Fundamentally, we make a couple mistakes in these situations:
* We fail to acknowledge that resources are finite. ALWAYS! I know that we get pressure to get everything done and sometimes we ignore this fact. We think that we are a work super hero who can get everything done just by working hard. The sooner we realize that there is a limit to our time, we can manage it better.
* We start building without a blueprint. We don't have a plan. It's hard to build anything without taking a few measurements, planning out your materials, and planning how you will systematically construct your building. Even for the smallest projects, it's important to develop a blueprint.
* We forget to prioritize. We all know this is important and yet we overlook taking the deliberate steps to pick the most important projects. The next time you are faced with a list of projects that exceeds your capacity, pull out the list below and use it as a quick guide for better planning. These high-level steps will at least help get the highest priority projects kicked off quickly.
1. Write a couple sentences to describe each project on your list - Create descriptions that help clarify what the projects entail and what objectives they will accomplish
2. Rank the top projects on your list - Determine some basic criteria and use it to develop a priority ranking of the projects
3. Pick the top projects on the list - Select the highest ranking projects. The number of items you pick should be based on how many projects you and your team can effectively handle at one time.
4. Define a project charter for the top projects on your list - The charter can be just a couple paragraphs, but should at least document the background, rationale, objectives, scope, and deliverables for the project. The level of detail should be enough to ensure that clear expectations are set for the project.
5. Assign one owner for each project - When possible, delegate the projects and make one person accountable for successful completion of the project.
6. Set deadlines - Get buy-in and input from the owner so they clearly commit to the deadlines that include regular milestones so that you can check on progress
7. Develop an approach - Ask each owner to develop a project plan and explain how they are going to manage the project. The amount of effort that should go into this step is dependent on the size and complexity of the project..
8. Develop a high-level plan for the items that didn't make the top of your list - Lays out how you'll attack them after getting the top few done.
All these prioritization and planning steps should be used on every project regardless of size. The key is to scale them based on the risk, sensitivity, and size of each project. If you follow these steps, you'll be more likely to deliver quality results faster. In other words, you can move a few things many inches rather than many things a few inches.
As the client and I discussed their issues and ways to solve them, the client grew more and more concerned as the list of good ideas increased. The list contained work that ranged from small to medium sized projects. Even the small projects were several days of work time. The list drove real concern because everything is important and everything must get done, but the client didn't really know where and how to get started checking things off the list.
A common response to this situation is that we just start working on the whole list or at least many things on the list. We start brainstorming about everything on the list. We start working on everything on the list. This sometimes leads to what I call the "move many things a few inches" approach. This almost always leads to a freak out moment somewhere down the line. It also typically leads to crappy results because we just starting running a marathon without any training. Fundamentally, we make a couple mistakes in these situations:
* We fail to acknowledge that resources are finite. ALWAYS! I know that we get pressure to get everything done and sometimes we ignore this fact. We think that we are a work super hero who can get everything done just by working hard. The sooner we realize that there is a limit to our time, we can manage it better.
* We start building without a blueprint. We don't have a plan. It's hard to build anything without taking a few measurements, planning out your materials, and planning how you will systematically construct your building. Even for the smallest projects, it's important to develop a blueprint.
* We forget to prioritize. We all know this is important and yet we overlook taking the deliberate steps to pick the most important projects. The next time you are faced with a list of projects that exceeds your capacity, pull out the list below and use it as a quick guide for better planning. These high-level steps will at least help get the highest priority projects kicked off quickly.
1. Write a couple sentences to describe each project on your list - Create descriptions that help clarify what the projects entail and what objectives they will accomplish
2. Rank the top projects on your list - Determine some basic criteria and use it to develop a priority ranking of the projects
3. Pick the top projects on the list - Select the highest ranking projects. The number of items you pick should be based on how many projects you and your team can effectively handle at one time.
4. Define a project charter for the top projects on your list - The charter can be just a couple paragraphs, but should at least document the background, rationale, objectives, scope, and deliverables for the project. The level of detail should be enough to ensure that clear expectations are set for the project.
5. Assign one owner for each project - When possible, delegate the projects and make one person accountable for successful completion of the project.
6. Set deadlines - Get buy-in and input from the owner so they clearly commit to the deadlines that include regular milestones so that you can check on progress
7. Develop an approach - Ask each owner to develop a project plan and explain how they are going to manage the project. The amount of effort that should go into this step is dependent on the size and complexity of the project..
8. Develop a high-level plan for the items that didn't make the top of your list - Lays out how you'll attack them after getting the top few done.
All these prioritization and planning steps should be used on every project regardless of size. The key is to scale them based on the risk, sensitivity, and size of each project. If you follow these steps, you'll be more likely to deliver quality results faster. In other words, you can move a few things many inches rather than many things a few inches.
Friday, July 3, 2009
The 7 Keys to Keeping Customers - Key Six - Be Reliable
It might seem ridiculous to include "Be Reliable" on the list of the seven keys to keeping customers because one would think that if someone owns a business, they would already understand the importance of keeping their word to their customers and how not doing so could lead to them lose those customers quickly.
But, unfortunately, a lot of business owners don't understand this simple principle and end up, either knowingly or unknowingly, letting their customers down by showing them they can't be trusted. If customers don't trust you, they won't buy from you. Period.
If you're a business owner who's having this problem, there's a simple fix. Just keep your word to your customers. If you tell them you're going to complete a job by a certain day or at a certain time, do everything in your power to make sure when that day and time come, the job is done.
Or, if you tell your customers they're going to love a certain product or service they purchase from you and they end up telling you they hate and it doesn't work like you said it would, be willing to either give them their money back or give them credit towards something else you sell.
The point is this. If you aren't 100% sure you can do something for your customers, don't even hint to them that you might be able to do it. Often when people hear you say you might be able to do something for them, they get so excited about the thought of having it done, they hear you instead saying you will do it.
This can lead to misunderstandings that cause your customers to see you as an unreliable person to do business with. It can also leave your customers looking for someone else in your industry who will be reliable when doing business with them. So, if you're absolutely positive you can make something happen for your customers, by all means, tell them. Then, when it comes time for you to make it happen, make sure you do.
But, if you're not sure about something or, even worse, you're sure you can't make something happen for your customers, don't make them think you can. This will only lead to a loss of business, or money, and of customers who no longer feel they can trust you.
By Jessica Martinez
But, unfortunately, a lot of business owners don't understand this simple principle and end up, either knowingly or unknowingly, letting their customers down by showing them they can't be trusted. If customers don't trust you, they won't buy from you. Period.
If you're a business owner who's having this problem, there's a simple fix. Just keep your word to your customers. If you tell them you're going to complete a job by a certain day or at a certain time, do everything in your power to make sure when that day and time come, the job is done.
Or, if you tell your customers they're going to love a certain product or service they purchase from you and they end up telling you they hate and it doesn't work like you said it would, be willing to either give them their money back or give them credit towards something else you sell.
The point is this. If you aren't 100% sure you can do something for your customers, don't even hint to them that you might be able to do it. Often when people hear you say you might be able to do something for them, they get so excited about the thought of having it done, they hear you instead saying you will do it.
This can lead to misunderstandings that cause your customers to see you as an unreliable person to do business with. It can also leave your customers looking for someone else in your industry who will be reliable when doing business with them. So, if you're absolutely positive you can make something happen for your customers, by all means, tell them. Then, when it comes time for you to make it happen, make sure you do.
But, if you're not sure about something or, even worse, you're sure you can't make something happen for your customers, don't make them think you can. This will only lead to a loss of business, or money, and of customers who no longer feel they can trust you.
By Jessica Martinez
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