Call Center Outsourcing

Get your sales, marketing or customer service messages out cheaply and efficiently
By Greg Brown As a small business grows, a rising tide of customers is good news — until each and every one wants to talk to you. That kind of chore you can farm out to a call center, leaving your team to focus on new business. Call centers can help you:

1. Take orders, resolve complaints
2. Reach new customers or market to existing customers
3. Make appointments for service

Here are the first steps toward understanding and using call centers:

First, try call center robots

If what you need is to get a grip on incoming appointments, say, for a medical practice or car repair shop, an automated, Internet-based system might be enough — and cheaper than call center outsourcing.
Try:  Timetrade is inbound call center software that allows your customers to make an appointment online or via the telephone.

Go private label call center

Setting up call centers takes serious investment. Unless your business is built around this channel exclusively or primarily, its likely better to outsource the work until it grows to a significant portion of revenues.
Try:  PSFweb, Americall, Quscient and Xact are some of the many companies that provide outsourced call centers.

Try overseas call center outsourcing

Inbound call centers often work from foreign shores using English (or Spanish) speaking reps to handle your company's needs. Increasingly, too, even big companies like insurance providers and airlines hire in-country, native speakers through home-based systems that rely on part-timers, usually U.S. citizens looking for flexible work schedules.
Try:  Teleplaza lists international sources for call center outsourcing to multilingual providers. LiveOps, PAI, Caleris and Willow offer access to home-based operators in this fast-growing segment.  Find a directory of international call centers at Business.com.

Build in-house call center solutions

Besides phones, computers and space, a call center in your own office implies a significant investment in software to manage those contacts, often Web-based.
Try:  Contactual, UCN and Angel offer Web-driven inbound call center software that integrates with customer-relationship management programs, including NetSuite and Salesforce.com. If you have the money to invest, top providers of high-end call center software include Avaya, Nortel and Cisco.  Find vendors of call center software and call center equipment in directories at Business.com.  

Keep up with the law on call centers — privacy matters!

As companies have come to rely on telemarketing, politicians have responded in kind with do-not-call legislation. Running afoul of one angry customer can cost you thousands.
Try:  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission maintains a page for businesses that explains the do-not-call registry and its rules.

• Some call centers also handle faxes, e-mails and letters from your customers. They go by the name contact centers.
• Hiring a call center can take a load of your mind, but then strangers are representing your brand. Ask for names of customers before signing on, and dial them up as mystery client. You might be surprised.
• Consider call center outsourcing a one-off project – say a timely marketing push – as a test before signing a long-term deal.
• A big part of using a call center successfully is reacting to what they learn. Make sure you have a good customer-relation database practice in place before taking on a call center project.