|
Why Companies Are Heading Towards Call Centers
Call centers or BPOs have become the hottest topic as more and more promising international players are increasingly using its highly useful trade services and effective business solutions. In the beginning, call centers were seen as an efficient tool used to reduce business costs and other administrative expenses, however over the years it has come across as a great system that is efficient enough to bestow desirable results even in the long run. Undoubtedly, BPOs run advance operations which make distributing maximum productivity at minimum operating costs easy.
The usefulness of BPOs is not restricted to handle clients only but also extend to minimizing dead time in each call as well. Actually, dead time refers to those unproductive minutes and hours which are spent on the process of making a call i.e., dialing, ringing and answering any number. This time is not considered productive because here agents spend a major part of their productive time making the call and not exactly talking with the client. For any business that deals in either making or receiving calls, having high-tech call center software solutions is of utmost importance in order to stay ahead of its business competitors.
Many international players, including some of the Fortune 500 companies like Walmart stores, Citigroup, General Motors etc. are using the benefits of call centers. These companies make sure that their work is outsourced to a dedicated offshore BPO that incorporate efficient agents and technological capabilities required to deliver the best customer services. Call centers help companies save on their administrative expenses and transportation costs incurred on employing in-house workforce. No doubt, BPOs render extra insubstantial advantages like business constancy, excellent customer support and elevated returns.
Some of the major process advantages of BPOs include highly advanced web enabled call center environment, capability to handle large call flow efficiently, and proper process training to agents.
Advantages of using live chat solutions
Terminologies such as computer, internet, online, access, user friendly and chat have become so common that without employing these words, every action looks incomplete. With the advent of technology, online retailing has escalated to great heights ignoring customer support believing that the customers will contact retailers for support. However, they proved to be wrong and the demand for online customer support is soaring high which is obvious from the numbers that exist on all the retail websites. Customers look for quick shopping, and live chat is the best solution. Having trained operators online is of immense help to the websites as they can also handle high level queries deftly. A package that offers live chat solutions as customer service with trained live operators and software will have potential traffic.
Features
Live chat has become mandatory for any online retail as users find it more trustworthy owing to human contact and it is time saving for customers and cost effective for you as well. Live chat implementation reduces the expenditure on the total cost of ownership. Live chat is preferred owing to various advantages to both, the buyer and the receiver end. However improvised be the systems, yet man being a social animal relies more on direct communication like live chat. This is one of the significant reasons of using live chat and hence has gained impetus in the retail market.
Some of the benefits of live chat software are mentioned to signify the importance.
- Live chat is precise and spontaneous making it easy to understand for both, the operator and the visitor. Opting for web browser based companies that provide support without jeopardizing any security and offers open port settings is essential as visitors can be at ease as they only need to interact with support representatives.
- Provide optimum support from anywhere office, home or cyber café. No software installation is required and merely launching a web browser will offer all time service.
- Live chat accomplishes an instant client care feeling and reduces various other operational costs such as phone, staff and fax.
- You can operate multiple sites with one live chat license.
- Live chat maintains secrecy and bestows with maximum flexibility to grow your business.
Besides endowing with numerous benefits, using live chat is of immense help as it possesses some excellent features such as Real-time communication and Real time chats. Real time chat allows you to interact and provide high level customer support to your clients, help in purchase decisions and the facility of human touch is a significant path to pilot other competitors. Similarly, other features such as multiple chat and the messages keep both the end people alert and focused. The visitors can copy the entire transcript for future references.
Significance
You can browse the visitor?s computer and display the products, services and provide guideline to assist them. This is useful for keeping a track as it has monitors to calculate offline and online status. It also tracks the hours spent online and offline. It has facilities to create chat icons and HTML code for individual departments. Your chat window can be customized with themes and you can have an account of the traffic visiting your website. Moreover, as it functions on your domain and server, there is perfect security and control. You can see comprehensive reports of requests attended, rejected, not considered on daily and monthly view basis. You can store canned messages or responses and make access it without wasting time. It facilitates transfer calls and this is very helpful as the calls do not go waste and is duly attended by one department or the other.
Back when the call center industry was in its infancy, its founders and visionaries had high hopes for this industry. They thought it would be the sunshine industry of the millennium and herald wealth creation for both its employees and for the call center companies.
However, what the call center visionaries failed to take into account was that the long hours, the graveyard shifts, and the nasty customers calling in to lash out as they filed their complaints would all take their toll on the front line staff of call centers ? namely, the call center agents. Thus began a cycle of employee recruitment to be followed by fast employee attrition. The call center industry apparently was in trouble. So how was the bleeding of manpower (the agents) from call center companies stemmed?
Well, in all honesty, the industry is still bleeding manpower. However, there is one company which came up with a solution that may address this situation. Oracle produced a virtual call center solution they called the Oracle Contact Center Anywhere call center software system. With this product, Oracle hoped that call centers would be able to set up virtual call centers (or call centers with no obvious real-time infrastructure) and then start operating fast. It might even be said that virtual call centers are the modern-day version of mobile selling ? because you operate anywhere you can plug in your computer for steady dependable net access and use a phone line. It is like operating a mercenary network because you can only be tracked down on the Internet and you can literally keep changing your location as you please. And if you opt to work just from home, that is certainly possible under this system.
Business solution provider Promero is the Certified Oracle Network Partner that distributes the Oracle Contact Center Anywhere solution. Promero may also serve as your hosted call center solutions provider if you wish. If, on the other hand, you would rather have an on-premise solution, fortunately for you the Oracle Contact Center Anywhere product can also function like that.
The Oracle Contact Center Anywhere call center solution may become more widely accepted over time by more and more customers as word of its many benefits gets out and spread to different call center circles. Callers will also become familiar with how this call center software works so that they to will come to accept using this type of virtual call center service instead of the usual fixed-facility call centers. Perhaps this is the solution that will stem the departure of call center agents from the call centers and allow call centers to stay alive in the near and distant future.
Promero does have a virtual contact center solution which is applicable to all sizes of call centers ? ranging from the small family-sized call centers (manned by as few as 10 agents) to the vast call centers (which may have as many as 100 agents working there in one day.) The name of this call center software product is the Oracle Contact Center Anywhere.
Why use the Oracle Contact Center Anywhere solution then? For one thing, it gives you a great degree of leeway in scaling up or scaling down the size of your call center depending on your business needs. The reason this Oracle Contact Center Anywhere product is so flexible is because it relies on use of a Web-based platform, meaning that you are not bound by real-time infrastructure when it comes to increasing the size of your call center agent pool and call center operations. This is great for setting up virtual call center facilities in different disparate geographic locations, meaning that your organization is only dependent on assigning a USB headset, a personal computer, and Internet access for each of your agents. There is no need to purchase pricey real estate, build a large facility, and invest in hardware and other systems (like air-conditioning, security systems, and vast IT systems) to operate your scaled-up call center. And if you need to scale down, it is equally easy because you do not have all those costly systems to sell off once your call center has finished its life cycle. You can literally just pack your PC and headset into a box, have the Internet disconnected, and you are off to the next location where you need to work. No fuss, no sweat, no tears.
The key to understanding why the Oracle Contact Center Anywhere solution is so useful is to understand that in the call center business, the life of your call center hinges on whether you comprehend what your customers need and how you could be in a position to meet that need.
This call center software can either be used as a hosted call center solutions platform, or as a licensed customized solution geared specifically for your own company needs. The advantage with a hosted call center solution is that minimal capital expense is provided, and also reduces the need for upfront expenses or for techie training. It allows for fast deployment of the call center software so that your system is up and running in days. If, on the other hand, you intend to have an on-premise solution, you can have your customized Oracle Contact Center Anywhere software licensed in the form it is to be used in your facility.
One advantageous component of the Oracle Contact Center Anywhere call center software is the Predictive Dialer call center technology which is appropriate for use by any call center because call center agents require the telephone to sell the products and/or services of the client that owns the account. You can also find the Predictive Dialer beneficial for lead generation, fund raising, or research purposes.
If your organization purchases phone lists, you can use the Predictive Dialer technology to manage content of your phone lists so that more leads are converted daily so that income and profits go up for your company.
The Predictive Dialer call center technology is also important for cutting down time spent in useless dialing tasks so that your contact center agents can devote more of their time to actual sales and marketing tactics.
Because there is more business coming in to your organization daily with use of the call center software called Contact Center Anywhere, you will find that the cost per lead decreases so that on the whole agent efficiency will also go up.
Contact Center Anywhere is a special kind of call center solution in that it can either be applied as a hosted call center solution, or as an on-premise call center solution. The hosted option means that you will allow a hosted call center solution provider to handle the hosting chores for your call center (inclusive of technical support services round the clock, 365 days per year.) With the on-premise call center solution of this call center software system, you can have the Contact Center Anywhere system customized so that it follows the specific business requirements of your contact center organization. And regardless of how big or vast your call center is (based on number of total agents employed there), the Contact Center Anywhere call center software can be scaled up or scaled down for the number of multiple users who are scheduled to use it during the day or the night.
Contact Center Anywhere relies on a single-system infrastructure that is centralized so that every location on the system can access the same system (even from remote locations.) In addition, this call center solution permits productivity to go up, efficiency to improve, and cost benefits to be realized because telephone lines, hardware plus software resources can be shared by multiple users throughout the same call center system. At the same time, independent user sites on the same system can retain their autonomy.
|
Improving Contact Center Service and Performance
