A call center is the front line of a business’ customer and client communications. It’s a centralized department that handles phone calls to and from existing and prospective customers.
A call center can be either in-house or outsourced. An in-house call center is fully managed by and located within the company. An outsourced call center is managed off-site by a third-party business process outsourcer (BPO) that specializes in call center customer service.
Before we explore whether it’s better to in-house or outsource your call center, let’s take a look at the different types of call centers there are.
Inbound call centers are staffed with agents who receive incoming calls from customers. The fundamental focus of an inbound call center is to provide customers with support or information.
Having an Inbound call center can benefit your company in the following ways:
- Peak call volume management
- After-hours customer support
- Customer satisfaction
- Enhanced productivity in other business areas
These are some of the most common call center services you’ll find, although this list is in no way exhaustive:
For large businesses or those with numerous departments, a telephone answering and transferring service can help to streamline incoming calls. Live agents are on hand to answer incoming calls, establish the customer’s reason for calling, and transfer them over to the appropriate person or department.
One of the primary responsibilities of a call center agent is to help customers solve problems. This could be anything from troubleshooting log-in errors to assisting customers with installation or configuration issues.
A business might train its front-line agents to handle calls relating to common or simple issues, while customers experiencing advanced technical issues are routed to specialized IT personnel.
If customers want to report technical faults or issue complaints, some inbound call centers provide a help desk service to centralize these communications.
Some customers prefer to make purchases over the phone for extra security or clarification purposes. A dedicated payments extension makes telephone order taking easy. Inbound call agents can also assist with any issues surrounding online payments or subscriptions.
For subscription-based businesses, customers calling to change their current plan is likely to be a regular occurrence. An inbound call agent should be able to upgrade, renew, or cancel plans at a customer’s request, or transfer them over to the appropriate department. In the case of cancellations, a live agent might even use some objection handling or even upselling tactics.
Specialty answering services go beyond telephone communication to include channels like live chat, social media communication, or promotional and transactional text messaging services.
Outbound call centers make outgoing phone calls to existing customers or potential customers. Calls might be made for anything from sales-focused to marketing and fundraising purposes, but one of their fundamental motivations is to expand the reach and revenue of a company.
Outbound call center benefits include:
- Expanded business reach
- Improved customer loyalty
- More generated leads
- Enhanced market research insights
There are many services that an outbound call center might undertake, but here are some of the most common:
Outbound call center agents can identify qualified leads by making cold calls. For example, a call center agent for an internet service provider might call a potential lead to collect information like who their current provider is, and what their budget is. This assists salespeople in their lead qualification strategies.
A traditional marketing approach, telemarketers contact both cold and warm leads over the phone with the goal of increasing brand awareness, acquiring new customers, and promoting/selling the company’s goods or services.
Telesales focuses primarily on contacting warm leads to close deals. They might also contact existing customers for upselling purposes. Despite its decline in popularity, telesales remains a cost-effective way to increase conversions and revenue, particularly when it comes to upselling.
Outbound call center agents conduct market research for competitor analysis and customer pain point identification. They also use customer surveys to gather crucial feedback as to the effectiveness of their marketing efforts or the quality of their products or services.
Commonly used by service industries like healthcare and real estate, an outbound call center service allows businesses to make new or follow-up appointments with existing or prospective customers. Some businesses, like energy suppliers, might use this service to schedule home installations or maintenance.
Sometimes, businesses proactively reach out to customers for important notification purposes. This could be a product recall, an event cancellation, or even debt collection.
With the right call center solutions, you can create a call center that’s just right for your business. For example, you can create an automated call center where tedious tasks don’t need to be done manually. You can also transition into a virtual call center with the right solution. All your agents need is to install the software on a supported device and they’ll be able to work from anywhere.
It’s important to get a provider that offers a wide range of inbound and outbound features so here are some common ones that a good call center solution should offer:
- Call routing
- Voicemail functions
- Automatic dialing
- Interactive voice response (IVR)
- Software and application integrations, most importantly CRM integrations
- Auto attendants and virtual receptionists
- Call recording and call monitoring
