Contact Center Services vs. Call Center Services: The Value for Tech Business

The world of call centers is evolving at a rapid rate to meet the emerging requirements of businesses. As new technologies disrupt business operations, the need to support customers in using the new tech is on the rise. Especially for companies that deliver technical services or the ones that manufacture hardware, there is an exigent need to revamp their ineffective customer support department.

Nowadays, there is a debate raging amongst eminent thinkers about the merits and demerits of call center or contact center services. Both these terms are similar but have different meanings in the professional world:

1.      Call Center Services – A call center generally provides inbound or outbound services. In inbound services, the call is received by a team of agents and in outbound services the call is made by agents to potential customers. The most common inbound call center services are customer care, technical support and order taking services. And, the most popular outbound call center services are lead generation, telemarketing and appointment setting.

2.      Contact Center Services – Contact center services cover multiple communication platforms including inbound and outbound call center services. Live chat, email and social media interactions are all covered as part of contact center services. The purpose of contact center is to merge all channels through which a customer can contact the product/service vendor.

Contact Center Services are the Ace in your Sleeves

While call center services in isolation do have their own value, contact center services are miles ahead of the curve. In a contact center, all customer interactions are updated on a common platform, generally a CRM.  Hence, your contact center representatives are always in the loop of what a customer has gone through thus reducing the chances of errors creeping into the workflow. Also, the errors can be reduced further, if you have a competent contact center outsourcing provider like Vcare as your partner.

The Benefits of Partnering with a Seasoned Contact Center Outsourcing Provider

When you choose a contact center outsourcing partner with considerable years of experience in the field, it instantly lifts your business prospects. Have a look at some of the benefits that you get out of such a partnership:

1.      Veteran agents in all departments – A contact center runs a blended process and the agents are required to perform a variety of duties as part of a contact center operation. Partnering with a seasoned veteran allows you to access the services of agents that have already presided over chat, email and call support.

2.      Access to a centralized CRM – A CRM plays a major role in shaping a contact center operation. With a centralized CRM that is efficient, your agents get the right impetus to serve your customers in a better way. At Vcare, you get a cutting-edge CRM that is flexible enough to align with any type of call center operation.

Round-the-clock customer support – A contact center can truly offer a 360-degree service experience to its customers if it can be contacted at any time. At Vcare, your contact center services are in the hands of agents who can work both day and night shifts. Hence, you are able to run a round-the-clock operation and serve your customers throughout night and day. 

The Importance of Work Culture in Outsourced Contact Center Services

Any successful company, when it decides to have a look at the reasons behind its success, the work culture it has maintained over the years comes at the top of the list. But of late, due to bad outsourcing decisions, many companies are unable to either maintain their cultural integrity or project themselves in the best light to their customers. Especially when it comes to customer-facing contact center services, a misalignment with your outsourcing partner can be critical. Even a small deviation from the norm can come back to haunt you in the long run.

An Example

Suppose your whole business is based upon the quality of your product. Your in-house team goes to great lengths to maintain its quality, fine-tuning every element before its launch and performing after-launch testing to evaluate the performance of the product in actual real-world use cases. Even your promotional campaigns are centered on the quality of the product. However, your outsourcing vendor is not sensitive towards your requirements. It does not understand that the whole business model will come crashing down if it fails to project the right image.

You need to understand that there are many businesses out there, which are happy doing the bare minimum for their customers, if it helps them get the job done. So, when a fault is found and a customer complaints, the agents who are not aligned with your work culture, may not follow the protocols with due diligence. They might treat your customers just like any other customers of any other client. So, instead of replacing a product that is faulty, they might try to defend it without reasons: citing irrelevant company policies and thinking in their mind that they are doing good work for your business.

Project Your Real Work Culture by Outsourcing Contact Center to the Right Partner

The above-mentioned example is part and parcel of bad outsourcing decisions. And, these decisions can come back to haunt you…and in a bad way. Therefore, you should always make your contact center outsourcing decision with great care. Below are some steps to follow for making the right selection:

1.      Look at the past record of the company – If the outsourcing contact center has delivered multiple projects for different clients that operate in different industries successfully, then you should sign the contract as soon as possible. Versatility of outsourcing contact centres speaks volumes about its ability to adapt to different work cultures. Hence, you should always look at their past records by accessing social media and other web platforms, and only then take the plunge of outsourcing your operations.

2.      Oversee training sessions – An agent, no matter how experienced he is, begins from the scratch when he starts providing contact center services for a new process. Therefore, training becomes extremely important for shaping the talent and inculcating the cultural values apart from the quintessential process knowledge. So, it definitely makes good sense to oversee training sessions and talk to the trainers about your vision and tell them what you expect from the soon-to-be agents for your process.

By performing the two steps mentioned above, you give yourself the best chance of recruiting the right vendor for your operations. Vcare is an experienced vendor of contact center services and takes the vision of its clients very seriously. Also, it offers its services at competitive rates, which makes it a reliable and lucrative outsourcing option for your business. 

Maximize Customer Satisfaction by Upgrading to Contact Center Services

Call centers have remained a vital part of customer experience for a long time. Whenever a customer faces any problem with regards to a product or service, instinctively he picks up the phone and makes a call to the toll free number provided to him by the supplier of the product. However, nowadays, customer preferences have changed considerably. Customers are no longer restricted to the phone when it comes to communication. There are many other channels in prevalence like email, chat, Facebook, Twitter etc. that are serving as convenient points of interaction between customers and the product manufacturers. It is time for brand owners to be proactive and reach out to their clients via all channels; it is time to upgrade to contact center services.

Why Choose Contact Center Service Outsourcing?

Although contact center services sound interesting, they are a lot harder to implement in reality. Reaching out to customers through all channels require significant investment and tremendous focus. If contact centers are not run appropriately, there is a big chance that they will backfire on you. In case, your representatives manning social media platforms are not up to the mark or do not have the quintessential single-view of the customer, they won’t be able to support your customers appropriately.

There are some basic requirements of running successful contact center services, which are listed below:

1.      Hardware components like ACD (Automatic Call Distributor), LAN (Local Area Network), Voice Logging, Predictive Dialer, CTI (Computer Technology Integration), workstations and headphones

2.      Software components like AI-Powered CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool, marketing-related add-ons for management of communication with customers

3.      Access to telecom network by signing up with a telecom operator along with Voice-Over-IP (VoIP) capabilities for low-cost communication

4.      A workforce that is well-trained in voice process as well as text-based platforms

Procuring all the above-mentioned resources can be quite bothersome for a business owner. A better way to run your contact centers is by outsourcing contact centers to a competent vendor like Vcare.

How Contact Center Outsourcing Can Help You?

Apart from having all the necessary tools (as mentioned above), a competent contact center outsourcing vendor also has the manpower to keep your customers’ satisfied on your behalf. Some of the major advantages of contact center service outsourcing are listed below:

1.      Single-view of the customer – Although a contact center offers services through different channels, it is able to view all interaction of its customers in a single view (through the use of a smart CRM solution). This allows an agent to instantly understand the customer issue and fix the problem. For example, if a customer has already mentioned his issue on Facebook and then calls an agent, the agent can simply paraphrase the problem in the beginning of the call and start working towards a resolution. No need to start the troubleshooting from the very beginning.

2.      Better analytics – With so much information about customer available via different platforms, a company can use its AI-based tools for understanding the customer behavior in a better way. This ensures better analytics, which in turn, helps a company devise a better business strategy for the future.

Helps you build a better brand image – When you have access to different platforms, you are able to project your brand in a better way. A quality call center outsourcing vendor like Vcare can ensure that all customers’ queries are addressed at the right time and in the right way, so that your brand image is enhanced.