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In the initial phases of a start up, a company may possess the requisite manpower to take care of the sporadic customer calls. The in-house employees may themselves be well acquainted with various facets of the business to be able to offer timely and satisfactory customer support, obliterating the need of investing in outsourced call center services or training fresh employees for the purpose. If you are lucky, this will not last for long. If at a later stage the business picks up momentum and sales suddenly shoot up like never before, it might just get impossible to adequately handle calls from the customers and clients using the in-house resources. Things might get out of hand and the well-paid executives of the company might have to attend to customer calls at the cost of neglecting crucial work-a-day business tasks. Nothing can be more suicidal for a business establishment. This is where the need of an appropriate and resourceful call center arises. Any kind of product service support, IT support or telemarketing support that is removed from the primary profit-making business operations of the company can be outsourced to a call center dealing in these services. It might not be a good idea to install and operate an in-house call center for these tasks as each set up would mean multiple expenses on telephone lines, computers and the all-expensive call tracking software, not to speak of the cost of maintaining the entire establishment in the long run. Statistics in favor of call centers In the last couple of decades call centers have slowly and steadily gained the favor of businesses and establishments across the globe. Companies can now bet on call centers to give them the much-needed growth push while relieving them of numerous peripheral obligations to focus on the core business operations. Statistics show that the attitude of businesses towards call centers is undergoing a very positive shift, in that, expenditure on call centers is set to spiral up to $400 billion by the end of 2011 with 30 percent of the amount dedicated to outsourced call centers. Maximizing returns on investment from call center The right measure of success for any call center operation is its return on investment (ROI). The benefits accrued out of improved sales and customer retention should far exceed the costs incurred in outsourcing the call center services. In fact, the attempt here should be to ensure that the returns are maintained at a high level and the company makes most out of the investment undertaken in hiring the services. Businesses can apply three basic processes to ascertain this: Analyze Data: Proper monitoring of the call data is indispensable. After studying the data collected on areas, such as, the call duration, the number of resolved issues, the number of unresolved issues, the number of times a caller is transferred, and so on, adequate and timely changes can be brought about to make the process all the more effective. Set Goals: By generating achievable objectives in the various facets of call management one can chalk out result-oriented guidelines to carry out the functions in the best possible manner. The CRM data can be very useful in the process. Train and motivate personnel: It is very important to keep the call center personnel adequately motivated to discharge their responsibilities well and to keep honing their skills by attending various training programs. Outsourcing call center services can be profitably resorted to as and when needed by business establishments, whether it is to handle a seasonal surge in business activity or to deal with constant rise and fall in customer service requirement.
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