Thursday, October 18, 2007

Outsourcing Customer Support

One of the most crucial elements in making a business grow is handling your customer needs. It is a part or will become a part of any business when your well planned business strategy shows big positive results. Whether you sell something or offer services, customer satisfaction is no doubt a major key in business success. Although there are some customers that are not satisfied with your product/services, there are ways to cover what they need and further improve customer experience. One way is by outsourcing call support to a well experience call center company with good customer satisfaction rating.

The benefits call center companies can offer to a business has been proven for more than a decade, that even big companies such as Dell, American Express and Microsoft use call center services to cover some of their the customer problems regarding their products.

One of the reasons why businesses big or small outsource their customer support is because of the much lower cost. You don’t have to worry on mass hiring call center agents and training them to support your products, also you don’t need to invest on office space and equipments to accommodate the agents. Not to mention call center companies like Global Response has enough highly trained call center agents to immediately start new projects while you sit back and plan your next step in improving your company’s worth.

With so many call center companies in the market today, it is best if you have criteria in choosing which call center can give you more. Make an extensive research on which call center can give you more quality results.

Friday, October 12, 2007

IVR's New Frontier in Australia

IVR or interactive voice response has been around since the 70s' where touchstone technology was used. It has developed through era, which is the tone dialing designed by engineers, small-vocabulary speech recognition that was plotted by speech technologist, and the highly-developed and logicaly-constructed ivr technology designed by professionals interested with end user contentment rather than human engineering.

Evolving to a more sophisticated sytem it has serve and supports different idustries whether in paying bills and inquiring order status. Though IVR has been highly critizised by many user mainly because of the time consumed in talking to pre-recorded voice.

United Customer Management Solutions (UCMS) announced a partnership with Enterprise Integration Group (EIG). EIG being an an expert in improving IVR utilization and customer satisfaction will address the major deficiencies while UCMS resell the technology and custom design software to the bussiest call center operation. With this partnership they aim to make IVR problems a thing of the past not only for technology solution but also for customer needs.


With this partnership, clients will look forward to a better guidance to their callers with the reliable IVR or speech recognition system that will be serve by EIG and UCMS. ______________________________

The world’s most prestigious brands trust Global Response Call Center with their single most important asset: their customers. Find Out Why.

Call Center Agent Work Flow

Nowadays where technology plays a big part of everyone’s lives, technical support is always needed especially for those who are just learning to use technologies such as the computers, mobile phone and etc. If you are planning to take a call center job you should consider if you can handle the pressure talking to irate callers giving them instructions and the graveyard shifts. There are lots of call center companies out there that often search for call center agents to help them handle callers. If you know you can handle this pressure then knowing how a call is handled by a call center agent will give you an edge in applying for the job.

1. Greet the caller with a smile, ask for their full name then try calling him/her by their first name. In this way you are actually personalizing the call and will improve customer experience.

2. Proceed in helping the customer. You can use all of your resources to that can help you. You can ask your supervisor if you can't find the best resolution to your customer's problem. While helping the customer you can ask some personal details such as phone numbers and email address once she is already comfortable communicating with you. By means of this the caller will not think that you are doing unnecessary things during the call.

3. To avoid dead air, you can make rapport by asking not offensive personal question.

4. Always ask for permission in putting customer on hold. Tell them how long and why. Never put the customer on hold for more than 2 minutes. Customer might think that you leaved her already. If you're not yet done finding the best resolution ask another minute. Customer will understand that, just be transparent and true to your client.

5. End the call in a polite way, try to leave a mark on the customer that you still want her to call and you are still interested talking to her. Try to give your contact details if allowed for her lifeline.



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The world’s most prestigious brands trust Global Response Call Center with their single most important asset: their customers. Find Out Why.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Dealing With Irate Callers



Have you ever watched any short call center movie clips from youtube that features an irate caller going ballistic to the agent? Sometimes it’s funny to watch movies like that but if you are the call center agent in that situation you probably think otherwise. Irate callers from any call center business are something that cannot be avoided since calls are randomly selected depending on the department. Whether it’s from inbound or outbound call there is no escape from the explosive and frustrated voice of irate callers.

Among the types of calls in a call center, an outbound call has the largest chance to get an irate customer. Well simply because outbound calls are done by calling customers which often not happy to entertain unsolicited calls, especially if the agents are selling something. While inbound call centers always get callers that need support, they also get irate customers that are often triggered by their frustration in following the instructions of the call center agents.

Now, if you are planning to start a call center business or career, it is best to prepare for the inevitable irate callers. Here are some tips that will definitely help you in handle their calls without making you frustrated as well.
  • Assume all calls are from irate callers
  • Having a mind set that all calls are irate callers will help you give your best service in handling the call. Thus, making the callers feel confident that you can help them.

  • Always think that it’s nothing personal
  • If the caller goes ballistic and keeps on swearing always remember that its nothing personal. They are angry because of the situation not because of who they are talking to. Don’t get angry with the caller because that will produce negative feedback not directly to you as the call center agent but to the company you are representing.

  • “Yes Sir, I Understand!”
  • Never interrupt an angry customer because if you do they’ll just continue in swearing. If they stop the word “Yes Sir I understand how you feel” will help ease their frustration.

  • You Can’t Please Everyone
  • If you tried everything to make the caller calm down and failed, then you can transfer your call to someone who can handle it like your supervisor. Well you can’t please everyone.

  • Ask Follow-up Questions
  • If you feel that your caller is starting to get frustrated ask follow-up questions to help you get back to the problem and try your best to solve it.
These tips are proven to work in most call center agents I know and for me as well. Being a call center agent is not an easy job, it still depends on the calls that you’ll get.

The world’s most prestigious brands trust Global Response Call Center with their single most important asset: their customers. Find Out Why.

Monday, October 8, 2007

CRM On Demand

The popularity of CRM applications in a business cannot be denied at all. But now in the last few years, there has been yet another change on the CRM front.

Traditional CRM software has been replaced by much sharper and precise on demand solutions called ‘CRM on demand’. What exactly does CRM on demand comprise of and what does it offer to your business that more conventional forms of CRM applications don’t? Well, for starters it is completely tailored and created just for your business. So you save a lot of time and money on upfront IT investment.

There are of course a lot more benefits of CRM on demand.

Benefits for your business
• One of the most important benefits that has been instrumental in the growth of ‘on-demand CRM solutions’, is the cost.
• While more traditional forms of software will cost you on a yearly basis with costs running up to millions of dollars up front, the on demand CRM software comes with a monthly subscription charge per user.
• Exclude the cost of implementation, infrastructure and yearly support and you have a deal that you simply cannot afford to lose out on.
• Also the pricing can be altered as you wish. There are many CRM vendors who allow you to pay only for the services that you need.
• Since most ‘On demand’ CRM solutions are web based, it eliminates the need for servers, databases and a complex network system.

Features
• On demand CRM solutions will bring about a marked improvement in all aspects of your business including sales, marketing and service.
• You are giving your sales reps a powerful tool that enables them to make faster and improved decisions.
• Your marketing team will be able to hit the right target audience at the right time with the right message.
• Increased efficiency will help you to keep your customers loyal and minimize costs.

For More Information visit: http://www.officeinteractive.com

By: venkatbabu

Thursday, October 4, 2007

What Answering Service Company do you prefer?

Technology and communication are undeniably an evidence of humanity’s progress. In this fast phase of progress, no one wants to be left alone. Especially when you own a business that you expect to grow after several years of hard work and a bunch of luck. With the rapid growth of communication technology several services were made and formulated to help businessmen in communicating with their prospects and clients.

Answering service has been a part of the corporate world. It plays an important role in the business field as an online receptionist ready to take important calls even after office hours. Being available 24 hours a day means you extend your support for your clients and customers which will definitely help increase your customer satisfaction rating and probably your profit as well. Without answering service to take care of your business calls, important deals with your clients may be loss and might give negative feedback to your company.

In getting answering service from reputable company such as Answering Service Care, there are some things you have to consider such as the following:

1. How long was the company in the Answering Service Business?
Experience of Answering Service Company is an important factor to consider to give you assurance that they can handle what you require and produce the results you expected.

2. The location of the company
Knowing the location of the company will give you an idea, if the answering service company can serve you even when natural calamity strikes.

3. What major companies do they serve?
Doing a research on which company your prospect answering service serve is a good basis to know whether they are trust worthy and can keep the confidentiality of your business dealings. You also have to know how long does an average client stay with the answering service company.

4. How do they train their answering service agents?
Quality and quantity is important in almost every part of business. Therefore knowing how they train their agents will give you an idea how they assure quality in each agents they deploy for the client.

Following this guideline will definitely help you land in the right and the most professional answering service companies that will help boost your company’s image in the corporate world.

Need a professional answering service company? Let Global Response Contact Center and Fulfillment help you. Contact us and hear the difference.