Quality call centre facilities can be a lifesaver for an organization and can improve the customer experience for a long time. However, a lot of needless issues can be created by selecting the wrong answering service or call centre.
Below, before hiring a call centre or answering service, we’ll look at the 5 top questions you need to ask.
1. What Kind of Availability Do You Provide?
What kind of availability they provide is the first thing you need to find out about a call centre. You need to know how versatile they are going to be and when exactly they are going to manage your company’s calls.
Are you looking for a 24/7 call centre dealing with calls? Or is it good if, during normal business hours, the call centre just makes and receives calls?
Some call centres do not provide 24/7 services, so finding out what you can expect beforehand is crucial. Depending on the nature of your company, you might even need to take holidays into account as well.
2. What Level Can be Expected for Reporting?
A quality call centre will provide your company with very comprehensive reporting and data. In anything they do, they will be very clear.
Some call centres can only have very specific information relating to the number of calls and activities over a period of time. Great call centres, however, will have extensive data analytics as well as access to captured audio that you will be able to check.
It is important that you ask every call centre that you are considering working on what reporting level you should expect from them. Before you employ a call centre, be sure to find out what reports you will get.
3. What Amount of Volume Can You Handle?
Depending on your business and its scale, when it comes to servicing your clients, you will have different needs. Before they are available to work for your company, many call centres would have a minimum number of companies required.
You need to make sure that you know how many calls per month you plan to receive. Take the time to make the best estimation for you
If you are a smaller business looking at call centre facilities, make sure that you find a company that deals for you and that there is a lower number of calls.
4. What Services Do You Provide for Inbound and Outbound Services?
Before selecting a call centre, it is necessary to make the distinction between outbound and inbound services.
Inbound, or answer services, which provide help for customer service inquiries, technical queries, or payment processing.
Typically, outbound services include cold calling and sales, lead generation, and data collection using customer surveys.
If you run a small business simply searching for a service to respond to customer help, you would probably have different needs than a larger organization recruiting telephone services to produce a high volume of leads.
5. Are Your Agents Experienced in My Sector?
It’s crucial that you find a business that knows the ins and outs of your industry when selecting the best call centre for your company. A call centre should be able to accommodate all of the demands and specifications unique to the industry comfortably.
A phone call from the medical office would be somewhat different from what can be expected from a call, for instance, made on behalf of an airline.
There will be no specialization in some call centres, and some call centres will have years of experience in different industries. Take the time to find out exactly what type of experience they bring to the table before recruiting a call centre.
Conclusion
Hiring a call centre to manage calls, both inbound and outbound, will provide the company with some great benefits.
You shouldn’t take the decision lightly, though.
It is important that you only employ a call centre that you can trust and that really provides the service you need. A call centre will be the face of your business after all.
Founder and CEO of Tech-Synergy, a leading provider of audio transcription, translation, medical record review, customer service, call center, and other back-office support services to customers around the world. Staffed with over 500 people and operating round the clock, we work as an extended office for our clients enabling them to be nimble and cost-effective.