For the past 30 years, our Centris agents have provided customer support to a number of businesses throughout the United States. As we continually grow our business and reach out to prospective clients, we often hear that one reason many businesses don’t outsource to a contact center is simply because they don’t know what to look for when doing so. The more we heard this, the more we realized that part of our job in approaching new clients was to educate them on this very issue. We have developed a check-list, of sorts, to teach our potential clients what to look for in order to know they are choosing the best call center for their business needs. Here’s the guidelines we use when educating a potential client.
HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR CALL CENTER- TEN TIPS
- Determine what your needs are: As a company, what exactly do you need from your contact center? Contact centers do far more than just answer in-coming calls; they conduct market surveys, trouble-shoot, handle soft-collections and much more. It’s important for any business to know exactly what their support needs will be before approaching a contact center. Some contact centers specialize in very specific tasks while others perform a variety of tasks. Know what you need before speaking with any prospects.
- Seek referrals from other businesses: Word-of-mouth is always a great referral. As a business owner or manager, seek out the advice of others in your field who are using a contact center. Speak to as many people as you can and get a broad range of feedback from each. Knowledge is power and the more knowledge you have, the better decision you will make.
- What is the company’s reputation for customer satisfaction? Once you have narrowed down your prospects, do your research. Check any online ratings that may exist for these contact centers. See if you can reach out to any of their current clients for references.
- What is the breadth of services that the company offers? If you have determined that your customer service needs will be rather broad, make sure the contact center has the capacity to handle these needs. They should offer a suite of services that line up with your business needs and they should also have an adequate number of agents to handle the volume your business may generate.
- What is their location? Will that work for your business? Contact centers reside in three basic locations: state-side, off-shore and near-shore. Location will have an impact on cost. U.S. based contact centers tend to have a higher cost due to wage expectations. However, U.S. based agents can easily speak the language of your customers making problem resolution fast and easy. Off-shore agents will come at a much less expensive price tag thanks to lower wages, however, the language barrier can become an issue when communicating with customers. When customers leave feeling frustrated or that there is a lack of resolution because of language barriers, the cost savings becomes negated. A near-shore contact center is another option and can tend to offer the best of both worlds. Typically, a near-shore contact center is much less expensive than a U.S. based center plus they bring the added benefit of being able to easily and effectively communicate with your customer base.
- Will their technology integrate with your business systems? This is a key piece of information that should be discussed and resolved in the early stages of interviewing call centers. It’s very important that the technology used in the contact center will be compatible with your customer database.
- Does the company integrate Social Media into their services? Many contact centers are beginning to add this to their suite of services since social media is such a driving force in our culture today; both business and personal. If your business is active on social media, then the platform will likely become a place for you to interact with your customers. Will the contact center be handling the issues that come up via social media or will that be handled In-house?
- Have a clear understanding of their general policies and procedures. This is information that can and should be shared in early discussions. These would include their billing procedures for you, how often they provide you with customer feedback, how they track customer feedback as well as a number of other day-to-day functions. If you are in discussions with a contact center, they should willingly map out for you the way they will provide the information you need.
- Have a clear understanding of their security and privacy measures with sensitive data. Most companies have data that is sensitive. However, some industries, such as Healthcare and Insurance have a great deal of highly sensitive data that needs to be protected. Is the contact center HIPAA compliant? What is their data capture and encoding method? You should have a working knowledge of what this will look like for your business before partnering with a contact center.
- Know what the costs will be both short and long term. Finally, knowing the costs for your business is essential. A good contact center will be able to project what your costs will be for the first year and up to five years beyond.
THE CENTRIS CHECKLIST
When we are in discussions with a potential new client, we go through these guidelines with them. We ask them many questions in order to understand what their exact needs are; especially if they have not been able to clearly articulate what they need. We are very customer centric here at Centris, so our reputation for customer satisfaction is extremely high and we share those specifics with each new client. We also share with them the number of services we offer our clients:
- Inbound Sales
- Marketing Surveys
- Tech Support
- Live Chat
- Business Process Outsourcing
In addition to these, our near-shore, bilingual contact centers provide customer support at a savings of 50-70% compared to U.S. based contact centers. If you are looking for a contact center to support your customer service needs, contact us. We will be happy to walk you through this checklist to best determine how to serve your needs. We’ve been supporting businesses for more than 30 years and we’d love to work with you.
