Life at the other end of the call centre

The present economy is growing by leaps and bounds with the lifestyle becoming very extravagant and people working hard to have a comfortable living. The transition is more towards the private sector than the public sector and the in trend is that of call centres. More and more multinationals are getting their base as India as call centres in India provide an exclusive blend of traits that have instituted it as the favoured stop for all companies accounting to the technological and communication development.

The globalization of business started from Delhi and slowly and steadily call centres started picking up pace and people from all walks of life got a place in it. As Delhi was known for its ethos, customs and its lively history, callcentres in Delhi had an upper hand due to a mix of tradition and modernity and the call centres became the façade of the modernistic culture.

The Customer Interaction Centre even referred to as a Call centre, is a place which focuses in receiving and broadcasting a large amount of data, helps the customer with answering queries and is voice-based.

The late 90’s witnessed the likelihood by other multi-national companies to outsource their call centres and BPO services overseas in order to cut the operational costs and also even upsurge efficiency. India was the very first one to have faced this new age experiment. It has been also seen that the call centre services in India could be set up due to the undermentioned factors:

·         Constructive government policies

·         Exceptional communication groups

·         Relatively low wages

·         Expert English conversant personnel

·         Cost reserves

·         Enhanced quality

·         Improved productivity 

All the above- mentioned factors have steered the organizations to outsource the call centre services to India or to mount up the prevailing global operations. Additionally, they have helped in the volatile business growth of outsourcing in India.

The services that provide a support for the services which are offered by a call centre are known as the call centre support services and are required by a company for smoother functioning. Some of them are mentioned as under:

·         Technical services

·         Front and back office operations

·         Financing

·         Account

·         Help Desk

·         BPO

The call centre services are the ones that manage the help desk units and also tailor to all the technical or any other queries raised otherwise by a customer and also embarks on sales and marketing activities. The services help an organization to stay connected with a customer by inbound or outbound calls and makes the customer happy and induct new customers as well. Some of the services are:

·         Inbound Calling

·         Outbound Calling 

·         Customer Service Operations

·         Responding to Service

·         Inbound Sales and Marketing

·         Chat and Email maintenance

·         Technical Support services

·         Procurement of Order 

It does not matter if the call centre is big or small, is staffed with less or fewer agents, all are in need of facilitating remote operations, assimilate business operations, regulate costs and confirm business stability. They are in need of call centre solutions that restructure business undertakings and enhance the processes, amend the communications, and are self-administered with least interference.

Some of the call centre solutions are as under:

·         Audio Visual Solutions- These include the meeting room, board room, audio interface etc.

·         Mobile Solutions- This comprises of handsets, mobile hardware support, mobile service provider, mobile application support etc.

·         Security Solutions- It consists of content and email encoding and web Solution etc.

·         Cloud and Data Solutions- This includes the online support and wireless access points.

·         Support Solutions- These cater to hardware, network and server support.

·         Network Solutions- These include the desktop security, network monitoring, Wide Area Network as well as Local Area Network etc.

·         Voice Solutions- These include the billing evaluation, call centre services and call recording and monitoring.

The sales and productivity of a call centre entirely depend on the satisfaction of the customer. There are two types of voice- based interfaces which are available to the customer. These are the inbound and outbound calls. These are explained in brief as below:

 Inbound call Centre- The inbound calling is a process wherein the agents receive calls from a customer for some information, support and assistance for using the products or services of the company.

A)   Outbound call centre –This is contrary to the inbound calling and entails the agents calling the clients to generate sales and also attract new customers.

Business process outsourcing (BPO) is the commissioning of secondary business undertakings and roles to a third- party and comprises of human resource, payroll, call centres and ITES (information technology enabled services).This is also referred as the back office outsourcing.

Apart from the outsourced call centres are the domestic call centres which are located in one’s country and takes care of business like the customer care, finance, payroll etc. depending on the requirement of the company and ideal for the organizations who want to keep it within the country and not overseas.

All these call centres are integral but the call centre rates differ for setting the call centres depending on the factors below:

·         Contract terms

·         Volume of Calls

·         Skillset needed by agents

·         Complication of projects

Inbound call centre rates differ depending on the factors below as they are at the receiving end and not targeting at sales.

·         Shared price

·         Committed price

·         Monthly price

Outbound call centre, however, has a pricing set up based on the below factors as it is focussed on lead and sales generation.

·         Hourly basis

·         Commission basis

·         Hourly as well as commission basis

Thus, we can say that call centre is emerging and developing at a remarkable speed and becoming a significant and vital constituent of the prevailing organizations. It serves on the motto “A happy customer leads to a profitable and successful organization”. Hence, they target at the satisfaction of the customers which in turn benefits the company, giving better returns and in developing the economy as a whole.

Quality and Customer Service Attitude

In a growing economy like today, the employment and growth opportunities are rising at a steadfast pace. The prices are soaring high and off lately the desires and luxuries are becoming a part of life and people are working together for a smoother life. For this people have started working early as they are well paid as compared to other fields and are not required to have any professional training or backing as well Transitioning the process to India meant less cost incurred, more productivity, economical as the labour costs are cheap, the quality is maintained and so the advent of callcentres in India has paved the way for numerous opportunities for people of all age groups and it is a pioneering lead in itself. The amazing as well as the masterminded development of the call centres has encompassed way beyond their initial set-ups in the fiscal and transmission zones and has baffled the basic qualms.

The transition of call centres started with their base at Delhi from where it started expanding to all parts of India. Delhi, being the capital was the first point of focus and gained momentum as people from all parts of the country came and started working and settling down there and gradually the growth started at an inevitable pace. There are a plethora of call centres in Delhi. Most of these are situated far off and are provided with pickups and drops for the employees as the employees are required to work at the wee hours and against the body clock.  

A call centre is a central point which is used for obtaining and even communicating a large bulk of data by the access of phones. This works as a pivotal focus for consolidated management of personal communication, comprising of letters, faxing documents, offer support through live support software, social networking, rapid messaging and emails.

After having an insight of the call centres and reasons for the shift to India, it would be interesting to know what call centre services in India comprise of. The call centre service in India deals with all types of services that can be offered by a call centre, could be for recovery, sales, marketing, after sales support etc. are all voice-based operations, divided under two heads:

(A)   Outbound call centre –This is managed by a company and offers services like reaching out to the clients by emails or chatting interfaces and it is specifically for those clients whom we are unable to offer service or one where a call back is needed, and even where the emails are left unattended and is done to communicate any special guidelines, proposals, bids, notices, etc.  
   
(B)   Inbound call Centre- This refers to a division where calls are received by the agents to help a customer obtain the required information, and even ask for support and assistance, for the products or services used by them. They are more frequently termed as Customer service or support and the agents need to be sympathetic and attentive to the consumers.

 

The above mentioned are the services that are directly offered from the comfort of a call centre. Yet there are other services which are required by a call centre to function smoothly and they are known as the scall centresupport service. These could be on the technical front and back office operations. The BPO services commonly referred as the back office operations along with finance and accounting operations and are crucial for the execution of daily activities with adept specialists so that the whole focus can be diverted to the main business activities.

Technical support, on the other hand, is vital for the smooth operations of all the devices that are used in the call centres, all software and hardware issues, networking, programming etc. It can be also said that call centre support services serve as a backbone without which the call centres cannot operate.

The call centre services administer the help desks, which cater to all the technical queries raised at the customer end and even provide assistance with the aid of their software. Other activities carried by the call centre services is to undertake sales and marketing undertakings. For this purpose, few callous calling approaches and assistance through live chat windows are used which are on a company’s website. Apart from the general inbound and outbound calls are the outbound sales call centre and the outsourced outbound call centre.

Let us have a sneak preview of the same. The outbound sales can be broadly defined as a process where the representatives are required to make calls to the prospective list of people who would have shown some interest in the products by downloading, liking a blog, filling a form, attending a conference or commenting on a post or submit some feedback earlier to increase the leads and are known as the lead developing team and another set of agents need to call a list and generate sales in which prior to a call, a connection is established through emails as well. This team is called as the lead generation team.

A prodigious way to enhance the customer service operations and even to enhance the business competency is by outsourcing and is also known as outbound call centre outsourcing to a provider who maintains a remarkable record of achievements. These kind of services are crucial for any business unit even though, administering a unit like this has many pre-requisites like adept labour, procuring expensive tools and machinery, training, quality etc.

Thus, customer service is of paramount importance for any business today and helps in controlling the labour operations, strengthens the work and even altering the work experience. It overall helps to bridge the relationship which exists between the quality of service and the customer satisfaction levels. The empathy provided by the agents comforts the customer and this understanding helps to develop the brand or the company in the long run thus yielding positive and fruitful results overall.