Inbound call center: Why and Why not?

Every successful business reaches a point where they can no longer handle all of their customer requests or calls on their own.

There are many reasons for the same. Some of them are:
1. Too many customers calling at the same time.
2. Customers calling at non-operational hours.
3. You are in an important business meeting.

Now what are the options that you have as a business owner?
1. Have an answering machine or voice mail to greet your customers.
2. Hire more people in your office to attend inbound calls.
3. Outsource your requirement to an inbound call center.

Answering machine would be a cost effective option.
So would you prefer answering machine over an inbound call center?

Let us imagine, today is the final game of NBA, which you absolutely don’t want to
miss. All of a sudden your cable transmission is interrupted. You pick the phone, call your cable company and you get a sweet voice mail. “We are not available right now, please call us Monday thru Friday 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM Eastern Time.” How would you feel?

Do you want your customers to feel the same about your services? Or would you like to make their experience better, so that they keep their loyalty towards your product? Statistics show the percentage of hang-ups on answering machines is significantly greater than a live answering service. And 70% of customers switch service providers because of the unsatisfactory support they get from their existing service provider. Do you want your customers to switch services for the same reason?
Hiring more people in your office to attend inbound calls might not be a bad idea;
provided, you have the required infrastructure, resources and knowledge accomplish the same।

You will need more office space, new workstations, chairs, phone lines, phone
instruments, computers, etc. You would also need to spend sometime monitoring
your employees, or hire a manager to monitor them. I think you get the point, it might not be cost-effective.

You need a solution that is cost effective and customer friendly. Here is the answer:
Outsource your inbound calls to an Inbound call center. An inbound call center is often made up of a group of individuals who answer phone calls on behalf of you. Your customers call your company’s 800 number and an expert call center representative attends the call.

How does it benefit you?
1. An inbound call center would utilize manpower depending on your call flow. If
you have 10 people calling at the same time, the inbound call center would be
equipped to handle all these calls, without missing a single call.
2. An inbound call center can be used every hour of the day depending on your
business requirements.
3. You can now invest your time expanding your business rather than handling
queries of existing customer.
4. You do not have to invest on infrastructural costs. The call centers are already
well equipped with state of the art infrastructure to support your business
requirements.
5. You don’t have to spend your time managing additional employees.
6. Not to forget, you don’t have to pay extra hour pay, perks and other employee
benefits.
Basically if your business receives phone calls on a daily basis then an inbound call
center would be beneficial to you.

How can an Inbound call center enhance your Business?

Let us take an example: If you have a website which has your phone number listed
on it, every missed call can be a missed opportunity. An opportunity lost to convert
that phone call into a sale. Whether you need to answer 10 inbound calls in a day, or
1000, you will find an inbound call center to be a professional and cost effective
extension of your business. Invest your time training the call center representatives
and delegate your work to them efficiently. Let them convert all these inbound calls
into sales and you can focus on adding new products and services for your customers.