Should Your Company Outsource to an Inbound Call Center Service?

The holiday season often brings an increase in incoming calls for many businesses. If your business is becoming overwhelmed, outsourcing to an inbound call center service or a phone reply service is a great way to not only handle the holiday influx but to continue to handle growing call volumes without investing a great deal of time and money to add to your internal staff.

Years ago, inbound answer services and phone respond services were considered completely different animals. Your business fit into one or the other category but not both. Today, many phone respond service providers have much of the same technology and range of services as do answer service providers.

Consider the following benefits of outsourcing your call center needs to an inbound & outbound outsourcing service or phone reply service.

Meet Your Needs -- Many outsourcing center and phone reply services offer a variety of support services, such as multi-lingual call-answering and/or translation options. You may also be able to find an inbound call center service or phone reaction service that specializes in your industry.
Save Money - Yes, save money. If your company is growing, then you need to consider how you are investing your capital to maintain growth. Your infrastructure and salary expenses can be reduced considerably when you use these services or phone reply services instead of investing in staff and technology yourself.
24/7 and 365 -- Call support every day, all day can be very expensive in terms of hiring and/or managing reliable staff for all shifts as well as absorbing the expense of turnover. However, this is the core business of an inbound call center service or phone response service. They are well equipped to have experienced agents ready at all times, along with having backups in place to compensate for unplanned absences.
Test the Waters -- You do not need to send all of your calls to an inbound call center service. You can route some of your calls and see if the service is right for your business. This is a perfect time to use a phone respond service, which often is smaller than an inbound call center service yet offers the same capabilities.
Budget for Call Volume -- You may know how many customer calls your staff fields on a regular basis, as well as the amount of time each call takes. However, a more accurate number helps to accurately budget for the expense. It is possible you may find you only need to use an inbound call center service or phone respond service during high call-volume times like holidays or certain seasons.
Customers First -- While it is easy to see how efficient and cost effective an inbound call center service or phone retort service can be on your balance sheet, it is even more important that the service provide superior customer care to your clients. To ensure this, you have to provide a detailed description of how your business manages calls. The best inbound call center services and phone response services work with your current system -- and with you -- to develop a plan and training to provide that high level of customer service you are looking for.
Inland or Offshore -- Once you decide on an inbound call center service or phone respond service, you then need to determine whether you want your call center operations to be located offshore. The main reason businesses choose offshore call centers is to save money. However, there are some "costs" associated with such a move. English is usually a second language to offshore agents who answer incoming calls. That may make it more difficult to provide the level of customer service your clients are used to receiving from your business. The language difference and location can also impact the amount of time you can dedicate to properly training the agents handling your calls. Customer services and phone response services in the United States may cost a few cents more per minute but may provide a comfort level for you and your customers that gives you a better return on your investment.

Consider the options available to your business by outsourcing your incoming calls to an inbound customer service or a phone answering service. Whether you are facing increased call volume because of the holidays or seasonal variations, you may benefit from testing the waters to see how an inbound call center service or a phone answering service can help your business grow.

Judy O'Brien is a freelance writer for Alert Communications, which offers a variety of inbound call center services solutions along with many other call centers service. Know more about our answering services; visit us on the web at alertcommunications.com.

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Industry Case Studies - How Inbound Call Center Services Can Benefit Your Company

Call centers are devoted to handling a large volume of incoming calls, but inbound call center services include more than taking caller messages-they literally function as a customer service department and extension of your business. Inbound call center services include gathering information for order processing, checking order status, and providing answers to any questions customers might have about offered services and products, and more. Also consider that it's not just traditional order-placing businesses that benefit from inbound services-many other companies rely on inbound call center services to gather both specific and complex information from callers and potential customers in order to make sales and sell services.

Inbound Call Center Services: Bankruptcy Counseling

When declaring bankruptcy, an individual must complete both a pre-filing and post-filing bankruptcy counseling session to receive their confirmation certificate. These services are often available online and accessible 24/7 as courses to be completed on a company website. Bankruptcy counseling companies also provide a number for questions that can be answered by an inbound service providers, who are available at all times to answer any bankruptcy related questions and provide general assistance. Inbound call services for bankruptcy counseling businesses also record and collect all information as is appropriate so the necessary certifications can be filed on behalf of customers, making things easier for both parties-the business and the customer.

Inbound Call Center Services: Emergency Related Businesses

Inbound call center services are crucial for emergency related businesses, specifically the food-service industry and restaurants.Call centers specialize in responding to customer calls and coordinating necessary repairs rapidly. When emergency calls reach an inbound service provider, agents follow instructions provided to reach an appropriate contact, then arrange for a repair time while coordinating with the customer and seeing the repair process through to completion. Technicians also benefit from these services-for the heating and air conditioning industry, callers report an emergency and inbound agents reassure that the problem is being addressed. Then, a technician is dispatched or a future appointment is booked. The same services are available for pest control, animal control, seasonal emergencies, and more.

Inbound Call Center Services: Apartment Hunting and Online Businesses

Online businesses offering membership benefits to individuals also profit from inbound call center services. Apartment hunters, for example, pay monthly fees to receive information related to apartment hunting, as it becomes available. Online businesses providing these services include a toll-free number for visitors to call if they have questions or need assistance paying online or gaining membership-in many cases businesses accept payment over the phone. When inbound agents receive phone calls, they go beyond providing customer service, acquiring new leads, and sales closing, they also address caller questions and follow specific instructions as provided by you-callers are encouraged to sign up for services, become members, and agents work to finalize sales.

Inbound call center services are capable of covering a wide variety of business needs across many industries, and agents are able to customize services to accommodate a company's specific requirements, information, and customer-service.

Designed to handle a high volume of calls professionally, inbound agents receive the training necessary to provide exceptional customer service, recover information quickly, and dispatch individuals as is appropriate, as well as capture new leads, close sales, provide helpful information, and follow any instructions or methods you recommend and provide. Inbound services work to fully understand your business, to provide that level of understanding and customer service to customers. Learn more about the kind of support your business needs to grow and how inbound services can increase potential client conversion rates, with professional call services and both customized and cost effective solutions.

Erica Ronchetti is a freelance writer for Alert Communications. Alert has over 10 years or experience answering phones for small businesses and companies all over the nation. We will save you time, money, and help to grow your practice.Costs of hiring a receptionist can be enormous, and the costs of missing phone calls can be even higher.Our inbound call center services solve both of these problems by reducing employment costs, and answering the phones for you with the utmost professionalism and courtesy. For more information on Call center service CA (California) visit our website.

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Appliance Service Repair Company Providing Customer Service After the Sale

While it is important that customers are spoken to in an understandable manner and cared for while their appliances are being serviced, there are two other aspects of customer service that are often neglected by GE appliance service businesses.

Customer Service Prior to Service

You may think that there isn't much pre-sell involved with appliance service. Either someone needs their appliances serviced or they don't, right? That is actually very wrong! One local company understands that the right amount of customer service prior to a service can result in many more customers down the line and they stay very busy as a result of this knowledge!

Potential customers will often call several local GE appliance service businesses before deciding who they feel the most comfortable hiring. If you are in customer service mode on that very first phone call you will put them at ease, make them feel comfortable with you, and make your service stand out in their mind even if they do call around to other places.

Also, if you use the right customer service strategies in the beginning, you could find that customers start referring you to other people they know before you even make a trip to their home to fix their appliances. Word of mouth is the best way to advertise because it's free, and it starts with customer service from the very first phone call.

Customer Service After the Service

Once you have repaired their appliance, the sale is over and you move on to the next customer, right? Not so fast! Even if you do an excellent job repairing their appliances and answering all their questions during the service, you are missing a great opportunity to expand your business if you just disappear.

Any reputable appliance service will remain open to future repairs if something goes wrong with an appliance, but you have to take it a step further. You have to follow the lead of one local business and discover the art of after service customer service.

Think of ways to keep your service in their mind so they will remember your name when they need appliance service in the future or when someone they know asks for a referral. You want to keep your company name in their memory, which is best accomplished by sending a post card to say thank you for their service. You can even include coupons for future services within a given time period or send periodical postcards checking on them.

This type of after-service customer service makes a customer feel valued and appreciated and it keeps you at the top of their mind if they do need GE appliance service sometime in the future.

This is the only way to earn repeat business and keep customers from calling up other appliance service businesses and going with someone else.

Remember, customers do not want to deal with businesses of any variety that are disrespectful, rude, or mediocre in quality. All General White Goods are experts and they are specialists in Ge service

Just as you already focus on the quality of your services and make sure every appliance is repaired to the best of your ability, you have to put the extra effort into top notch customer service.

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Delivering World-Class Service Part 2 - Company Service Standards

When building a strong service culture, it is important to have an inspiring vision and mission statement; but they only provide the context. Service standards, on the other hand, are the "nuts and bolts" of how you serve. They are the specific behaviors that you expect from yourself and your team in the ongoing journey to deliver engaging service. Standards such as "I attentively listen to others" and "I will always give a gracious goodbye", are clear and apply to everyone from the CEO to the housekeeper.

For service standards to be viewed as credible, they must be discussed frequently. They have to be spoken about everyday and used as the basis for recognition, appraisals and constructive feedback. Let's assume that one of your standards is "Every team member will maintain an impeccably clean work environment". If one of your employees walks past a crumpled piece of paper on the floor, that is a great opportunity to discuss that particular service standard. The same applies if a service standard is "I will own and immediately resolve customer complaints, then follow up to ensure customer satisfaction". Talk about that standard when you are recognizing your staff for taking ownership of customer issues and following through. Also use that standard when providing constructive feedback when the opposite is true. The point is to make the service standards more than just another concoction dreamed up by senior management.

Here are a few easy-to-follow steps when developing or refining service standards:

1. Identify what your customers expect and how they want to be served (Don't assume!). If you don't have a market research department, then conduct your own research by informally surveying your existing customer base. You can start by hosting focus groups. The point is to become crystal clear on what your customers expect from you.

2. Be clear on what type of service your company is promising to deliver. Ensure that your advertisements and other branding messages are consistent with the quality of service you can consistently deliver.

3. Assemble a cross-functional team who will review the collected customer data and begin drafting some preliminary service standards. (Note: be sure to have a senior leader as a member or at least a key sponsor/advocate of this cross-functional team).

4. Get senior leadership input on the preliminary service standards.

5. Revise the preliminary service standards based on senior leadership input (if needed).

6. Share the revised service standards with the company to get more input (remember: the workforce is more likely to embrace anything new or different if they are involved in the developmental process).

7. Revise the service standards again (if needed).

8. Determine how the service standards will be deployed to the workforce (new employee orientation, cards, posters, screen savers, etc.)

9. On a periodic basis, review the service standards for continued relevancy. This is a great exercise during the strategic planning period

10. In addition to the steps listed above, another great resource to find service standards are the personal service standards already written by your staff.

Use these company service standards to dictate how service is provided on a daily basis. Investing the time and resources to develop, implement, and reinforce service standards will reap enormous rewards in the form of higher morale and more engaged customers.

Additional Information

Click here for the Personal Service Commitment card: http://engagemenow.com/card

Find more articles relating to service excellence at http://www.bwenterprise.net Also on the website, you can subscribe to the official B.Williams Enterprise emailing list. You will receive announcements, newsletters and other excellent resources.

About the Author

Bryan K. Williams is the Chief Service Officer of B. Williams Enterprise, LLC. He is a seasoned service expert, who has facilitated workshops and delivered keynotes all over the world for various companies. Bryan speaks on a variety of topics related to service excellence, employee engagement, and organizational improvement. As a consultant he works closely with companies to design, develop, and implement sustainable service strategies.

About B.Williams Enterprise, LLC

B.Williams Enterprise, LLC is a consulting and auditing company which focuses on service excellence. The goal is to assist organizations to enhance their levels of customer service to world-class levels. This can only be achieved by focusing on service excellence as a way of doing business, rather than an "initiative of the month". Service excellence must be weaved throughout the organization...at every level.

-We exist to serve others so they may better serve the world.-

Email: info@bwenterprise.net

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Nginx creator launching company based on popular web server

Nginx creator Igor Sysoev is planning a company based around the wildly popular open-source web server.

Sysoev announced the decision on the Ngnix blog Monday morning, writing that the commercial entity’s “primary goals are improving support and communication for our users, streamlining the development process, revamping the documentation, integrating and speeding up pending bugfixes and patches, introducing long-requested functionality and more.” Sysoev had been handling much of the development and support for Nginx as a side project since he created the project in 2002, but now will commit to the project full-time.

As of May, Nginx had 7.35 percent of the global web server market — or 23,463,669 hostnames — according to research from Netcraft, so there’s likely plenty of appetite for more consistent support and releases. It also claimed 6.79 percent of the top million web sites as users. Apache is still the dominant web server worldwide, with Microsoft IIS and Google Web Server (thanks primarily to Blogger sites) also maintaining large market shares.

Andrey Alexeev, part of the initial management team for the new company, told me via e-mail that the company is still in its very-early stages and has not officially launched. He also noted the company is entirely self-funded at this point.

We see this type of move fairly often, where the creator of an open-source project either launches a company based upon it or joins a company that has invested heavily in it. Recent examples would be Ruby creator Yukihiro Matsumoto joining Heroku, Piston Cloud Computing launching an OpenStack-based company and Damien Katz forming CouchOne (now part of Couchbase).

Image courtesy of Flickr user whalesalad.

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Times Company to Repay Carlos Slim Early

9:54 a.m. | Updated The New York Times Company said Wednesday that it would pay back the $250 million loan from Carlos Slim Helú, a Mexican telecommunications billionaire, on Aug. 15, freeing itself from one of its larger financial obligations.

Peter Foley/Bloomberg NewsThe New York Times Company will settle its debt with Carlos Slim Helú on Aug. 15.

The repayment will come three and a half years before the loan is due and five months sooner than the company initially planned to settle the debt.

Janet L. Robinson, chief executive of the Times Company, and Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman and publisher of The New York Times, said in a message to employees that the company’s strengthened financial position enabled the early payback.

“Our ability to pay down this debt at this time is directly linked to the decisive steps we have taken to improve our financial flexibility over the past two years,” they wrote. “We remain focused as we move to the next phases of our business plans and as the uncertain global economy and the ongoing volatility in our industry continue. But today we take pride in this moment.”

The Times Company ended the first quarter with $352 million in cash and short-term investments on hand. The total cost of the loan, with a 14 percent interest rate, was approximately $279 million.

While the company will incur a $46 million loss on the prepayment in the third quarter, savings on interest over the next three and a half years will exceed $39 million each year.

Mr. Helú and members of his family hold about 7 percent of the Class A shares in the Times Company.

The Times Company has taken other steps recently to firm up its financial position, including a deal last month to sell most of its stake in the Fenway Sports Group, owners of the Boston Red Sox. It sold 390 of its 700 Class B units of the Fenway Sports Group to three separate buyers in a deal for $117 million. It now holds a 7 percent stake in the company.

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