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Advantages of Outsourced Answering Services

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Advantages of Outsourced Answering ServicesOutsourcing different aspects of your business can help you save time, money and focus. You can send your books to an accountant, your calls to an answering service and your intelligence technology management to an IT firm, while you concentrate on the core projects and tasks that build your company up. Some of the benefits you will see from outsourcing your answering and receptionist services include being able to extend your customer service hours, save money and focus your efforts.

Extend Your Call Hours

Many answering services offer call-in hours around the clock and on all days, with the phones being answered by real people instead of an automated system. This gives your customers the opportunity to talk to someone and resolve issues outside of your normal operating hours without you having to keep employees working at all hours. You can even find mobile apps from these services to help you keep track of messages and leads in one place. This can lead to better customer retention and higher profits.

Save Money

Outsourcing can save you money both in terms of salaries and in terms of space needed for the extra personnel. You will not have to hire and train employees to answer the phones and then dedicate a place in your building for them. An outsourced receptionist service will have many clients to help cover their costs as well as the beefed-up phone plans to keep up with everything. Many will offer personalized call scripts so your brand’s voice and culture will be presented to the customer when they call just as it will be when they walk in your office.

Focus on Core Activities

When you do not have to pay for a dedicated employee to answer your phones, you can more closely focus on the core activities that make your company great. For example, if you own a catering business, then having another company answer your phones will give you more time to develop new recipes and finish orders without worrying about the calls coming in.

Outsourcing can help startups survive the first few years of business with less overhead and can streamline operations for huge corporations. When you outsource your call answering with a receptionist service, you can see increased customer service and retention as well as lowered costs. This gives you more time to focus on other aspects of your company such as making new products. You can also extend your customer service hours outside of your office hours and help clients around the clock without paying overtime.

5 Reasons Customer Service is Important to Small Companies

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StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Customer Service|5 Reasons Customer Service is Important to Small CompaniesAs a small business owner, you may at times find yourself strapped budget-wise. Operating costs, marketing, and logistics may take priority over customer service but it should never be overlooked. Customer service is crucial – especially for small businesses looking to establish themselves in their respective industries.

The following article will articulate 5 reasons why customer service is so important for small businesses.

Customer Referrals

Word of mouth referrals is very important for a business, even more so for one that is just starting. No one is going to tell their friends or family about your business if they were treated rudely or didn’t feel valued as a customer.

People are much more likely to use the products or services of a company if they heard of them through a trusted friend or family member. Keeping existing customers happy is a great way to ensure you have consistent purchases.

Encourages Brand Loyalty

According to most answering services, when customers feel valued by a company, they are more inclined to stick with that company and purchase new product lines outside of their norm. Good customer service is therefore imperative for brand loyalty.

This is how you can extract the most value from a customer since the revenue you get from them comes with much less effort than trying to convert new customers. Great customer service can create life-long brand advocates and who doesn’t want as many of those as possible. One way to achieve this is through a call center or answering service that can tend every customer that calls.

Offers Valuable Insight

Having good customer service can add a valuable resource: knowledge. Some market research can only be done via a customer’s interaction with your customer service reps – and you don’t have to pay extra for it.

For instance, you can train your reps to ask questions about why a customer likes your product or what they use your service for. Their valuable answers can be used to direct your marketing campaigns to truly resonate with your customers. A well-trained customer service team can seamlessly insert these questions into their conversations with your client and phrase them so they are simultaneously providing value to them.

It’s Cost-Effective

The initial investment in your company’s customer service may seem costly but it pales in comparison to new customer acquisition costs. Having return customers means you don’t have to spend anything on their return business. Plus, customers are likely to spend more money with a company they like. Focusing on customer service is usually less expensive than focusing on new customer acquisition.

More Margin for Error

Customers tend to be more forgiving when a company with good customer service makes a mistake. Let’s say a shoe company ships the wrong pair to a customer. Usually, that is enough for a person to stop buying shoes from that company, especially if the company has bad customer service.

As much as the person likes their shoes, one small slip up can be enough for them to abandon them if they are known for poor customer service. Having good customer service will incline a consumer to stick around if you commit a shipping error or even if you raise your prices.

At the core of everything you do you should be providing great customer service because without your customers you wouldn’t be in business and doing what you love. We hope this article has provided you with insight into why this is so important even in this digital age.

4 Ways to Improve Customer Care in Your Call Center

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Customer Care|4 Ways to Improve Customer Care in Your Call Center If you’re managing a call center, customer care is the name of the game. You’ll undoubtedly have all kinds of targets to meet, and it’s in your interests to make every call a customer care success. How can you make this a reality? Sometimes, customer care is less about focusing on the caller, and more about investing energy in your staff. Here are four ideas on how to improve customer care in your call center.

Service with a smile

Did you know that a smile can be heard on the phone? Picking up the phone with a smile on your face can make your voice sound warmer and friendlier, and encourage the caller to trust you. This all happens subconsciously, without the customer really being aware! It’s a free, easy way to build a connection instantly. With a smile, you can set up in the right way even the most challenging of calls. Train your staff on this simple trick, and you could see customer satisfaction shoot up!

Celebrate your staff

If you want your staff to smile on the phone, you’ve got to give them plenty of reasons to beam off the phone, too. Working in a call center can be energetic, fast-paced, and fun. But it can also be draining and repetitive. Not to mention the exhaustion of dealing with angry customers. Keep spirits high by celebrating your staff regularly. This is how BPOs in the Philippines motivate their employees. They recognize employees achievements monthly, quarterly, and annually, and provide perks that they can enjoy. Your celebration could be as simple as some targeted praise after a perfect call that you overhear. Or you could create a reward system, perhaps where coworkers nominate each other, or based off a leaderboard related to departmental targets.

Create a positive environment

So much of excellent customer service comes down to brilliant representatives. But even if you hire the very best representatives available, if the environment is poor, they will either leave or become disengaged. The culture of the call center should be all about support and positivity. Then these elements will feed into the service provided. Remember, the culture is often dictated by what happens at the top. Think about how senior staff communicate and how they handle challenges. The team will look to them to set the tone for the entire department, so it’s vital they set a shining example. Positivity is everything.

Get the right tools

Making use of the latest tools like Knowledge base software could really boost your call center and make customer service a breeze. Artificial intelligence applications can make life easier for representatives as well as customers. You should also invest in analytics tools which will enable you to track and record statistics relating to calls and customer experience. This can be useful for training, appraisals, and rewards.

It might be possible for some of the processes within the department to be automated completely. For example, you can use RPA tools for real-time automation. This can improve productivity and allow for proactive staff training. Saving time and boosting productivity means benefits for you and your customers. You could even take the bold move of asking your staff what tools might help them better do their job.

Conclusion

Getting call center operations right can be extremely challenging. If you wish to outsource call center services as a business, read this comparison guide first.

Why Our Employees Asked Us To Stop Giving Away Cars

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Easy-to-implement ideas to improve your corporate culture and drive employee engagement

 
We gave a new car away to our employees every other month, six cars in total, to keep the motivation and excitement up among our best performing sales agents. We were really impressed with ourselves and wanted to know what else we could do to improve the happiness factor. We sent out a survey (which we still do today) to ask our employees about the cleanliness, the temperature in the building, the security, the lighting, the management, the pay, the incentives, the likelihood that they’d leave if another company offered them more money, all-in-all we had about twenty five questions. Two months later the same survey showed that the work space was cleaner, the building temperature more comfortable, the security better, the lights brighter, the managers more helpful, the pay was better, our incentive plan produced better results, and less of our employees would leave for more money.

How did we manage to change our employees’ perception and why did they want us to stop giving away cars?

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About the Author

Craig Handley is a networking monster with an unstoppable combination of hard work, ingenuity, and creativity that has sparked the vision and growth that drives the success of Listen Up Español. Craig’s expertise in maximizing the sales process – and Listen Up Español’s impressive track record of higher conversion rates and higher average order value than any other Spanish language call center – was achieved from the ground up, having started his professional career in door-to-door sales and rising through the ranks in many call centers. He is well known for being an entrepreneur who lives and breathes the Maverick motto: “Make More Money, Have More Fun, and Give More Back.”