Important Factors When Selecting an Outsource Call Center

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Selecting a call center is a decision that many organizations in the United States must make in order to remain competitive or to handle increased call volume.

A call center or contact center provides a variety of services and reside in almost every country. Just like any other industry they have specializations and exist in a number of sizes such as startups, boutique centers, and large multi-country centers that will compete for your business.

Whether selecting a telemarketing partner is the result of cost considerations, improvements in customer service or some other reason, there are a number of factors that need to be considered before finally selecting your outsource partner. If your organization needs additional services such as clerical, back office or accounting services, then you need to consider if your outsource partner can handle all of the functions you require.

First you need to decide, based on the reason for moving the specific functions to a contact center, where you want the center to be located. You have three options; onshore (in the United States), near shore (Canada, Central or South America and the Caribbean) and offshore (everywhere else but most are in India or the Philippines).

Each area has its pluses and minuses which need to be carefully matched to the process you want to outsource. If neutral accents and knowledge of U.S. culture is needed then those considerations may target specific countries or call centers that specialize in calls to and from the U.S.

If you are selecting a center to make outbound sales calls to consumers then it needs to provide different agent skills then selling business to business and also must follow different federal compliance guidelines. The agents should not have accents that interfere with the process and some cultural understanding of the country in which you market your goods and services. When choosing a center for outbound sales keep in mind who will supply the calling list and, if calls are made to consumers (other than survey, nonprofit or political calls, the data list must be opt-in or DNC compliant.

If the call center receives customer payment by credit card then the call center needs to either be PCI compliant or adhere to your company's PCI compliance program.

If the payment is made through the telephone company either land line or mobile, then there are a number of phone company rules and FTC regulations along with specific rules and processes for refunds and conflict resolution.

If your primary concern is customer service, then you need to ask how the calls are distributed to the agents and does the center have 24/7/365 capabilities if necessary and can they maintain the required services levels at all times of the day.

When choosing an outsource telemarketing company training is critical since they will become a very visible arm of your organization. How they train their agents including product knowledge, script adherence and accent neutralization affects your customer experience. Does the outsource call center have their own quality assurance program and should you spot check? What is the management to agent ratio? These considerations are just a few that need to fit within the service levels that you expect from an outsource partner.

Don't forget to match your reporting requirements with the call center capabilities. You will want specific metrics regarding the calling lists used and dispositions of outbound and inbound calls. If you need to archive call recordings, the dialer software used by the call center should be able to handle this seamlessly.

This is a general overview of just some of the factors that must be included an any evaluation of outsource call centers or the construction of an RFP.

When selecting a call center, independent consultants are often employed to assist companies develop the strategy and design that is consistent with their needs.

If you want to avoid serious problems when selecting a call center then click here to learn more.

Telemarketing For 2012

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Telemarketing And Lead Generation

Lead generation has always been a problem for many businesses, as there is normally a saturated market, chasing down new business is normally a difficult process and one that is reserved to seasoned sales people.

Over the last few years with the growth of the internet, many companies have swapped their lead generation strategy from proactive marketing (such as telemarketing) to reactive forms of marketing (such as SEO and PPC on the internet) however as the internet has boomed, even this is becoming hard.

Telemarketing has been a strong part of the lead generation process for many decades now, but how is this being affected by the recession.

Why Was Telemarketing So Effective

The process was quite simple, pick up the phone, find out the contact name, hunt them down and sell to them. This is basically the process involved with tele selling, however prospects were receiving dozens of calls a day from businesses, telesales companies (working on behalf of businesses) that action had to be taken. Receptionists were told to block calls, people became rude on the phone, answerphones blocked calls.

However despite the problems, selling over the phone was the best way to target new business. For companies that were trying to target a specific market or client type, the old fashioned 'identify, research, target and close' sales process still worked (eventually).

How Have Things Changed

Competition has increased as the number of companies in the UK has increased, the market has stayed the same, so the concentration of competitors vs customers goes against anyone selling.

The internet has made the world smaller, it has changed peoples mindsets, so instead of reaching for the yellow pages, a local internet search is done. Instead of spending a day getting quotes for insurance from the phone book, a few minutes on price comparison sites saves time.

The recession means that a lot of companies are not spending, they are being cautious, which means that the number of 'active prospects' is less.

Can Telemarketing Work In 2012

Consider the above:

The competition is higherMarkets are quieterCustomer numbers are down as companies close

For this reason, telemarketing is more important than ever, as more businesses are struggling to sell their products and services. True that the internet has changed buyers perspectives, so now people feel 'if I need it, I can find it myself when I am ready'; however there does need to be a degree of 'prompting'.

Telemarketing can be used for relationship building, to build a relationship with a buyer so they see you as a friend rather than a sales person. This way they will buy when they are ready (with a little subtle helpful guidance) or when they feel they are ready.

Choosing The Right Telesales Partner

There are over 600 teleselling firms around the UK as well as hundreds of freelancers plus full time staff. How do you choose the best solution?

There are pro's and con's to outsourcing or using internal sales sources, mainly being around cost. It is more expensive to bring someone on (recruitment fees, training fees, incentives, salary, NI contributions, commissions etc.) rather than using an external source.

One thing to bear in mind is that by outsourcing, you are bring on an experienced agency, one that should know what they are doing and provide some sort of guarantee as to results.

Shop around, get quotes (as all telesales companies are profit making businesses) and talk to some of their current clients (to see if they are getting ROI on their telemarketing campaigns).

Marketing Quotes is a free price comparison service to UK businesses to help get free quotes and advise from local marketing companies.