“How can I help you today?”

Sounds familiar, right? You’d have come across this question every time you would have interacted with a customer support executive. More often than not, these executives are not a part of the in-house workforce of companies. Rather, these services are outsourced to third-party service providers.

You may be wondering, why do companies hand over this work to an external resource. You’ll get your answer in this article. Here’s what call center services are and why it is always preferred to outsource them.

What Are Call Center Services?

Call Centers are business units that take care of calls from current and potential customers. A call center service is an offering provided by a consulting party that specializes in handling calls for companies.

Source: Unsplash

In today’s day and age where customers are the king and expect to be heard all the time, organizations are increasingly trying to be available for them 24X7. A call center service becomes the communication line between your customers or prospects and you. All types of businesses including e-commerce websites, telemarketing businesses companies, product help-desks, mail-order organizations, and even non-profit organizations seek call center services. In fact, you can say that any large company would invariably need a call center to handle leads and customers.

Before we proceed on to why these companies need call center services, here are the different types of services that companies avail of.

Types of Call Center Services

There are primarily three types of call center services that you can outsource for your business. These include:

Inbound Call Center Services

As the name suggests, inbound call center services handle incoming calls for companies. It includes customer helpline calls, complaint center calls, or even service/product query calls.

An inbound call center typically works using an interactive voice response (IVR) system. Those automated messages that you hear when you dial a customer support center make in IVR. Based on your responses in the IVR, the call either is handled using existing automated messages or is transferred to an adequate customer service agent with the knowledge to handle that call. All-in-all, an inbound call center manages the entire volume of calls made to a company, screens and forwards them to a qualified executive.

Source: Go4Customer

Outbound Call Center Services

Contrary to the previous type, outbound call center services make calls for a business instead of taking them. More often than not, these are sales, lead generation, or telemarketing calls. They can also be calls for customer retention, scheduling appointments, fundraising, surveying, or even for collecting debts.

An outbound call center, too, works using an interactive voice response (IVR) system. However, in this scenario, the IVR automatically makes calls to customers, prospects using a database, which is transferred to an agent once the person picks up the call.

Quick note, to keep up with the times, customer service executives are now trained to handle incoming as well as outgoing calls. This type of service is known as a blended call center service.

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is where the entire process of handling calls is offloaded to an outside organization. Here the ownership is transferred to the third-party which functions as a complete business unit in itself. While BPO service can be availed for multiple functions, call center services are one of the most common ways companies avail the option of a BPO.

Now that you know what call center services are, here’s why outsourcing call center services is a good investment for your business.

Why you should outsource call center support?

You can focus on other functions

Even though customer support is a crucial business function, it can be outsourced easily. All you have to do is set standard operation procedures (SOPs) and key result areas (KRAs) for your service partners. Once set up, you can focus on business growth, funding, customer acquisition, and other key functions, without having to worry about dealing with calls.

You get 24/7 Customer Support

As mentioned earlier, nowadays, your customers expect you to be available for them round the clock. When you outsource your call center service, you can outsource to 24X7 provider at Prismbiz, which would provide support to your customers even beyond your company’s official working hours as they work in shifts.

You have access to the latest technology

Sometimes you’ve got to leave certain things to the ‘pros’. Call center service providers are experienced in setting up efficient IVR for business. They know what kind of menus to add, which questions to ask, how to distribute calls to reduce waiting times,

Source: Vcaretec

and more. Overall, they have better access and knowledge of the technology used in setting up a call center.

You get access to the experienced manpower

Handling calls, whether inbound or outbound, is not an easy task. Agents at call center services have the expertise to handle challenging situations and deal with difficult callers. You get access to their experience and don’t have to spend too much time on training or guiding your customer support team on how to deal with customers or leads.

You can provide multi-channel support

Call centers at the present moment are evolving in terms of the services they provide. Today, a call center service also provides chat support, social media support (WhatsApp, FB, etc.) along with call support as they are now growing to become holistic contact centers than call centers. These contact centers let you handle all communication channels that your customers might contact you through.

Less effort, more productivity

Since you work with trained professionals, they’re more efficient in their tasks and are able to wrap things up faster. They’re more adept to deal with a higher volume of calls without losing any valuable customers. Overall, they help you in becoming more productive in your customer support.

Over To You

Call Center Services are already popular in many industries including aviation, healthcare, e-commerce. However, it wouldn’t be surprising to see most businesses irrespective of the industry. That being said, it all depends on your business needs.