Limited advertising and marketing budgets restrict small-and-midsize-businesses (SMBs) from adopting crafty tactics to sell their products and services. With small customer support teams, they can’t communicate consistently with existing and potential customers. Hiring an outbound call center can help you accomplish these tasks.
Outbound call center companies offer helpful services, such as telesales, customer acquisition, and market research, that can strengthen customer relationships and free up your staff's time. But, before you hire an outbound call center service company, it's important to know what they do and how to find the right one.
What services do outbound call center companies provide?
Outbound call center companies provide a range of services, including:
Telesales
Telesales involves proactively selling new products and services to existing customers and new prospects via phone calls. The call center staff members are typically trained in cold calling, which helps generate more sales and customer interest in short calls.
Customer acquisition
Many outbound call centers feature customer acquisition services, which may involve the lead generation process, from lead research to qualification, scoring, and lead conversion. Some call center companies adopt a broad approach to customer acquisition by calling multiple phone numbers to gauge their interest in your products and services.
Market research
Market research services by an outbound call center can include customer feedback surveys and follow-up calls to analyze customer satisfaction rates. Hiring an outbound call center company to avail market research services can help you better understand your customers' wants and needs, helping you devise marketing strategies accordingly.
Customer retention
Outbound call centers frequently encounter customer issues and complaints. With their reactive customer retention techniques, such as offering cashback and discounts, these third-party service providers can help you retain customers and stay ahead of competitors.
Debt collection
If your business sends invoices or provides credit to your customers, you have to deal with debt collection. Outbound call center companies offer trained staff that can effectively collect past-due amounts and work out payment arrangements so you and your internal team can focus on other important tasks.
Product promotion
Another marketing service offered by outbound call center companies is product promotion. This service typically involves increasing brand and product awareness by contacting existing customers. These companies also share details about new product launches and upcoming sales events to attract potential customers and increase conversion rates.
Proactive customer notifications
From appointment reminders to service outages, outbound call centers can proactively notify customers of important events. This service is beneficial in the healthcare sector, where a patient might receive a call about an upcoming doctor appointment or a reminder to pick up a prescription from a pharmacy.
What's the difference between inbound and outbound call centers?
Inbound call centers handle some or all of the phone calls coming into your company. An outbound call center provides the opposite service; they call customers on behalf of your company—in other words, they handle outbound calls.
At inbound call centers, agents respond to customer questions and issues. Outbound call center agents are more proactive and reach out to customers for feedback, sales efforts, or to conduct surveys. Outbound calls are often limited to a predetermined time not to take up too much of the customer’s time. Calls to an inbound center have no fixed time limit as agents resolve issues.
The goals of each type of call center are also different, as are the metrics used to measure success. Outbound call centers monitor call conversion rates, lead generation, and sales goals. Meanwhile, inbound call centers focus on call resolution times, issue resolution statistics, and customer satisfaction levels.
What are the benefits of hiring an outbound call center?
Hiring an outbound call center is often a cost-effective solution for growing companies. Recruiting adequate support staff to increase sales and customer support efforts can take time and money. Outbound call centers can help you get trained personnel for a reasonable fee. Other benefits include:
Access to expertise and resources
The best outbound call center companies distinguish themselves by hiring expert staff. They might be trained in customer interactions, retention techniques, sales, and marketing. Call center personnel might have certifications to validate their expertise in these areas.
Outbound call centers also have calling resources that small businesses are not likely to have, such as progressive dialers, predictive dialers, and power dialers. These tools help ensure agents make the maximum number of daily calls, giving your business value for your money.
Flexibility to scale up and down
Outbound call centers allow you to scale up the number of agents assigned to your business as demand increases. This can be helpful during sales promotions and peak sales seasons. You can also ramp down as needed. The scalability offered by an outsourced service is much more flexible than what you could achieve with in-house staff.
Build brand awareness and customer relationships
The customer support and market research services offered by an outbound call center help build brand awareness. Reaching out to customers and potential leads spreads the word about your company’s products and promotions. Call centers can also manage referral programs, helping your brand reach a larger audience.
Cost-effective customer communication
Outsourcing outbound calling is often cost-effective compared to the expense of hiring an in-house team. Your business saves on infrastructure, technology investments, and the cost of training a dedicated staff for calling.
Improve customer satisfaction
Outbound call centers address customer issues proactively, helping improve satisfaction levels. This also boosts customer retention, ensuring repeat business from a loyal base.
What should you look for in an outbound call center company?
There are many outbound call center outsourcing companies. Selecting the right one for your business takes time and effort, but here are some tips on what to look for:
Industry expertise: Look for a call center with experience in your industry. Familiarity with your ideal customers and the language of your business helps make a call center a good fit.
Customer relationship strategies: Businesses planning to hire a call center aim to focus more on customer loyalty and retention. While selecting a call center for your needs, choose one that can articulate its marketing and promotional strategies.
Cost-effective pricing: There are many pricing models in the outbound call center industry, including per-call, per-hour, and flat fees. Looking for a budget-friendly company will help you save money, giving you more flexibility to invest in other important areas.
Modern technology: Many call center service providers use call center software to enhance the efficiency of their services. Check if your selected company uses the latest technology software to provide you with helpful metrics and analytics.
Outbound call centers help businesses thrive
Every small and midsize business witnesses its share of highs and lows. While it's relatively easier to attract customers, retaining them with qualified support staff can be challenging. The best outbound call center company can help take care of customer support and other critical functions so that your team can focus on what you do best.
Check out these Capterra resources to help you with other outsourcing options: