Career in Business Process Outsourcing Industry

The scope of services in a traditional business process outsourcing industry has spread its roots from providing the conventional voice based customer support. Today BPO services have gone one step ahead by managing customer database through different interface based on Web 2.0 technology like Live chat, e-mail etc.

Today BPO sector offers young graduates an opportunity to gain expertise in industry- specific services like travel, telecom, retail, insurance and technology. A fresh graduate starts the career as an agent and can move up to become a team leader to floor supervisor to professional business unit heads. They are also promoted to senior leadership position in this sector.

A call center job also helps you to get into a niche environment with lateral movements like quality, training, marketing, HR, finance etc. You can also gain a global exposure and be part of the global workforce. This can be through your job posting on a long term to different geographical locations. If you are graduate and are curious enough to know about the kind of skills required in call center then you should start looking for one. In the last three BPO sector has created huge employment opportunities.

A lot of people have misconception that working in a BPO is like doing an odd job to meet one’s pressing expenses and educational requirements. Well they do not know that it can provide some serious career opportunities and give a competitive edge to your career. In terms of career options in BPO there is no substantial difference if you are in captive process, third party outsourcing or joint venture except for the goodwill and the brand name it carries.

What’s your take on pursuing a career in BPO? Leave your comments here.

Process Management in Call Centers

How important is the question of process management in a call center? If you go by what the America Society for Quality (ASQ) says, it is one of the key elements that clients are looking for in a BPO. In the context of modern business, clients are actively involved in the process of telemarketing and lead generation even when they have outsourced their project to call centers.They want to keep a close tab on the progress of work. Process management is necessary to reduce the costs and also improve efficiency at call center services. It also brings about more flexibility in the workforce.

The ASQ findings also tell us that there has to be more of communication between the BPO service provider and the buyer. Lead generation agents should correspond with the buyers to a greater degree. These interactions are necessary for lead nurturing as well as for better relationships after the sale has been made. The findings exhort call center units to try and upgrade their call center services regularly to improve the quality of service. It is important for the telemarketing units to try and innovate. Innovations always find favor with the client, because thinking out of the box separates you from the competition.

Web-Based CRM for BPO

It’s time for the telemarketing calls to move on. It’s also time for the customer service to be conducted only through voice calls. Social media networks are the new media for inbound call center agents. We have written about this topic a number of times. Let’s look at why Twitter promises more to the BPO than the other options like Facebook or MySpace. To begin with, Twitter is short and precise. In just 140 characters, the customer has to really keep it down. If they are posting complaints, issues or questions, they have to be direct. It becomes for the call center agent to answer these questions fast and also cover more questions in the process.

Twitter isn’t just for people to tweet to your brand for your BPO agents to answer them. Tweets are also public. Customers often discuss your brand on Twitter. Your call center agents have to monitor that. When you are monitoring the activity on this micro-blogging platform, you know that people are talking about your company. When the need comes, your customer service agents can step in and answer questions. They can offer solutions to problems even when they are not directly addressed to the brand. Such proactive methods of reaching out to your customers will be extremely beneficial for the company as a whole. You will also earn some brownie points from your clients.

Changing Metrics at Call Center

The call Centre services have always used the same metrics to measure performance. These metrics offered them some kind of purchase, but when it came to working in the modern sense of business, they fell short of expectations. The BPO managers had to think of something different from what they traditionally measured. Moreover, they had other non-tangible aspects to measure as well, like customer satisfaction with customer services. For that they couldn’t have depended on the existing metrics of the day. They had to bring some other areas like first call resolutions and agent utilization rate, along with cost per contact and average speed answer.

These new age metrics are important for the call Centres. They establish the BPO unit as a professional set-up. The clients are better off with technology aiding telemarketing services. It gives them a feeling that their telemarketing project is in good hands. When the call Centre units are pitching for projects, they will be in a position better suited to bag it. Clients are also particular about the way call Centre services are being done. They have a brand reputation that they have to take care of. The metrics of the call Centre services often determine what kind of efficiency the unit is going to work at.

Unemployment: Is Call Center The Answer?

The debate over the question of offshore BPO outsourcing has brought one important conclusion to the surface. The call center industry is now renowned for being the best bet to revive a dying economy. This is true not just for the call centers in the third world countries. The same can be said about the domestic ones in USA. Otherwise why would the American political establishment be in such a raging war over the question of business process outsourcing? The way things are, the Obama administration is somehow sure that they can bring down the unemployment percentage only by getting more of telemarketing projects.

What has brought out this dependence on BPO? Often touted as the least reliable when it comes to pursuing careers, the contribution of the call center industry during the recession is what turned the tide in their favor. It’s diversification into various call center services, other than the customary voice calls, has managed to get in more clients. The business process outsourcing firms are now working on core business projects, the ones that make or break companies. They are getting to be more elite in their standing when it comes to contributing towards the national income.

Contact Centre Solutions For Business Needs

Contact Centre Solutions :

Today, customers contact companies by calling, emailing, chatting online, visiting websites, faxing and even instant messaging. A contact centre is a centralized office used for reception and transmission of large volumes of requests by telephone. Inbound Contact centres deal with product support and customer enquiries. Outbound contact centres deal with telemarketing of products and/or services. In addition these contact centres collectively handles letters, faxes, live chat, and e-mails.

A contact centre is often operated through an extensive open workspace for call centre agents, with work stations that include a computer for each agent, a telephone set/headset connected to a telecom switch, and one or more supervisor stations. Most major businesses use contact centres to interact with customers.

A contact centre, also known as customer interaction centre. Through contact centres, valuable information about company are forwarded to the appropriate department or staff.