Customer Service Goes Virtual

The customer service departments of various BPO companies are going virtual. The struggle to be there for the customers at all times has reached a new height. Call centers are now working out a schedule by which they are recruiting answering service agents who will work as a virtual team. The agents will ideally be located in different time zones so that they are able to cover the entire 24 hours. The idea is to keep phone answering agents on the call during the lean hours. The customers can be located anywhere across the world. They will call according to their convenience. So the call center has to be ready to receive them.

By careful scheduling, the call center units can assign agents according to the time zones they are based in. It will be the BPO manager’s job to check up the peak hours at the inbound call center desk. Get the best agents on the job during this time. You can keep this thing with the customer service agents working from the call centers itself. During the weaker periods of time, get the virtual phone answering agents to come into the picture. Brief them about the telemarketing project and the requirements well in advance. You need the whole team to function as one unit.

Value to BPO Units

Business firms are attaching more value to BPO units after noticing their significant contribution towards their bottom line. The call center services was always been a distant business partner, handling non-core business work. But these non-core business aspects have become money spinners in the modern day context. Consider customer service as an example. In the initial stages, the answering service was considered unproductive and very few brands actually made an effort to offer quality phone answering facilities to the customers. However, now you cannot expect to retain customers or even acquire new ones unless you are very adept in customer care. These are small ways in which call centers are now part of the core business network.

The rise in the importance of the BPO units has added to the responsibility. Call centers are now aware that they have duties towards the brand that they are representing. The stakes are high and so are the chances of committing an error. Call center services are now pushing towards an important phase. They have a chance to make better contributions and also earn long-term projects. Call center units would prefer stronger partnerships with their telemarketing clients. There is much sense is making these partnerships to get a steady flow of projects in this rather dynamic market.

More Satisfied Customers on Answering Service

The answering service departments of the call centers are seeing some improvements in the recent times. As compared to the satisfaction levels among the callers in the past, there is a sharp rise in how many callers go back from the inbound call center desk happy with the experience. It’s not uncommon for the callers to find that the phone answering system is not up to the mark and there is a lot of ground for improvement. However, with the right steps in the right direction, the monsters of the past can be put to rest now. Callers have observed that repeated complaints about the call center services have actually come off with some reward.

These days you can feel the efficiency when you call answering service. The percentage of first-call resolution has increased dramatically. The right call center agents are answering the phones. They are aware of the solutions, as much as they are confident about providing the right solution to the caller without wasting the caller’s time. There is a sense of urgency and BPO units are using Interactive Voice Response System (IVR) to handle the rush at the inbound call center desk. The insistence of keeping a close eye on the watch while answering calls has brought about excellent results. Time becomes a defining factor even for callers who are calling toll-free phone answering numbers.

When Answering Service is Busy

A pet peeve at the answering service desk is finding the number busy. It happens so often that you feel scared of calling the phone answering desk unless there’s a dire emergency! That’s not a healthy sign for a brand that wants to be popular with the customers. Having a functional and efficient inbound call center team is important for brand value. Customers thrive on brand value and that comes chiefly from customer service and customer care. If you are taking good care of your customers even after you have made the sale, you are earning some brownie points for yourself and your brand.

We have all experienced the frustration of finding the customer care number to be busy. Repeated calls to the number fail to elicit a different response. That’s where BPO firms need to work. They have to use specialized tools and probably interactive voice response system (IVRS) to tackle the clutter at the inbound call center. The right kind of technological investment, like depending on web enable call center services can solve a lot of your worries. You can route the traffic of customers to a website. This will take the pressure off telemarketing agents and yet bring you leads. Online lead generation will also ensure that the customers contact you through emails and queries addressed through the website. They will seldom call and you will have your phone lines free.

Answering Service: Order Taking

Order taking is one of the more up and coming call center services. It has been around for quite some time, but it’s only recently that it claimed its place under the sun. With the kind of takeaway and fast food networks that are coming up, the concept of ordering for your food on the phone is catching wind. The upwardly mobile want their pizzas and burgers on the dot. They like them with the characteristic idiosyncrasies, like the right kind of topping and flavor. If your business is into the fast food chain, you will quickly feel that the receptionist is not really the ideal person to take your orders. You need a specialized team of phone answering agents to handle your customers and process their orders. That’s when you need to hire a BPO unit.

Handing out the answering service work to the BPO unit will help you get in more customers. Once your professional order taking services hit the market, you will get positive feedback from all the customers you have. They will refer your fast food network before there are too many outlets out there who mess up orders! The call center agents who man your phone can process the orders in a prompt and professional way. They are skilled and trained to ensure that each order reaches the person concerned and there are no mix-ups. Moreover, the BPO service agents can hike up your sales through telemarketing methods like cross selling and up selling.

Voice Clarity on Answering Service

A persistent problem at the answering service table is the quality of the voice calls. Telemarketing calls made to the callers often come across as clear but when the customers call up, things are totally different. The BPO units who have phone answering projects find themselves at their wit’s end because they cannot fix the problem. On the other hand, they cannot ignore it because they are losing customers who are fed up with the static noise in the calls. The fact that they are talking to an agent thousands of miles away to solve a local problem becomes more prominent when there is call drops. They feel irritated and often angry at the lack of voice clarity in the calls.

The going is tougher for the call centers that do tech support projects, or even the financial ones. In those telemarketing campaigns, it becomes important for the callers to listen to every instruction clearly. Failure to do so would result is complications later on. That is why customers calling the answering service system make mistakes in following instructions clearly. This is messy for the BPO units as well. If the callers are not getting what the agents tell them, it leads to situations where the BPO service has to bend their backs to clean things up. It also raises questions on the technological equipment that the firm uses.

Volunteering for Emergency Answering Service

The answering service system in several emergency call centers offers the do-gooder a chance to play the Good Samaritan. If you are a BPO employee who wants to get into a bit of social service, you can volunteer to be a phone answering agent at one of the emergency call center desks. This will be a nice way for you to do something for the society and helping out those who need your assistance. To be a good at the emergency inbound call center table, you have to be alert and extremely focused. Whatever you give out from this desk will be important for the callers on the other end of the phone. More often than not, you might be doing some life saving tasks as well.

There are plenty of challenges at the emergency call center desk. You have to cautious about what you say and how you say it. You have to firm when giving out bad news or informing relatives about the deceased. All of that comes with the emergency answering service job. It pays for these BPO agents to know a little first aid and other life-saving techniques. There is no saying when they might be called upon to help out someone. It takes time for help to reach. A proactive inbound call center agent can handle the emergency while help goes out to the caller.

Making Customers Feel Special through BPO

Just like you’d want your guests to feel special and your guests want to feel privileged, it’s the same with your customers. In the competitive market you are working in, unless you make your customers feel some strong tug with your business, they will not hesitate to stride over to your rivals. This erosion of the consumer database can be prevented by quality answering service that a BPO can provide. Call center agents are trained to receive and process the customer’s calls in a way that leaves them feeling good about their association with your company. Despite the bad flak that the inbound call center receives for poor customer service, it remains the reason why customer bases remain intact.

To run a successful answering service team, the call center must understand the basic psychology of the customers. When they dial a number to speak to someone in the company, they have this wish that they will be able to talk to someone who’s nothing short of the CEO! They are not willing to settle for anything less. Keeping this in mind, the phone answering agents must be allowed to talk with a certain amount of authority. They must be able to take decisions that make the customers feel that whatever be their worry, you are willing to solve that in a jiffy.

BPO Jobs Return to American Homes!

In a bizarre turn of events, the outsourced BPO jobs that the Americans wanted back badly is returning to their homes! Yes, that’s the current scenario for the call center industry in USA. The jobs are coming back for sure, but not to the call centers. Answering service agents working from home are being hired to do the work. There are certain advantages of working from home. For example, the agent can work extra hours because they are saving up on the time of commuting. Similarly, they can work without the stress and tension associated with the BPO service work floor. They don’t have the typical peer pressure to tackle as well!

From the perspective of the hiring BPO firms, this is a fairly money-saving deal. They don’t need to set up a call center, with all the infrastructure and office space. They don’t have to pay for the electricity or for the establishment costs. And as for the work, they can always monitor the answering service done through online reports and other statistics. The biggie for the hiring call center services is that they can hire these agents at lesser pays. The state of unemployment is such that laid-off telemarketing agents are willing to work for thinner pay packets than what they used to make before they got the pink slip.

Answering Service Upgrades: How Necessary

How necessary is upgrading an answering service? That is the question that many call center investors ask. They feel contented to find that their inbound call center desk is working according to the demands of the industry. They don’t see any need why they must invest in sophisticated phone answering equipment and devices. There lies the catch. The BPO firm may not feel the need of upgrading, but the clients will like to see some new methods being applied. They will like to see their call center services being done using the latest technology and with expert professionalism. You have to score there to bag the telemarketing project. Clients don’t like to invest in firms if they don’t find the presence of modern business process outsourcing technology.

The process of answering service upgrading involves web-enabled call center services. Using the internet as the medium of communication means that there will smoother phone answering operations. The hold time of the employees will be reduced while the inbound call center can attend to an increased number of calls. Call centers are also trying to ensure that the calls are transferred between agents without the caller having to repeat the information. BPO firms must also take into account that callers are more likely to use mobile phones while calling and that means they would hate to wait it out for someone to come and solve their problem. They will lose patience and hang up.

More Power to Answering Service

The way ahead for answering service agents is one that is laced with excitement and greater responsibility. Several call centers across the world are trying out a new model that has been initiated by giants like the American Express. This makes BPO employees at the inbound call center desk take more responsibility in dealing with customers. The call center agents at the phone answering desk generally stick to a script, one that has a start and end protocol. However, the time has come for them to enrich the experience of the callers. And for that to happen, it’s important that they break away from the mould that has not taken the customer care department ahead like the other call center services.



BPO firms are allowing the answering service agents to take things in their stride. Agents find themselves with the power to bypass certain protocols to make things easier for the customers. A dynamic phone answering team is all that call centers need at this point in time. When the experimentations at the inbound call center team passes the acid test, others in the business process outsourcing world would join in too. BPO service agents in the units of American Express often hold conference calls to clear things out between the caller and the technicians. That’s a much better idea that just transferring the call to the tech team.

Answering Service Challenged by Help Desk!

The answering service of call center units has an unlikely adversary in its own backyard! Yes, help desk services has thrown its hat into the ring and is gearing up for a tough challenge to beat phone answering service as the main revenue earner for the BPO unit. That’s the trend that is coming to light in the recent past. The trend is stronger for the rural BPO services where the local agents are not conversant with the English language and therefore unsuitable for the inbound call center work. However, they are more than making up for it through their help desk work. Help desk work comprises of call center services like billing and product information and web marketing services.

At a skeletal level, the non-voice part of the call center is coming up strongly to make their presence felt. Even for something like lead generation, BPO agents are not relying on voice calls anymore. They are making better use of emails and websites to drive up the sales lead generation efforts. The aim is to ensure that the BPO service puts forward a multi-prong attack to get what they want: consumers or users or subscribers. Answering service stands threatened as the primary revenue earner for the call centers. Though help desk services still have a long way to go, the start has already been made.

Global BPO Contracts Rise, Price Falls

The number of contracts between business firms and BPO units shot up by 12% in the recent months, more specifically in the last quarter of April to June. However, the money that changed hands in the process because of the call center dealings was only $3.03 billion. That’s 22% less than what it was in the quarter prior to that. The reason that business process outsourcing insiders give is that because of offshore BPO service, the amount of money is not high enough. Companies have extensively used call centers in the developing countries to get their work done. As a result, they had the benefit of cost cuts. This is why the call center services didn’t see much of money being generated in the industry.

The BPO trends that can be seen here is indicative of the future as well. It’s common knowledge that the call center units working out of offshore destinations will continue to bag the telemarketing projects. The advantage of cost is not something that is forfeited easily. Moreover, sensing the amount of money in the BPO service sector, the call centers in these countries are improving their telemarketing services quality. This is making the task even more difficult for the domestic business process outsourcing units. And true to expectations, they are sitting idle with the major chunk of the projects making their way out of the country.

Latin America Beckons BPO

Latin America as a call center destination is in the spotlight now. Many top notch BPO firms from countries like USA and UK are now looking for destinations in Latin America to house their call centers. The advantages of being in this region are plenty, not to mention the big one of being the first movers. The region has promising prospects in terms of infrastructure, manpower and availability of space to set up BPO hubs. The biggest draw seems to be the fact that people in these regions are more in tune with the lifestyle of the consumers living in USA and UK and generally over Europe. This makes them better suited for telemarketing services as opposed to what people thought initially.

Telemarketing, like any other form of marketing, requires some sort of understanding about the customer and his/her needs. When the call center agents have an understanding of the lifestyle led by the consumers, they can present their case in a better way. It also helps the outbound call center agents to recognize the dormant requirements in the consumers and make sales pitches accordingly. In a way, it makes the job easier for the call centers that take up the task of doing their BPO work from Latin America. As the industry of BPO service grows in these parts, the bigger players of the sector would definitely show an interest. But as I wrote, the first movers’ advantage would be crucial in the long run.

Telemarketing Sector Proliferates

The telemarketing sector in India is showing the inevitable signs of growth. The top 10 call center companies in the country have grown by 15% in their combined earnings in this fiscal year. The amount of money that they were making in the BPO business touched $6.1 billion. If you consider the rest of the companies in the fray, the growth in the telemarketing services is definitely something of substance. That the BPO service unit in India was growing at this break-neck speed was mentioned in the report published by the International Labor Organization (ILO). However, the ILO also wrote that the answering service industry was growing at a faster rate, almost double, in the Philippines.

The Indian BPO scene has always been the yardstick to measure growth in the call center industry. If the Indian telemarketing scene has a good percentage of growth, it’s no wonder that the telemarketing services sector as a whole looks promising. The inverse is true as well. With continued threats that rock the call centers in India, leading them to keep contingency plans always at hand, the growth of 15% is nothing short of phenomenal. Other reports have already proved that the Indian business process outsourcing industry is already larger than the IT sector.

BPO Hub in Indian Hinterland

A back of the beyond hinterland in Karnataka, known as Shimoga, is going to be the site for a BPO hub. The announcement was made by the British Prime Minister on his recent visit to the country. The UK call center giant Xchanging will be setting up the BPO service unit in this town, which happens to be the home town of many significant political luminaries.

The business process outsourcing hub will come into existence soon. The training center to make local talent fit for answering service will start off as well. Initially, the call centers here will concentrate on getting back office functions. The phone answering part will come later, when the agents are trained in receiving and making telemarketing calls.

There is no doubt that the BPO firm has picked up a 3-tier location for their hub. This is probably the first time an MNC has chosen such a location to expand their call center business. It remains to be seen how the BPO service kick-starts. There is a capacity of housing about 1000 employees in the call centers.

The number can be scaled up to 2000 seats in the near future. A project of this magnitude will put any city-bred call center services firm to shame! The CEO of the telemarketing firm has pledged his commitment to the project and also thanked the government for their cooperation and support.

Telemarketing Woes Increase to 200m

The Federal Trade Commission has announced that the number of citizens signing up for the national Do Not Call (DNC) list has touched 200m. That mean, the telemarketing teams cannot call 200m consumers without violating the telecommunication law. This is a big blow for the call center industry. When the DNC list was being talked about being put into use in 2002, the telemarketing services were threatened.

However, that did not prevent the call centers from violating the DNC list at will, setting themselves up for fines and penalties. Nothing prevented the outbound call center agents from calling up the numbers listed on the DNC! Officially speaking, call centers are not supposed to call up the citizens on this list.

The 200m numbers being out of the telemarketing circuit, the call center managers have to think of something new and different. Lead generation has to take a new turn and the outbound call center agents have to be conservative in their approach. There are some who do not support the DNC list on the ground that telemarketing services add to the revenue of the country and such measures only harm the earning potential of the country.

However, on closer inspection you would find that protecting the privacy of the citizens is also the duty of the government. To prevent misuse of call centers, a DNC list is necessary. Surely there are other ways of conducting sales lead generation that cutting rudely into someone’s routine of work and family.

BPO Part of University Course!

After making headways into the most covert economies, the BPO sector is steamrolling its way into universities! In a landmark decision, the Delhi University has inked a MoU with NASSCOM to provide BPO service information to the undergraduates of the university. The course will help the young guns know about this extremely challenging career path. The call center training will help the students to get out of university and focus on pursuing a career in business process outsourcing.

A job in the traditional sections of the industry looks tough, what with the economy in the shape that it is at present. In this sort of a situation, the call centers are the only places where hiring continues undeterred.

The BPO sector as a whole has a lot to gain from this alliance. It’s not everyday that a prestigious university opens its doors to welcome the presence of BPO service among its students. The exposure of the call center sector will only strengthen their recruitment drives. In the course of the call center services training, they are sure to come up with some talented telemarketing and answering service recruits.

Fresh influx of talent is always something that the telemarketing companies are looking at. With a defined structure to impart business process outsourcing training, the students will be most definitely benefited.

UK PM Brings Rural BPO Scheme

The Prime Minister of Britain David Cameron will be taking along a rural BPO scheme for India when he visits the country this week. The call center deal with be sealed with the Karnataka government. According to the deal, the interior heartlands of India will be brought on to the business process outsourcing map.

The business outsourcing firm that will sign the deal for UK is Xchanging Plc. The company will also provide training to the call center agents who will be recruited through the process. This will be the first MNC BPO service to be taken to the rural areas of India.

The deal will see Xchanging building up a 2000-seat call center unit in Shimoga, a hinterland in Karnataka. The area will be included in the special economic zone (SEZ) of the state. This is part of the ongoing process to bring more quality call center services out of the country. UK has many BPO units working for their business outsourcing work.

The BPO service company will be listed on the London Stock Exchange. The experiment will be beneficial for the other projects as well. If this is goes off well, the success of this initiative can be replicated by other call centers in the UK. While they have the cost cut benefit, the Indian areas will be benefiting greatly from these tie-ups.

BPO Hiring 3,600 More in Philippines

BPO giants Convergys Corp. is on a hiring spree again! It’s taking in some 3,600 call center agents for their call centers across Philippines. The current workforce for Convergys is already more than a whopping 20,000. However, the company is looking for telemarketing agents for some 12 call center services units across the country.

To be specific, they will be hiring 2,800 in Metro Manila, 2000 in Cebu City and some 600 in Bacolod City. The expansion plans are necessary for the conduction of their BPO services in the country. This is a time for these business outsourcing companies to stand up and expand their empire.

The BPO giant took this opportunity to thank their call center employees for providing them with the impetus for growth. That is something that is highly recommended for other call center providers as well. Call center services is the only way these companies can grow and expand their territories. Being cash-rich acts as a secondary factor in this expansion drive because no company, however high on money, will invest if they find that their BPO services are not earning them enough ROI.

Another fact that earned them these growth prospects is that they have clients in a variety of fields. So if one of these fields does badly, it doesn’t affect the income of the call answering services firm.