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:
knowledge transfer will be easy,
set up and executing time frame will be shorter,
performance will be at its peak and
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:
End-Customer Satisfaction
Abandon Rates
Service Level (% Answered in seconds)
Average Speed of Answer
First Time Resolution
Response Time and Resolution Time
Average Handle Time
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 outsourcing .

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