Have you been considering investing in call center services? You may be debating between outsourcing customer support, automated tools, and simply keeping these tasks in-house. As you contemplate your decision, ask yourself: What do high-quality follow-through and customer support look like?
Try to recall your best customer service experiences. What made them so pleasant? What helped them go smoothly? Chances are, it was thanks to:
Now consider your own customers’ experience. Are they enjoying the best of these elements at every touchpoint with your company? And is your team delivering that experience as efficiently and affordably as possible?
Just because you can manage a task internally doesn’t mean you should. Even if you provide premium customer service, it won’t be sustainable if it requires significant office rent, equipment, hiring, and training expenses. Your assets (and your employees’ time) may go farther in other business areas.
Not to mention, customers still strongly prefer human connection—yep, that means live engagement! A recent market study found that 74% of customers are more loyal to a company if they can speak to someone. On the other hand, 54% aren’t confident their issue will be solved if they don’t talk to a rep.
Investing in an outsourced call center could make more organizational and financial sense for your business while improving the customer experience. And you know what that means: Greater customer loyalty and retention!
Let’s explore the advantages of call center services for small businesses.
You may offer a fantastic product or service—but that’s not enough. B2B customer support is crucial; your prospects and existing clients will weigh the quality of a given solution with how readily available your team is.
If a customer has to wait for open hours or stay on the line for your sole in-house representative who’s spread thin, they’re likely to get frustrated, and that quality factor goes out the window. Wait times only separate customers from available solutions and lower their opinion of your business. One of your more responsive, easier-to-reach competitors will surely snatch up that business.
From the business perspective, addressing customer concerns exclusively during business hours only accounts for a small percentage of inquiries and transactions. This leads to lost leads and lost prospective customers!
Customers desire timely service, resulting in 24/7 availability becoming the norm. With a combination of round-the-clock call, chat, and email support as part of your B2B customer strategy, you won’t miss opportunities. Your customers will get what they need when they need it.
So, how could your small company handle such a high call volume 24/7? Again, staffing and equipping your business to accommodate this level of service is costly. Hence why many organizations turn to call center services, which provide:
You’ll improve the customer experience and, therefore, boost customer satisfaction!
Although being readily available for your customers is vital, there’s more to it than that. What level of support is your team delivering? If you and your employees are overwhelmed by your primary roles and managing customers, your customer experience will suffer.
Successful customer experience for B2B businesses focuses on quality and providing the best-fit solution. But how can you trust that an outsourced call center company has adequate knowledge and experience to represent your brand, products, or services?
Call centers train their agents thoroughly so they can:
This shows your customers that expert help is always within reach, improving their opinion of your company.
Good question! Effective call centers build in regular training to keep agents familiar with your company’s solutions. They will understand what they can offer a client on the line and who to send them to for resources outside their own purview. Simply put, these representatives offer the most satisfactory solutions to clients by either:
Even with ongoing training, however, reps can’t possibly remember everything. That’s why outsourced call centers provide their agents with easily accessible resources to quickly find answers to questions they may not already know. Your contact center will gather all necessary information from you, add it to your knowledge base, and update it regularly. They’ll also utilize your CRM tool, so your team is always on the same page.
This leads us to another benefit of a call center solution: Continually updating your business’ knowledge base! These reps will speak with your customers daily, gathering new data and questions. They can inform your company of these queries and help you develop answers and solutions to keep improving the customer experience.
While your outsourced contact center focuses on what they do best, you and your team can do the same!
When contemplating how to reach B2B customers, engaging with them on their preferred channel(s) is vital. Every customer has preferences of where they want to communicate with you, and you’ll likely have segments for each.
An omnichannel approach to customer service ensures you are available when and where they want. Ask yourself:
For example, your business may use a combination of phone, email, live chat, and other digital channels like social media, blog comments, and forums.
And while many still turn to their phones, others—especially younger generations—like the immediacy and convenience of live chat. It allows them to contact your support team from anywhere. Most chat apps enable you to set up automated responses to common questions. If these FAQs don’t answer customer questions, they can be sent to a live agent.
Call center services help you build customer retention and relationships thanks to their accessibility, allowing customers to feel closer to your business. Call center agents are specifically trained to create this positive experience and build an emotional connection with your customers by using methods like:
Communicating how customers prefer will show them you respect and value them, earning you their respect and loyalty in return. And when they can reach your support as easily as they could call a friend or family member, they’ll build a rapport with your brand!
As you weigh the costs and benefits of working with call center services, keep in mind that the ideal customer experience is based on three essential factors:
Bottom line: Your customers want to be heard! Just consider this feedback for more insights into why customer experience matters for B2B:
You and your staff should be focusing on building the business and your own specialties—not calling, sourcing new clients, or doubling as customer service representatives. So while outsourcing customer support is an initial investment, the ROI can be significant by elevating the customer experience, streamlining support tasks and responsibilities, and boosting employee morale and productivity.
If you’re ready to explore what an outsourced call center integration could look like for your business, contact Chameleon today!
"*" indicates required fields