How Can a Call Center Help Your Small Business?

0
1798

Share on LinkedIn

In today’s aggressive and customer-centric professional world, customers want immediate responses, quality interactions, and timely results. The truth is that it’s difficult to keep up with the demand that’s being placed. The Small companies out there can become especially frustrated because they typically don’t employ enough workers to perform the company’s tasks and interact with the customers at the same time. Fortunately, there is a solution. Companies can outsource to a call center where all of those calls, emails, chat, tickets, and more can be handled.

“If you deprive yourself of outsourcing and your competitors do not, you’re putting yourself out of business.” -Lee Kuan Yew

Q: What services do I need a call center to perform for my small business?

A: The answers here are endless but the two major categories of call center services are customer service and sales. Sales is responsible for scheduling appointments, taking orders, helping customers through the online sales process & order process, and making outbound sales calls . Customer service support makes itself available for feedback from customers. They may also make outgoing calls to customers who have not left a response on their own. With some businesses they may act as dispatchers, improving communication between employees and making sure each is aware of their personal goals for the day. Customer service support doesn’t need to communicate exclusively with phones. They may also handle the e-mail for the company.

Q: What will a call center do for my small business?

A: Call centers help to save employees time so that they can improve their productivity and increase profit. For example, consider a store manager. The phone might be ringing off the hook with orders for goods. However, the more time spent on the phone is less manpower being used to make run the actual operations of the store. In this situation, a call center could receive phone calls for the store to take orders, deal with customers or help with employee needs like back office support. The employees could then do their jobs without being interrupted by other phone orders. The call center could also receive customer feedback that could lead to improving the business.

Q: Could I set up a call center from my own home or business?

A: It is absolutely possible but a rather uneconomical decision to establish your own call center. It is not as simple as equipping a few people with phones. There are several factors that should be kept in mind.
· The technology implementations and management can be rather cumbersome and expensive to do.
· The recruiting, hiring and training of agents would be all on your shoulders. This would also potentially increased burdened expenses, unemployment hearings, and HR needs.
· Lastly, you would need to take out more square footage to house the call center team. This means more hardware, rent, electricity, etc. It’s doable but you need to ask yourself the question, “Am I in the call center business or the ___fill in the blank__ business?”

Q: What is the overall goal in hiring a call center for my small business?

A: In a single sentence: A call center will serve as the primary point of contact for a business. The point of hiring a supplier is to make interactions with the business convenient and effective. The people who answer the phone are representative of the business so it is important to hire ones who are right for the job, not those who will do it for the least amount of money. Not all providers are created equal and finding the appropriate call center takes intense research. Before settling on a provider, consider the impact it will have on the company’s image.

Here’s the great news! There are contact centers out there designed specifically to support the small business world. From startups to small enterprises, we would love to be a resource for you evaluating the idea of a call center to support your business. It’s something we love to do and it’s why we are here.

It’s Your Call!

Eric Sims
Eric is a Contact Center Outsourcing expert who specializes in helping businesses help their customers. He is the Cofounder & CEO of Leading Edge Connections, LLC, America's #1 fully remote outsourced contact center. He is also the host of Preventing Brand$laughter. A weekly podcast that helps business gain the insights and information to protect their brand from self-inflicted sabotage.

ADD YOUR COMMENT

Please use comments to add value to the discussion. Maximum one link to an educational blog post or article. We will NOT PUBLISH brief comments like "good post," comments that mainly promote links, or comments with links to companies, products, or services.

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here