Incentives Motivate Call Center Agents

There has to be some reason why your call center agents will push themselves beyond their usual limits. The motivation could come from any aspect of their job: the challenges of telemarketing, the targets need to hit in lead generation, or simply the satisfaction of solving the problems of customers at the answering service desk. Job related motivations are always a major moving force. But beyond a certain point, BPO agents want to be rewarded monetarily as well. This stems from the growing belief that they are instrumental in getting more profit for the BPO service unit. So, they are entitled to a share of the spoils. If the sales lead generation achieves more than what was targeted, the agents working on the project would want their efforts to be appreciated.

Nothing works better than incentives in these matters. Call center agents are not always expecting a rise in salary at premature times. They know that the BPO unit will evaluate their performance and give them a hike every 6 months or a year. For short term gains that they help the call centers to achieve, they would like to be rewarded with incentives. The practice of offering incentives to high performing agents has always existed in telemarketing. It’s just that in the present scenario, it has become a necessity. Incentives keep your agents on their toes, breed healthy competition and also pull down the attrition rate.

B2B Lead Generation Target Demographics

I was observing the social media lead generation campaigns of a BPO firm with interest. They had company profiles on Facebook and Twitter. They had deployed call center agents to put up regular posts on these platforms. They were adding friends and followers. They were doing everything that an individual would do on social media. And that is where they were going wrong. They were not doing what a company profile should be doing. Any B2B company would be wasting their time if they went around tapping the common people! Come on, the only chance of your hitting the right note on this one is, if you come across a major mover and shaker who can get his/her company to hire your answering service firm. Otherwise, you are just wasting valuable resources on a mindless social media campaign.

The trick here is to tap other business networks for your BPO firms. What do you intend to do with the huge number of friends and followers on Facebook if they don’t contribute to your lead generation? You need business. For that you will have to tap business houses and CEOs. You need a tight, professional social media plan. Your call center agents have to be well-versed in the tenets of business communication. These agents will be representing your call center services to the prospective clients. This is like a red alert for all those B2B companies who are conducting social media campaigns. It’s better if you plan the metrics and methods that your business needs rather than do something that others are doing. Look closely. They are more likely to be B2C!

Advantages of virtual call center

Virtual call center is a customer service unit in which the representatives of the organization are found to be geographically dispersed. Instead of being located at a definite work station, the virtual call center workers can be found existing in groups in a number of small work centers. Or else most of them also work from their own residences.

Switching to the virtual call center model may prove to be beneficial for a business. For any organization, the virtual model can save both equipment and the housing costs. It can even lead to the lower employee turnover rates that often ten to be higher for any physical center.

Companies that stand to offer seasonal services can essentially make the best use of these virtual services. This can prove to be a great way through which companies can maintain huge facilities all year round.

To appear to be professional and experience an increased customer satisfaction, most brick and mortar call center units does attempt to offer customers with the virtual representation of the offices of an organization. Additionally, most organizations all across several utility industries deploy the virtual customer care units in an effort to cut down the costs and to improve the customer experience.

A customer who is dialing to a technical or a customer support number will be given the impression that the call is reaching to any physical department of the organization. On the other hand, the fact remains that the call actually reaches the outsource support center.

BPO Companies guarantee Job Satisfaction

All BPO companies look forward to provide efficient customer support services as their entire business revolve around it. The services offered by the call centre agencies require extensive functioning of adequate human resources. Thus, it is very essential for several employees to work as a team so as to execute their tasks with great proficiency. The call centre employees feel urged towards improving their services as they gain hundred percent job satisfaction in their work field or profession. The BPO managers play a vital role in keeping the agents satisfied with their work on a consistent basis.

The managers of the call centre companies make efforts in providing the employees with a safe atmosphere at the workplace. This is achieved by meeting even those needs of the employees that are not adequately significant. The managers even try to motivate the employees by showing them ways by which they can grow to a new height, along with their company. The employees are assured with increased privileges, provided that they show continuous improvement in their performances. But the managers must keep in mind that they should satisfy the lower-level requirements of the employees before enhancing their work schedule.

As the call centre company tries to meet the needs of its agents, the agents develop a greater concern towards the company. They sharpen their set of skills and learn up many new techniques for completing their work in speed and with efficiency. They make attempts to find out if their services are benefiting the customers and their company as well.

BPO Industry Improves its Customer Service

The BPO industry is improving its customer services on a constant basis since it forms the core of its business. A new advancement in technology is being adopted by the call center agencies to provide hundred percent satisfaction to its customers. Speech analytics is one such technology that is being incorporated by the customer support centers. This device is very appealing since it enables the BPO firms to utilize the unstructured data obtained from their interaction with the customers to gather an insight about them. This software can undoubtedly change the entire functioning of your BPO company for the better.

This technology allows the customer support centers to make their customers acquire a better experience while interacting with them. The software examines the audio data for identifying the stress or emotion in the customers’ voice, their purpose of calling and so on. Speech analytics adds efficiency to the work of the call center employees since they are able to quickly make out the exact requirements or expectations of the customers and work accordingly. Even if the technology is quite new, its demand is increasing at a faster pace since most companies are availing it for maintaining a quality service.

The software can be used by the managers for simultaneous monitoring of their BPO employees and the customers as well. Another great advantage of the software is that it enables the BPO managers to keep a track on the performance of their employees. This helps the call center in improving the standard of its services.

Call Centre saves on its costs through Scheduling

The BPO firms aim at satisfying the requirements of the customers at reduced costs. A greater part of the costs are involved in the salary of the employees hired by the call centre. Thus, it has come up with an effective solution to this problem. Around sixty or eighty percent of the call centre expenses are concerned with its staffing. The profitability and success of customer support centers depends on the presence of the most favorable number of employees who are skilled for the job. They must be able to attend the customers’ calls very tactfully. This working process is known as call centre scheduling.

Many BPO companies administer their agent scheduling through a number of manual devices such as spreadsheets. It is a fact that sometimes these tools do not work and cause an increase in the number of recruitments. This ultimately leads to a higher shrinkage of the BPO business. With the use of such manual tools, the call centre costs can amount to about more than $30,000 in a year even with a working staff of 25. Today, a special kind of software is available in the market for solving this problem. All the important tasks are automated by the software, which increases the business of the BPO firm through precise forecasting of call volume. The software performs many other functions like scheduling, tracking the daily staff performance, staffing calculations.

Receptionist Services of the Inbound Call Center

The receptionist service of the inbound call center works as an extension of its client’s office. The client does not need to worry about missing out any of the calls of the customers due to the receptionist service offered by the inbound team. The team consists of professionals who receive the calls from the customers and then redirect them to the clients. No matter where the client is located, he will get all the business through the remote receptionist services. It is one of the most flexible inbound services of the call center.

The client’s business does not get even a bit affected while he is away form office or may be on the move. Because the receptionists are in direct contact to the customers and they redirect the calls to the client. Thus, they keep a track of the calls and client can remain tension free. The service is very effective in increasing the business of the client. If the client gets satisfied, the call center will also acquire profit.

The receptionist services can be categorized into different types such as, voice mail, order entry and tele-messaging. The unique feature of this service is that it transfers calls to the clients irrespective of their location. That is what the term “remote” suggests. This inbound service of BPO makes it a communication partner of its clients. This is indeed very essential for the call center and its clients as well for gaining profits. Thus, the client can entirely depend on its customer care service for expanding his business.

Telemarketing call centers

There are certain call center firms that are well known for offering specialized services that include telesales, telemarketing and market research programs and more. In order to offer specialized services, certain progressive technologies are extensively used by the call center firms.

Outsourcing companies are better known for offering outbound call center services and they are highly dependable for business enterprises that aim at offering excellent performance. Services offered to the overseas clients make use of state of art equipments and custom software that are mostly automated ensuring operational excellence. By using such sophisticated technologies, the BPO companies can attend thousands of calls in each day.

It is the sheer dedication and hard work of call center agents that enable a telemarketing service provider to offer great quality services at an extremely affordable cost. They remain as the foremost contributor of business process outsourcing services in the world.

Call Center Careers

Call center is one of the hottest career options for youngsters today. With rising competition in various sectors call center industry is not lacking behind. A call center can be defined as place or an office where calls are received and made. It has adequate amount of telecom facilities, wide database and access to the Internet. The services provided in call centers can be voice based or non-voice based. Since it is multi-billion dollar industry there is lot of scope for growth.
Call centers exist in various areas of business like banking, insurance, manufacturing, collections and technical support. Call center is one of the recently introduced career option. Call centers provide wide variety of services like telemarketing, order taking, product inquiry, customer service and technical support. Basically the call centers are of two types these are international and domestic. There is much scope for call center business in India due to high number of English speaking professionals. The main attraction of this industry is that it comparatively pays good wages than any other job and the minimum college level graduates are hired for this. One only needs excellent communication skills and offers excellent facilities like subsidized meals, transport and medical facilities.

Outsource Technical Support For Your Business

Today even small businesses need computers as well different software and various network solutions. Most of the companies do not have technical support in their payroll. Therefore, they need to outsource technical support. If you have just started a BPO business then you must be looking for cost effective means to outsource technical support.
Many BPO companies offer technical support as part of their customer care service to provide assistance for their products or services. This is given rise to many remote computer support companies that provide all types technical assistance. The technical support staff provides assistance through phone, chat or email. The callers have the advantage to cal up at any time of the day. They usually call up through a toll free number, through mail-in-service, an internet bulletin board or through on-site contract. The quality of customer services differs from company to company.
Most of the organizations rely on information that comes via computers. Problems arise when there is system failure or any sort of operator error. The technical support executives ensure that there is smooth running of your computer systems. This way you can get rid of any technical hindrance that comes in way of your business commitments.

Workings Of Call Center

A call center is place where calls are made and received to potential customers. The calls that are received from customers are known as inbound calls and the calls that are made to customers are known as outbound calls. Today most of the organizations use calls centers to keep their customers informed about the services they provide. It can be said that call centers have now become a means to market and advertise a product or service.
A call center is usually a closed office with rows of agents taking calls through their headsets. Some of the call center services are inquiry handling, customer care queries, business transcription, answering services, order taking and others. The place where calls are taken is known as floor and there are no phone rings otherwise there would be lot of disturbance. The calls are taken through automated and computerized process. The system through which calls are taken is known as queuing system. The calls are directed to an agent who is free for a longer period of time. In case the agents are busy with another customers the call is put on hold.

India Continues To Lead The BPO Market

According to the reports by Market Vista: Q2 2009 on global outsourcing, the outsourcing transaction volume increased by 10 percent globally in the second quarter as compared to the first quarter this year. These reports were issued after the contracts being signed by the financial services and manufacturing firms.

Everest Research Institute, the global outsourcing and offshoring activity serves as a central source of independent and objective strategic intelligence and actionable insight for leading corporations, technology providers, suppliers and investors in the global outsourcing and offshoring market place.

During the second quarter of the fiscal year, out of 30, 13 offshore call centres were established in Asia. In the same period, the transaction volume in Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Africa, Latin America increased by 25 percent Nikhil Rajpal, Principal, Global Services said that, there has been significant increase in market as compared to Q1 2009 in terms of transaction signings and captive set ups.

HCL BPO To Set Up A Training Institute

The BPO wing of HCL Technologies, one of the ITes service providers, is planning to set up training institute. The institute is likely to come up in Chennai in a year’s time. It will create a pool of quality resources that will be useful for HCL itself as quoted by A. P Rao, the senior vice –president (human resources).
Due to recession many professionals have got into BPO services. HCL has created an innovative method to increase the quality of working conditions in order to retain the existing talent. This new programme is called “Aspire”; under this programme the company will offer training programmes to professionally qualified professionals.
This training programme will enable professionals to move HCL’s IT services. If a BPO employee undertakes this training programme he will have to work for four days and on the fifth day he will have to attend the training programme. This training programme will jointly conducted by NIIT.
So far, HCL has already enrolled 400 employees after taking the test from BPO services to IT services. This year so far 500 employees are getting trained. Though the training is imparted at HCL organization, the company charges a course fee of Rs.50,000. However the company would pay back the course fee in two years.
Mr. Rao said that due to downturn, it has become necessary for any organization to improve efficiency through innovative ideas and most of the organization is reducing the attrition rate and quality of working conditions.
Mr. Rao added that, the existing head count in HCL BPO services was 10,000 and it hoped to grow by 25 percent next year.

BPO Industry Faces Tough Phase

The Indian BPO companies that grew at a blistering rate of 30-32 percent for many years have almost halved to growth rate of 16.3 percent in the financial year 2008-09. They are likely to plummet further to 4-7 percent in this financial year due to economic slowdown.
The software exports revenue is projected to grow at a mere 4-7 percent to reach $48-50 billion in the year 2009-10 as said by the industry association Nasscom.
Earlier in February, Nasscom had reduced the growth target for IT exports to 16 percent from its forecast of 22-24 percent that was made in the mid of 2008 for the financial year 2008-09.
The major reasons for decline in BPO industry is technology spending by global major, pricing pressures, delay in demand pick up and overall bleak economic outlook.
India’s largest software exporters Infosys and TCS have predicted tough business environment this year. Domestic IT- BPO revenue grew by 21 percent to touch Rs 12.5 billion in the financial year 09. The total industry revenue for domestic and exports was $58.8billion in the financial year 2008-09.
According to Nasscom findings, the domestic revenue is expected to grow by 15-18 percent in 2009-10. The BPO sector has reached $58.8 billion in 2009-10 from $52 billion in 2007-08.