Call Centre Roles - Inbound and Outbound Traffic
Telemarketing, Sales, Technical Support, Customer Service
Call Centres can function in an outbound role when the primary task is to make calls, for example, with telemarketing. An inbound call centre takes calls from customers, for example, sales and support.
Outbound Call Centre
Everyone is now familiar with telemarketing as a method of companies using an outbound call centre to increase sales by calling people on target lists, or to introduce existing customers to a new product or service. Campaigns can be aimed at convincing people to change from an existing service provider, telecoms companies are prevalent in this area.
Business can make use of an outbound call centre to poll the opinions of it's customers. An example is car dealers polling customers after a car servicing to gain additional feedback enabling customer service improvements. Charities use outbound call centres to solicit donations.
Order Fulfilment
Following up on unpaid accounts, or advising customers that a product order has been fulfilled and is now available for collection, are additionally within the realm of an outbound call centre.being
The public perception of emailing has been affected by the excesses of spammers, and as such the phone is still seen as a preferable medium for interaction between business and customer, being perceived as more personal.
Inbound Call Centre
Customer liaison and support are primary roles for inbound call centres. For example, a call centre has the ability to handle the large volumes of sales calls generated by a TV advertising campaign incorporating a special 'phone now' offer. Agents can be assisted by call scripts guiding them through the call procedure, making sure the correct information is both imparted and collected.
Technical support lines can be funded in part or in full by use of a revenue generating non-geographic number, or even a premium rate number where revenues need to be higher.
Department stores, banks and utilities also use inbound call centres to deal with customer support issues and to handle enquiries and sales.
Cross-Selling and Up-Selling
Cross-selling and up-selling can be used to pro-actively improve sales. For example, an accounting software business may use its support staff to not only answer the customer's enquiry, but also recommend a software upgrade to the latest version.
Outsourcing
Call centres are increasingly located off shore for economic reasons. A cost effective alternative is provided by the PhonePresence Call Centre platform, which allows distributed staff, and even homeworkers, to form a virtual call centre. Linked together by logging into the system from any phone, whether landlne, mobile or VoIP phone, users can form a virtual call centre, no matter where on the planet they are located.
The savings in terms of intial hardware costs, and also ongoing maintenance costs, make a Virtual Call Centre solution extremely cost effective. The flexibility and power of PhonePresence Call Centre ensures it can match and even exceed the facilities of a live call centre.
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