Why a Telco Should Outsource Their Call Centre

In the telecommunications world, there is a lot of discussion currently regarding the benefits of outsourcing call centre operations. Such a hands-off approach is sometimes seen as risky and unnecessary, but the truth of the matter is that outsourcing in this manner can be one of the most successful ways of generating and maintaining customer loyalty. There are other benefits as well, and that is why it is important to fully understand every advantage that outsourcing call centre operations can offer your company.

 

No More Staffing Problems

 

Once you opt to go with an external service provider, the task of dealing with any staffing issues, including the hiring and management processes, are taken out of your hands. This not only removes the time and effort needed to handle telco call centre staffing but saves your company time and money as well.

 

Significantly Lower Costs

 

Once the decision to outsource a call centre has been made, it will quickly become evident just how much lower the costs can be. Rather than investing in developing infrastructure and managing operations with an in-house call centre, instead you will see considerable savings by handing off the duties to an service provider.

 

No Issues With High Call Volume

 

Regular overflow call volume can be a serious problem. However, opting to outsource a portion of your call centre specifically to deal with this is an easy answer that will save you money in the long run.

Offer Extended Hour Availability Without Huge Costs

 

One of the biggest advantages of choosing to outsource call centre operations is that you will be able to provide your customers with availability beyond your normal business hours for a fraction of what it would cost in-house.

 

Better Uptime and Call Quality

 

Outsourcing to a reliable external service provider can net you 100 percent uptime and in addition, excellent call quality at all hours. This improves your company’s ability to meet and surpass customer expectations and significantly improve customer relations.

 

Seamless Integrations

 

It is imperative that an external service provider is able to offer call centre services that meld seamlessly with the other day to day operations your telco offers. You want to ensure that you are getting a trained team of customer service operators that have extensive experience in dealing with all manner of customer calls. Familiarity with things such as social media interaction, live web chat, voice support, and email communication are a must, particularly if those are things that your customer base has come to expect from your brand.

 

Versatility is Key

 

Given the way the technology landscape is constantly shifting, customer service for any successful company needs to be able to keep up with the trends. To this end, outsourcing to an external service provider such as KPI Connect can let you have all the access to the flexibility needed to keep customer relations running as smooth as possible for a fraction of the cost. External providers make an effort to keep their specialists trained in everything ranging to product inquiries to technical support, meaning that they can cover all the bases so that you do not have to.

 

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How a Building Supply Company Benefits from Outsourced Customer Service

There are lots of gimmicks and features that are being used by building supply companies these days making it hard to compete without them. Maintaining the same standard of quality customer service and working to guarantee that your customers receive a high level of service every day, can be challenging with all of the things that your employees do on a daily basis. There is one way that you can provide better customer service; through outsourcing customer service calls.

 

It is pretty well-known that building supply companies thrive when customers feel like they are receiving great customer service. Oftentimes, even if another company offers a lower price, loyal customers will keep coming to one store for their building supplies, simply because they like the treatment they get there. And, it is no secret that a lot of business in building supply stores comes from word of mouth. If one contractor has a good customer service experience with your business, you could see a lot more business from them and all of their friends.

 

Here is where outsourcing comes in. It may seem contradictory to hand off your customer service calls to someone else when you have worked for years to develop the way that your employees interact with customers, but it is really not. Call center employees, like those here at KPI Connect, are able to efficiently handle customer service because they have lots of experience and training, specifically on phone communication, that your employees likely do not. Furthermore, the call center can protect your brand by learning how you already interact with your customers, what to say and what not to, in order to become excellent representatives of your business.

 

Associates at a call center can help to provide you with an increase of repeat and loyal customers. This is because they know how to solve a customer’s problems over the phone quickly and precisely, while being friendly and respectful. They can also eliminate hold times that plague different departments. Not only that, they can give your customers extra attention that your employees likely do not have time to. Your cashier likely does not have time to ring people up and call someone back to see if their problem was resolved. However, call center associates can give them those callbacks, which often leave customers feeling just like someone has went that extra mile to make sure they are satisfied.

 

Not only can outsourcing provide better customer satisfaction results, call centers can prove the results to you. By conducting customer satisfaction surveys and supplying you with detailed analytics, call centers can assure you that they are getting results that you will be happy with. Even without these reports, you will likely be able to look around your store and see for yourself the results of customers who feel that they have received a high level of customer service.

 

Without having to answer the phones, your employees will have a less burdensome and stressful workload, which will make them happier to be there. This also means that they will be more likely to provide better customer service when face-to-face with your customers. In the end, what is more important than happy employees and happy customers? Call KPI Connect to see how we can help your building supply company have top quality customer service today!

 

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Why Outsourcing Your Loyalty Reward Program Support Makes Sense

Just about any business owner or manager has an understanding that gaining customers is very difficult. They also know that keeping them is even harder. That is where a loyalty reward program can make such a big impact. It can bring in new customers looking for that added bonus of doing business, and it can retain those customers with incentives they enjoy.

However, running your loyalty reward program can be a daunting task, especially when you are already running your business operations. That is why outsourcing your loyalty reward program makes perfect sense.

 

There to Respond to Customers

 

While your staff goes about their daily business, customers may be contacting you with questions about your loyalty reward program, or even redemption of their earned benefits. That can take valuable time and effort away from regular business duties.

By outsourcing those obligations, you can have a dedicated team of professionals ready and able to handle that inflow of calls or emails so you do not have to. On your end, it is business as usual, and as far as the customers are concerned, they have a seamless outlet that manages their loyalty reward program issues without missing a beat.

Strengthening the Customer Bonds

 

Because your loyal customers are receiving prompt attention from reliable professionals that understand how to keep them coming back, your business can thrive in two ways:

• You will be free to continue pushing your business forward without the distraction of dealing with incentive programs. With that managed for you, the focus can stay on your work.

 

• Satisfied customers will have the great experience they are looking for from your company, so they will want to return not only for more loyalty rewards but for the excellent service too.

 

Rather than your loyal and returning customers waiting for you to have a spare moment to respond to a message or having them wait on the line with extensive hold times, they can be engaged immediately. They will feel gratified and appreciated instantly, which can only set a good impression for your business.

 

Global Appeal

 

Every business starts out locally, but a customer loyalty program can move your business to a new frontier. That means different cultures and languages to deal with. Your internal team may not be able to handle such an inflow, but the right outsourced specialist can give you the quality service you want for your customer base in multiple languages.

Imagine keeping your customers happy in their native language instead of trying to communicate in yours and ending up with misunderstandings.

As you can see, outsourcing your loyalty reward program has great advantages that can keep your business operating smoothly. But it can also allow you to continue growing your business through efficiency and dedication to keeping your customers happy and returning. You can have all this without adding any extra workloads on your staff. Trust the professionals with your loyalty reward program and watch your business soar.

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Good and Bad Customer Service Trends

New customer service trends emerge all the time because everyone is looking to improve their company’s customer service. Your customers are the lifeblood of your company, so adopting new customer service techniques and mediums can vastly benefit your company. However, just because they are trending does not mean that all of these techniques are effective. Here is a look at both good and bad customer service trends.

 

Good Customer Service Trends

 

Text Messages: Studies and surveys show that most customers prefer a text response. They are great for communicating with customers quickly, with little to no hold time. The only real caveat is that your responses have to be precise and accurate. Your customer service agents will need to be highly trained, in order to think and solve problems quickly.

Rapid Response Times: Customers are getting used to customer service response that is nearly instantaneous, and they come to expect it out of every company. So, no matter which medium you use for customer service responses, the faster your response times are, the happier customers will be.

Social Media Outreach: More and more customers are reaching out to companies through social media. It is usually one of the fastest ways to get in contact with a company, and people are taking advantage of it. You are missing out if you are not responding to customer service inquiries on your social media, because companies that are responding publicly are getting a lot of customer satisfaction because of it.

Follow Ups: Customers do not like to think that you solved their problem and then forgot about them. So, a follow-up contact to check in and make sure they are not still encountering a problem can go a long way towards increasing a customer’s satisfaction level. Follow-ups can be done in the form of phone calls, emails, texts, etc., so they are pretty easy to implement.

Scheduling Apps: In this fast-paced world, customers do not want to wait on hold to schedule an appointment. It is far simpler for customers to schedule the appointments themselves. You can implement this system in a couple of different ways: you could add a section on your website for DIY scheduling, or you could use an app like Schedulista.

FAQ Videos: Customers tend to like to solve their problems themselves before breaking down and calling customer service. So, having a large list of FAQs is a great way for customers to troubleshoot. However, they like “how to” videos even more. Short videos that explain how to use features or fix common problems give your customer step-by-step instructions, along with visuals. It is easy to upload such videos to YouTube.

 

Bad Customer Service Trends

 

Negative Online Contacts: Just because celebrities get into arguments with their followers online does not mean that your business can afford to. Anyone who represents your company should maintain a positive online presence. Treating a customer badly in such a public way can have a drastically negative effect on your company.

Using Only Facebook: People are turning away from Facebook as more types of social media sites and apps are emerging. So, if your only social media presence is on Facebook, you are missing out on a large customer base.

Exclusively Telephone Customer Service Support: Customers are evolving to use new technologies, and we now have other ways that they can contact us. Text, chat, and email customer service make up a lot of customer service contact volume today. If you are only using telephone customer service support, you are really missing out.

 

 

This is the age of the informed consumer. They can see a good business when they see that others like it too. So, when you treat them well, they are really good at writing rave reviews online. So, if you provide good, fast customer service, not only will your customers be happy, they will sing your praises to others. Since the majority of people now rely on the reviews of a business to make decisions on which company they will choose, a great review will hopefully result in even more customers.

 

 

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Proper Customer Service Email Communication

There are a lot of customer service email scripts and templates out there. They are pretty easy to find, and all you have to do is copy and paste to use them. However, while they may be a quick way to communicate with your customers, scripted email responses may not be the most effective way to communicate with your customers regarding their inquiries. If a customer receives a scripted response, they are likely going to call customer service later, and be unhappy. As anyone who has worked in customer service can tell you, if the customer is already upset before contact, it has a real potential not to be a good outcome. The information in this article will help you to avoid that whole fiasco and provide you with more satisfied customers, and an enjoyable customer service experience.

 

Problems with Scripts

 

Poorly scripted emails from customer service are common enough that you have probably received one yourself at one time or another. Here is an example of a typical scripted customer service email:

“Hi, <<customer.first_name>>, Thanks for contacting the XXXX”. Then, it usually goes on to give the customer service team’s hours and days of operation.

There are a few problems with this type of email, and you can sense them as you are reading it. Someone did not use your name, and the whole thing just feels robotic and computerized. Worse still, the email points out that nothing can be done to fix the customer’s problem because it is after business hours. It is one thing to tell a customer that you can’t fix their problems after you have tried, or at least heard what they had to say, but to tell them right away with the first response that you can’t fix their problems, without even talking to them, can be a put off.

 

How to Send Better Emails and Make Better Scripts

 

If you do not have a 24-hour customer service response team, and someone sends you an email after business hours, it is okay to use an automated, scripted response. However, the script needs to be written the right way. Rather than stating that you are unable to fix the customer’s problem because it is after business hours, add “This is an automatically generated email” at the end of your automated email. Why does this work? Generally, people who see that the reply they got back was automatically generated, they know that their message was received and once your business is open, they will get a real response. People sometimes will feel anxious if they receive no response back at all and will begin to wonder if their message was received in the first place. So, an automated response helps reassure them that their message was received. When you add that the business is closed at this time, but that their email will be replied to as soon as possible, or answered in order, they at least know they are in line to have a response.

 

You could consider sending out personalized emails yourself. No matter how big your company is, it should still be rooted in making the customers happy. However, it takes a lot of time and commitment that many business owners do not have. If you are wanting your business to have expanded hours for customer response, it is a great idea to hire a contact center like KPI Connect that is able to provide customer service email response outside of your normal business hours. This way your customers are able to be replied to by a real person vs an automated response. Whether you’re sending personal emails or automated scripted emails, it’s important that your customers feel like they have been heard.

 

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How Outsourcing Your Car Dealership Customer Service Can Make A Difference to Your Bottom Line

With the ubiquitous nature of smartphones and social media, both potential and existing customers have more opportunities to connect with businesses and brands – and vice versa – than ever before. No longer can a business thrive solely on the basis of high-quality products and services; in this age of constant connectivity, high-quality multi-platform customer service is the ultimate key to sustained success. While this is true in any field, it is especially relevant if you own and operate an automobile dealership.

 

You are not just selling cars, you are presenting a lifestyle choice, and a major component of that process is the ability to provide convenient and satisfying customer service that results in repeat business and positive word-of-mouth. Rather than handling these duties in-house, outsourcing your car dealership’s customer service to a reputable multi-channel contact center can make a real difference to your bottom line in many ways.

 

Reduce Operating Costs

 

 

Since most call centers serve multiple clients in a range of industries, the operating costs of the facility, equipment, maintenance, and training are spread out instead of footing the bill all by yourself. By the same token, these agents are experienced, knowledgeable, adept at dealing with customers in a courteous manner, and versatile enough to handle any situation that may arise. With everything already in place, you only pay for services as needed. Whether it’s on a regular basis, during peak periods or holidays, or if you find yourself shorthanded for any reason, the parameters depend entirely upon the unique needs of your dealership.

 

Increase Customer Satisfaction

 

Because strict quality control is the name of the game, you can rest assured that the agents representing your dealership will uphold the same high standards of professionalism and dedication to customer satisfaction exhibited by your in-house team. Entrusting your inbound and outbound customer service needs to a first-class call center means reduced hold times when customers try to contact you, and the extended hours offered by firms such as KPI Connect allow customers the convenience to connect with your dealership outside of traditional business hours.

 

 

Free Up Staff

 

 

Instead of tasking your skilled in-house team with answering common questions via phone, email, web chat, or social media, outsourcing these duties to experienced customer service specialists will free up your staff to do what they do best and focus their valuable time and effort on core business activities. Not only will outsourcing allow your staff to be more productive, but potential walk-in customers will appreciate receiving prompt attention rather than waiting for someone to finish up a phone call or email.

 

 

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Why Your Pharmacy Would benefit By Complimenting Its Customer Service By Outsourcing

Pharmacies handle a great deal of sensitive personal information. Not only do they fill people’s medication that they are in need of, they are also privy to knowledge of people’s ailments, all of their medical, insurance, personal information, and more. Most people see pharmacies as one of the most trusted community businesses because pharmacists help people when they are in need of medications that range from minor to life saving. They know that they are able to trust their pharmacists.

So, when it comes to customer service calls, outsourcing may be a scary idea for many pharmacy owners. However, it can actually benefit the business in many ways, and be done in a secure and confidential manner.

As a customer, it can be very frustrating to call your pharmacy, especially if they are known to have long hold times or that your call will be unanswered. This causes a negative customer service experience for customers, especially given that pharmacy calls can be vitally important to their health. Your business likely misses calls every day due to high call volumes and after-hours calls. In other businesses, missed calls are missed business opportunities, which is true of pharmacies, as well. One of the most beneficial aspects of outsourcing customer service calls is that they can help with answering calls during high call volume times, and they can answer calls after hours, creating less work for pharmacy employees and leaving your customers happy knowing that they are able to fill their prescriptions in a timely manner.

For the most part, pharmacists do not end up answering the phones and have assistants or clerks to do so. Today, customers often do not even interact with the pharmacist, coming in contact with assistants or clerks instead unless it is necessary that the pharmacist speak directly to the customer about their medications. Call center agents are trained to handle customer service calls and handle them efficiently. This means that they’re able to solve customers’ problems and answer their questions accurately as they are highly trained. Not only that, they excel at providing customer satisfaction, ensuring that customers come away from the calls feeling positive about them and are far less likely to provide businesses with negative customer service feedback.

Lots of pharmacies have only a handful of employees to answer calls, most of which perform other job duties, as well. This takes them away from their other work and burdens them with a heavy workload. Stressed out employees are not as capable to provide the same level of service to each customer if they have multiple things that they need to do at once. They become distracted, make mistakes, which one doesn’t want in a pharmacy. You’re likely to start seeing a higher employee turnover rate, as well. In this scenario, everyone loses. Outsourcing your customer service calls to a call center can ease their workload and provide your employees with a better working environment with less stress.

If your pharmacy has experienced lots of high call volume, you’ve likely started thinking about hiring more employees to answer the calls. But, when exploring this idea, it doesn’t take long to learn that there are tons of extra costs and equipment needed. Many pharmacies don’t have room to expand to include a call-center or office in which several people can answer calls. But, outsourcing the calls to an already established call center can offset these costs. You won’t be paying to install extra equipment, phones, furnishings or office supplies. Instead, the call center already has them and you’re paying for their associates’ work and training, rather than the equipment they use.

There is a stigma that surrounds outsourcing. Many people believe that it takes jobs from other employees. The reality instead is that outsourcing creates jobs and will improve both employee and customer satisfaction. So, if you’ve ever considered outsourcing your pharmacy’s customer service calls, contact KPI Connect to see how they can help your pharmacy run more smoothly and help more people with their needs.

 

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