Call Center Management: 3 Simple Ways To Drastically Trim Down Call Center Operational Costs

A call center business demands a significant cash investment. These include employees, key equipment, and business location. You could effectively cut down costs and provide good call center management if you have a clear understanding of these basic sources of call center expenses.

1. EMPLOYEES ( Staff)

   People make up 90 % of your call center investment. They are the frontline fo your business. Hiring the right people and offering them the right incentive could spell success for your investment. Without the proper renumerations, a call center will suffer from a high turn-over. People won’t stay long in the company and it cost more in terms of training lost and resources. How could you trim down the employees aspect of a call center? Well, it’s simple, actually. You implement a sensible hiring process. Screen applicants to weed out the “ unfits” , the “ misfits”, and the people who do not have any customer service inclinations. This way, you hire only people who are best fitted for the job. Go for quality, rather than the quantity of recruits. It is better to hire 15 best performing call center employees rather than hire, train, and pay 30 mediocre employees. And once you have good workers, constantly monitor and upgrate their productivity.

   It is worth mentioning that you should also make pro-active plans regarding :

   a.) Agents’ Talk Time— you should implement the necessary metrics to gauge an agent’s work output. The longer your employee stays on the phone for one caller, the more costly it will be for your company.

   b.) Resources —- the agent should be able to resolve a caller issues and not transfer the call to a supervisor. Provide your employees with comprehensive trainings.

   c.) Total volume of contacts— while a call center welcomes calls, there are some call types which are best blocked at the start. This generally refers to prank callers, stray calls, and other unproductive callers. Your call center must decisively handle these types of calls.

1. EQUIPMENT

   Call center operations need dedicated phone lines, computer workstations, and proprietary software. You will incur bigger expenses if you go for used equipments or worse, inferior hardware. While these equipment may initially cost less at start up, you will be plagued with server downtime, choppy receptions, and costly repairs. Better select the best equipment and software available at the start to have a worry-free call center operation, than suffer from periodical interruptions due to faulty equipment.

   In this regard, you should do some research on the hardware vendors. Conduct business only with legitimate and duly licensed vendor companies.

2. LOCATION

   US-based companies pay premium fees on employees’ salaries and building costs. However, outsourcing your call center to other locations— like Philippines or India– results to substantial cost reduction. No wonder companies prefer to invest in call centers abroad. Basically, it costs less building call centers in foreign locations outside USA.

Cutting down unnecessary call center operational costs can be achieved with sound call center management strategies. You should exercise caution, though, on what , where, and how to cut expenses for greater impact and effectivity. Otherwise, you will be spending more than you hope to save in the long run.

courtesy: http://janinefritzgerald.wordpress.com

What are Telesales

Telesales is the act of using a person or a service to make calls or solicitations with the intent of selling a service, item, or product. Telesales are done over the phone, although there are many websites that can lure a potential customer in and then have them call their number, or even have a salesperson call you. Telesales are usually done by cold calling. Cold calling is when the person or company calls a residence or business without the recipient ever requesting a call or information from that company. Cold selling is typically the hardest telemarketing stint to accomplish. Telesales are very controversial, as many people do not want to be bothered all day by phone sales.

There are many types of telesales. Outbound is the controversial type, since many of the calls are cold calls. There is also inbound telesales, where the customer is calling in for a product or service. Inbound telesales usually go smoother than outbound. However, laws have been put into place that help restrict the times and places that telemarketers may call. The most popular example of this is the national do-not-call list that anyone can request to be part of. Utilizing this offer can cut your calls down dramatically, as you have essentially taking yourself off the telesales and direct selling list.

Good English Skills in Call Centers

In  outsourcing destinations, the question of available workers is never in doubt, the only problem here is the number of quality workers which are eligible for working in a call center. outsourcing

From experience, I could say that out of 20 applicants for a call center position, you would consider yourself lucky if you could hire 5 for the said job. Three or four out of these 5 people would need to undergo training in order to really be a “qualified” employee in the call center industry.

The problem why there is a shortage of quality workers in these outsourcing destinations is the lack of English skills from these countries. Though most of these people are able to comprehend and communicate the English language, the skills needed are sadly lacking.

Personally, I think the only solution to this problem is an early training implemented to these population and it should begin in an early age

Lead Generation

Lead generation in its simplest form within the call center industry is when a call center makes outbound calls on behalf of a client in an attempt to identify prospective customers. As a function of a call center it can be a substantial subset of a telemarketing company.

Within the call center industry lead generation plays a major role. It is not uncommon for a call center to specialize in this type of outbound calling activity. Similarly, creative forms of compensation for the call center can often be arranged with the client.

Compensation for lead generation can be arranged in a number of ways depending on how flexible the call center company is. A few scenarios included paying a commission on the leads the call centers generate (pay-per-lead) or the sales made (pay-per sale) or a combination thereof.

By outsourcing your lead generation you free your internal sales people to focus on closing deals rather than trawling the waters all day. It can be cost effective if done correctly and when considering a vendor you should do your homework and talk with their references.

At the end of the day lead generation is largely a rendezvous problem where there is a set of well-matched candidates for product purchase within a larger set of poorly matched candidates. Various methods including outbound telemarketing are used to try to identify the well-matched candidates which are also called sales leads.

Tips to improve call center sales result

Want to improve your call center’s sales results?  Here are the best practices of high performing call centers:

Clearly communicate sales targets:

1. Set expectations:
   Communicate sales objectives on a daily basis so your Agents know exactly what is expected of them.
2. Provide feedback:
   Post daily sales results at each Agent’s desk or on-line so they know how they are performing versus expectations.
3. Spot trends:
   Analyze results per Agent and, per product, to determine trends. Use these trends to coach your team to higher performance.

Train your call center Agents on how to sell:

1. Sales skills workshops:
   Having good customer service skills isn’t enough.  They need to attend a call center sales workshop so they can learn how to upsell and right size client accounts.
2. Product knowledge training:
   During team meetings, have each call center Agent take turns doing a five minute presentation on the key selling benefits of a product.
3. Competitive information:
   Train your Agents on how your products and services compare to your competitors. Provide them with solid answers they can use when a client says, “But your competitor offers…”

Provide a ‘big picture’ perspective for your Agents:

1. Key Business Indicators:
   Ensure your Agents understand how their performance impacts your department, your company and its customers.

Motivate your call center Agents:

1. Rewards and recognition:
   Give out out prizes for “Most Improved Performer” or “Top Ten Salespeople.” The rewards can be food, movie passes or company branded items like mugs or caps.
2. Motivational ideas:
   Use one idea per week from an employee motivation book like “1,001 Ways to Reward Employees” by Bob Nelson and Ken Blanchard to encourage your team.
3. Post a “Wall of Fame”:
   Show photos of the top sales Agent for each product. Beneath each photo, have that Agent share their best sales tips on how to sell that particular product.

Call Center Stress

There was a news of a man dying while in duty in a call center. I think this is the second time I have heard such news. I was amused why this is included in the news when work related deaths can happen very often in any industry.

Doctors believe that the death is stress related. Since the man has already hypertension problems, the stress in the call center could have triggered it big time causing his death. The news is now a bit sensationalized. Health sectors and government officials are giving recommendations and are asking for investigations.

They believe this is caused by stress due to irregular schedules. Come on. There is stress everywhere. All work as its equal amount of stress. I even think that a call center has less stress compared to my work. Their work ends after their shift. In my case, I work even at home until midnight to make reports, analyse data and resolve issue. The news seems to imply that a call center has a stressful work environment compared to other industries.

Irregular schedules? So what. They say that being assigned in the evening and early morning is not the usual and can stress the individual. Ourcompany has a rotating work shift where employees rotate from day shift to night shift every two weeks. Don’t you think this is even more unusual and harder for individuals to adjust?

I just don’t agree with the implication that a call center has a stressful environment and it is being singled out in the news. All work is stressful and has its own share of hazards to it’s employees. I agree with the recommendation for call centers to have regular blood pressure check ups, doctors on duty and exercise on shifts.

I also think they need to check the lifestyles of their employees and recommend a healthy lifestyle. Whenever the jeepney pass along the buildings of call centers, I see a lot of agents smoking outside. I know of friends who dont go home to rest after an 8-hour work but proceeds to gimiks. Health related issues should also be the employee’s concern.

Now I hope, I don’t hear another news like this especially with my name on it.

Misconceptions about Call Centers

Don’t think that Call Center jobs are boring, career blocking and not interesting. These are in one word – wrong ideas which some people narrowly concluded in. Working at call centers is not as simple and easy. It requires talent, skill, potential, patience, process-knowledge, stress management and above all brains.

Every job in this world has its pros and cons. There are also some factors in a call center which can seem negative, however, overcoming those with smart and on spot decisions is part of good management. Some people are not effective in doing so and they blame the whole industry or the employees of the industry when fail to adjust.

Major misconceptions in the industry are:

- This is an unstable industry

- Employees don’t have job satisfaction

- Clients are always unhappy with the Services

The Fact:

Every industry has challenges. The Call Center is not another alien here. There are employees in this industry who just take this job as a ‘stay over in a resort’ in some interval – this has made bad impressions. Some clients are truly unhappy because of ‘some’ service providers.

Make your Customers Happy – Make them Return

Your customer will ask you something – you have to answer it. Make sure that you do the following things when responding to your customers:

- put a positive impression on the mind of the customer at the very first conversation

- be a good listener

- get to know the maturity level of your customer so that you provide services being at the customer’s level

- discover why the customer contacted you; the more you know about the customer’s concern, the better you will be able to help them, resulting to a satisfied customer

- relevant information can be provided but be specific and vivid

- be friendly but smart

- don’t make haste; calmly and politely deliver information

- get tips from 24hourscall.com to handle customers most efficiently

24 Hours Call care 3 things seriously

In a good Call Center there must be:

• 1. A standard performance management system
• 2. Employees must be well trained
• 3. Technology including the monitoring system should be up to date
• 4. Environment must be congenial
• 5. There must be alternate power supply system
• 6. The Manager must be very friendly and he himself must be an example of providing best services

In 24 Hours Call we care 3 vital things to ensure the above factors:

i. Workforce Training: This is not actually an ending process. It is continuous. However, many fail to understand so and just relax by arranging some training programs. What will the newer employees do who never had been present in your training program? Or what about an old employee who has not been in a training session for a long time? What about the Manager who is very confident on his works but now worn out only because he doesn’t specifically and formally communicates his employees routinely to develop a better workflow? Training is today a workshop which can help bilaterally develop – both the management and its employees.

ii. Quality of Service: Not in words only, get proven “reports of quality improvement” is today’s slogan. In call center this is the biggest challenge. To achieve this outcome all others are being arranged, initiated and put in the block. Hope to write some more on this point in detail soon.

iii. iii. iii. Controlling: This point is one – no businessman/manager can ever miss to count. But some people who think and believe in getting hot money without foresight would always neglect it. Importance of controlling proves when a sudden unusual problem occurs. A manager who is not aware of controlling – identify problem and solve it taking the corrective measure, will always bewildered by encountering adversaries.

How can the Bangladesh Call Center Industry be developed?

Finally the Bangladesh Government has focused on Call Center issues. However, if the following points are not considered by the BD Govt, we cannot expect a development:

i. No bureaucracy in issuing licenses

ii. Provide options in connectivity; permit VOIP connectivity

iii. Arise awareness about Govt initiatives, business opportunities, industry growth and development in this industry through Internet and other media

iv. Conduct seminars and programs which provide enough knowledge to general people about Call Center Services and Call Center Providers

v. Provide opportunity to the Private Sector so that companies can train, motivate and retain its employees.