Multilingual Call Centers in Vogue

Multilingual call centers are back in the business. After a forced hiatus because of the recession, these specialized call center units are in the reckoning again. The answering service of many businesses in a country like USA needs the option of many languages. Customers who call up don’t always speak English. In fact, in a pot-melting country, you cannot expect all your customers to come from the English-speaking community. So you have to be ready to tap those customers who don’t speak the universal language. It gives your business an added edge. The BPO units providing the phone answering service should also have this system in place.

Helios Outsourcing has always been a pride provider of multilingual answering service facilities. We are adept in Spanish and French phone answering service. We pick our agents according to the use of the accent and the easy with which they speak the language. We are committed to our motto of offering every assistance possible to further the cause of the client. We train our telemarketing agents according to the cultural contexts of different ethnic groups. We believe that telemarketing services cannot be done unless the seller and the buyer are on an equal footing. Our call centers try to bring our agents on par with the demographics they are catering to.

Improved Leadership for Call Centers

Improving the efficiency of call center services has a lot to do with leadership. The studies conducted by BPO experts have taught us that better team leaders and supervisors make for better work on the floor. As we keep reiterating on this blog, motivation is a prime mover to get the job done faster than it usually takes. Team leaders have a lot to do here. They can lead by example or by imparting valuable lessons in the task that remains to be done. Telemarketing embraces and discards methods each day. The leaders have to keep themselves abreast of all the development that is happening so that they can work towards incorporating them in their own processes.

Leadership skills have to be fostered in the call centers. Helios Outsourcing is proactive is coming up with leaders and supervisors at all times. We are always scouting for talent and looking in the corners to bring out the best in telemarketing services. We are committed to provide leadership skill training and also equip them with the soft skills that differentiate a great leader from a good one. We encourage our BPO leaders to build up a healthy work atmosphere, keeping an eye each on productivity and relationships. We are confident that relationship-building will work well for our call center units.

BPO Use Social Media for CRM

Social media networks are fulfilling the needs of the BPO in more ways than one. Firms are increasingly using Facebook and Twitter for lead generation. Call center agents have used these platforms to promote products and services. Now, there is another function that social media is being used for: Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Answering service agents are not exactly passé, but BPO service agents are creating profiles to interact and maintain proper relationships with their customers through social media, blogs and websites. It’s a conscious effort on the part of the call center services to reach out and make some personal connections with the consumer base.

This is an age of abrupt change of loyalties. Consumers may change over to subscribe with a rival firm any point in time. The call center firm has to prevent that or their lead generation efforts would amount to nothing. Eroding databases can be fixed through effective CRM. On the social media networks, BPO agents engage in a one on one tête-à-tête with the consumers. It’s a wonderful trend to touch base with people who are the building blocks of a business. The consumers can also get their queries sorted out and they like interacting with an insider. This BPO service effort builds up user loyalty and also builds a formidable brand image.

Managing Customer Feedback

Customer feedback is important. Collecting this information, analyzing and responding where necessary is equally important to ensure the demanding needs of today's consumers are met.

The traditional channels still exist, but add to it the social media networks and we now have a wealth of useful information to help us make strategic decisions. The challenge is making a conscious effort of managing these well. An article in the E-Commerce Times outlines some best practices for companies to manage customer feedback:

1. Create clear objectives and garner company support. Objectives for the management of customer feedback should be aligned with the company's overall goals.

2. Actively encourage and promote customer feedback. The more feedback companies receive from customers, the more insights they will have about their business.

3. Offer customers multiple feedback channels. People vary greatly in the way they prefer to communicate, so be sure to give your customers several options in communicating with you.

4. Centrally collect, store, manage and analyze customer feedback. By consolidating all feedback and survey data into a single centralized system and using that system across the organization, feedback managers are able to gain valuable insights into what customers need, want and value most, as well as identify important trends and patterns in the data.

5. Use and take action on customer feedback. Many organizations collect customer feedback, but tend to fall short when it comes to actually using and acting on that data..

6. Resolve outstanding customer issues promptly. Nearly all businesses have some customers who complain about something at one point or another. What's most important is how your organization handles those complaints.

7. Close the feedback loop with customers. Inform your customers whenever your company initiates change as a result of their suggestions or feedback, and let them know what changes you made.

8. Create a company culture that is committed to using customer feedback. To maximize awareness, build an employee rewards program around the positive feedback that your company receives from customers.

What Makes a Contact Center Agent Unique

Would your hiring requirements be the same for an agent in a sales queue, versus a customer care queue? No, and it doesn’t make sense to have the same criteria for an agent who will be in a call center answering phones, as one that will be engaging customers in online chat.

Beyond the obvious requirements of a contact center (chat) agent to have a certain typing speed and superior knowledge of the written word. There is a need for these agents to have a particular acumen for reading between the lines in a chat conversation in order to determine the tone, demeanor, and current disposition of the person being engaged in the chat.

For example, the ever-prominent ellipsis in online conversations... what does it mean? As I just used it, the ellipsis is a textual means into a further point or question. But more often than not in an online chat, it means an uncertainty by the person using it. If a customer, for example says “okay….” It most likely means he/she requires a little more reassurance or guidance in making their purchase or trouble-shooting their problem, and it is the agent’s responsibility to recognize this in order to meet that customer’s needs.

Then there’s endless short-forms used in chat, and while an agent shouldn’t be employing the use of these short forms, he/she must possess a secure knowledge of their meanings, at risk of otherwise being unable to understand the customer’s meaning. IDK why so many ppl need short forms, but FYI many do use them, AKA as acronyms. B4 you LOL at me for pointing this out, plz visit any chat room for proof and an “OIC” moment. Did you get that?

These are just a couple things that new chat agents should be trained for before going live. What are others that are trained in your contact center? What do you train your contact center agents for?

Promoting Productivity in the Call Center Environment

How do you promote productivity amongst agents? As much as we’d like to believe that doing the job, doing it well, and knowing that by doing so you’re helping people is enough incentive, the reality is that agents want more.

In a large contact center, it’s easy for individual agents to get lost in the masses – which is why step number one to ensure agent contentment, continued productivity and retention is creating a boutique atmosphere with a limited number of seats. For example, having 2 locations with less than 200 seats is better than one location with 400+.

Do you hold contests in your center? What about community activity days? These simple things will allow agents to interact with others in the contact center including floor managers, human resources, marketing and business development. In short, it will help them see the larger picture that this is a business, it is a business of serving people, and that other employees in the company recognize the hard work agents put in to their jobs in order for the rest of the company to thrive.

Another favorite way to promote productivity is to recognize a job well done. What does your contact center do when it receives a thank-you for a job well done by an agent, from either the customer who called in, or the client who was represented on the call? Hopefully, you forward that message on to the entire team! “Hey everyone, look at the amazing job Sue did today and the thanks we received. Well done Sue – keep up the good work!” Wouldn’t you like it if every time your boss thought you did something well, he/she emailed the entire company telling them of your achievement? Thought so.

These are just a few of my favorite ways of promoting agent productivity. If you have any others, I’d love to hear them!

Why Outsource to India?

With company budgets facing a major squeeze in these tough economic times, global companies are focusing on reducing costs, cutting IT investments and outsourcing certain processes that allow them to concentrate on their core competencies.

In such an environment, where outsourcing by overseas companies is becoming the need of the hour, India's prospects in this emerging opportunity segment are getting brighter. India is the preferred choice of the top 500 companies of the world, not just for its geography but also for its technological agility, quality, flexibility, cost control, time-to-market and competitive advantage. The country's unmatched value proposition for customers - based on the factors such as cost savings, productivity gains and quality improvements have given India an edge in the global ITES-BPO marketplace.

India is taking the lead in this environment on account of the following factors:

1. Abundant, skilled, English-speaking manpower, which is being harnessed even by remote ITES hubs such as Singapore and Ireland.
2. Improving telecom and other infrastructure which is matching global standards.
3. Strong quality orientation among players and their focus on measuring and monitoring quality targets.
4. Fast turnaround times and the ability to offer 24x7 call centre services based on the country's unique geographic location that allows for leveraging time zone differences.
5. Proactive and positive policy environment which encourages ITES-BPO investments and simplifies rules and procedures.
6. A friendly income tax structure, which places the ITES-BPO industry on par with IT services companies.