Many call centers are now using Facebook and Twitter for sales lead generation. But an equal number of them are leaving out LinkedIn. As opposed to this unhealthy trend, this professional networking site has all the ingredients needed for B2B lead generation. B2B projects don’t work on telemarketing calls anymore. You have to do something extra, something that shows off how effective and professional you can be. LinkedIn is what premiere BPO units trust for B2B projects. There is a certain amount of credibility to your brand when you feature of LinkedIn and have some recommendations. The professional networking site brings together all the companies and employees that you may feel the need to connect with.
The primary advantage of B2B lead generation on LinkedIn is that you can survey the scene. Before you rush in to grab projects, you will have to do some marketing pitches to the companies you want the projects from. LinkedIn provides you with that platform. Call center agents can approach business executives and influential members of the board through this site. The BPO agents can even get a reference from a common contact. The contact base of the business process outsourcing unit increases manifold through canvassing on LinkedIn.
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There is a sustained growth in the BPO sector. Yet the stock market value of the call center companies continue to plummet! This is a bizarre phenomenon that the experts of the business process outsourcing industry have not been able to explain satisfactorily. There are some calculated responses to this fall in the stock values of call centers. Some feel that it could be because of the rising inflation in prices. Call center services cannot hike up their price tags for the simple reason that they will find themselves on the leeward side of business deals if they offer uncompetitive prices. On the other hand, their cost of production is not getting any lower, thanks to the same inflated price scenario.
There is another reason cited by the BPO experts. The cost of hiring better manpower for telemarketing services is higher than what they allocate for their budget. Third world call centers are now working on a quality-oriented system, as opposed to the traditional way of using a cost-oriented business model. Because of the numerous telemarketing units fighting for talented agents and employees, the cost of hiring has gone higher. Unfortunately, these rising costs have dented into the profit margins. The general profit margin has dipped from 18-20% to 13-14%. The repercussions of these falls is reflected in the stock values headed downwards.
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The standalone BPO units are developing better facilities to compete with the IT sector. Experts studying the trends of business process outsourcing have always pointed out how the IT sector is moving ahead in bolder strides than the call center industry. The business firms in countries like USA are looking at companies that can provide them a bit of IT support along with call center services. That is how bigger names in the business get the bulk of the projects while the telemarketing units find it comparatively tougher to bag them. As observed from the trends, call centers have to pull up their infrastructure and provide a more diverse range of outsourcing services.
A prime reason why the call centers are falling short of business is that the cost factor is not the only reason why business firms are outsourcing. The concept of BPO has changed over the last few months. It has become more of a business supporting enterprise as opposed to call center services that do the non-core work for your company. Because the core business areas of a business needs innovative engineering, new technologies and development of new platforms for better revenue generation, the diversification has become extremely necessary in call center units.
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The BPO sector, fresh from the turmoil that this year put it through, will go through a consolidation phase in the first quarter of the next year. The global survey and research group, Gartner, has come out with a report saying that call centers will be looking to settle down and adapt to the changing dynamics of telemarketing services in 2011. There is a strong speculation that many of bigger players will brand out and embrace different lines of business to cope with the changing times. The challenge of doing something different in the call center business is necessary because some of the core issues of business process outsourcing were challenged in 2010.
Making the BPO service portfolio broader was always part of our agenda. The experts working for us had predicted long back that voice-based call center services are only the tip of the outsourcing iceberg. There will be various other disciplines to follow and most of them would be non-voice call center operations. Keeping these forecasts in mind, we have developed our SEO and web development teams. Now these departments are generating profits and financing their own expansion drives. We are in the act of recruiting more quality manpower to meet the rising demands. 2011 will be an exciting year for us in office! Stay tuned on this page for updates.
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