Call center units in the Philippines and Korea are bracing themselves to make their mark on the global scene. In a bid to make their answering service reach out to a global network of clients and customers, several BPO units are offering a wide choice of languages. Languages like Japanese and Mongolian are now part of the oeuvre, too.
The aim of all call center services these days is to make sure that they are part of the networking fraternity. Networking is the key to obtaining business and clients in the B2B marketing segment. Recommendations and references rule the roost.
An example of such a call center hub would be Dasan in Seoul. Before they decided to revamp their answering service department and get in new foreign clients, they received about 200 calls every day. Now the inbound call center agents have to deal with a call volume of 40,000 calls on a daily basis. English and Vietnamese make the bracket as the most popular BPO language in these parts.
Tourism is the department which receives the maximum number of calls. It would be nice to note if the trend catches on in other countries as well. It is, of course, a known fact, that call center services all over the world are making a distinct effort to go international.
Call center units are steadily realizing the importance of data. Report analysts have drilled it to the BPO managers that there is more to the data they have than meets the eye. Numbers and facts speak more than you can hear. In answering service, you can know much about the customer if you interpret the data at hand in an intelligent, innovative way.
For example, if you selling personal loans and you come across the financial statements of a person declaring that your target has just bought a car, you can conclude that the person is least likely to burden himself with another loan. Similarly, the outbound call center agents can check up the data to find out if the person is working at an office. If the answer is in the affirmative, calling at office timings at a residential number is nothing less than wasting resources.
Call center data can be studied to find out patterns in the customer’s behavior, too. Check for the buying patterns of the customer. If the person has bought an LCD TV recently, he/she will probably be interested in a Home Theater system or satellite TV connection. The BPO agent can make use of this opportunity to make the sale.
You can use the customer data for market survey as well. The outbound call center agents can call and ask specific and relevant questions to the target customers to find out what they need and what sort of a product/service will suit their convenience more. It’s all a case of smart telemarketing!
Gone are the days when the Best Customer Service award would go to the company that didn’t win any other award. In modern business, customer service is a serious factor in determining if the company will have a steady base of customers. Business firms that want to make a difference in the way they were handling their customers are now hiring answering services firms.
The call center agents are stepping in not just to rectify the down-sliding database of customers. The BPO agents also work towards creating a favorable and positive brand image for the client company.
Consumers depend a lot of hear-say when they buy products/services. Consumers will only talk about your product/service in a good light if your after-sale service is top-notch. Smart consumers know that telemarketing agents make tons of promises to push their sales. It’s only after the conclusion of a sale that they find out if the company really has a good customer care service.
Answering service plays the most important role here. If the BPO agents manning your company phones can get in touch with your inbound call center agents and get their problems sorted out, it reflects well on the branding of the company. Entrust your phone lines to a call center services firm. A steady and loyal base of customers will take your business to the next level.
It’s true that the BPO firms are always replenished with manpower to deal with high attrition rate. However, the grouse over quality call center employees is still very much there. Nathan Dixon, an answering service manager, says, “The lack of soft skills makes it difficult for us to provide placements to many. They are just not there!” By soft skills, we are talking about confidence, business ethics and attitude, among others.
The young guns trying to break into the call center services industry are falling short of the benchmark in terms of qualities that are needed to shine in this sector. In fact, the worst part is that these are qualities which are personality traits. Either you pick them up or have them or either you spend a lifetime hankering for them with no success.
It’s not that the BPO firms have not tried to train the new call center hopefuls. Dixon has himself conducted several classes with his new answering service recruits but he shakes his head in disappointment when asked if those sessions made a difference. He says, “They picked up, yes, but even then they were far behind the desired stage.”
With call center services striving to improve their quality with each passing day, the motto for the business outsourcing agents is perform or perish. It remains to be seen if they can overcome this set-back.
