A call centre is a service company which provides operator-assisted voice services. It is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers. These calls are termed as outbound and inbound calls respectively. Inbound calls are calls that are made by the consumer to obtain information, report a malfunction, or ask for help. These calls are substantially different from outbound calls, where call center agents place calls to potential customers mostly with intentions of selling services to the individual.

In this article we will be basically discussing about Outbound Call Center Services. Outbound call centers provide services, which are outbound in nature, like providing telemarketing or appointment filling services. The following is some of the outbound call center services that can be outsourced to India:

• Telemarketing

• Database Selling

• Direct Mail Follow-up

• Appointment fixing

• Deal closing support

• Dynamic order filling services

• Customer satisfaction surveys

• Payment reminder

• Debt Collection

• Credit card verification solutions

• Outsourcing program notice

• Advertising and brand management solutions

• Business correspondence assistance

• Registration and confirmation functions to a call center

• Market Intelligence

• Database Selling

• Direct Mail Follow-up

• Lead Generation Services Qualification Management

• Seminar Population

• Product Promotion

• Information and Literature Fulfillment

• Decision Maker Contacts

• Up Sell/Cross Sell Campaigns

• Surveys

Outsourcing is beneficial for the organizations as it is cost effective and the energy of business can be directed at the competencies of a particular business. It is also beneficial in terms of making more efficient use of labor, capital, technology and resources.

India has become an ideal location for outsourcing business primarily because the same services with the same level of quality are offered in India for a much lower cost in comparison to other countries. It saves hidden cost like training, overheads and saves infrastructure cost which can eat up your investment. Organizations don’t have to spend on setting up the right kind of technology and later maintaining it.

The prime advantage of outsourcing in India is that as it has a large number of manpower available which is educated and is fluent in English. People work for lesser salary in comparison to European countries, and are more hardworking. Due to India becoming a hub of outsourcing business – availability of skilled labor is getting easier day by day.

The organization that is willing to outsource do not have to develop the competencies in the area which they want to outsource. The outsourcing organization already has expertise available for their business and work by providing greater efficiency and quality which results in providing faster services to customers and in term resulting into higher customer satisfaction rate. India also gets benefit from time zone which enables faster work for customers.

India’s democracy and stable government along with an inclination toward IT development and open door policy also makes it inviting choice. India also has a large pool of highly technical skilled manpower which enables these outsourcing organizations to be technically excellent, which in turn helps in providing high quality solutions.

Last but not least the prime reason of the growth of outsourcing business is that an organization which is outsourcing becomes free to concentrate on core business functions and can reap high amount of profit by directing energies on these areas only.

The idea behind pay per click is to drive visitors to your website with a portion of them making some type of desired action such as a purchase or filling our a form for more information. Many service related sites or those that sell high end products use pay per click advertising to drive visitors knowing that it will take a phone call or personal meeting to close the sale. For example, the visitor may fill out a form requesting more information. The sales person then calls that prospect (lead) to discuss the product or service. The worst part is that he or she may not even make contact with the prospect since people become busy or have already purchased through someone else. Finally, out of the prospects that he has reached by phone, he can then finally get his message across and start to make the sale. That’s a a lot of money spent on clicks just to make phone contact with one prospect.

With pay per call, you eliminate these two steps and jump straight to talking to a prospect that has called you. Just the very action of someone calling you instead of you calling them creates a prospect that has a more immediate interest in what you have to offer.

Pay per call can even be less costly than pay per click advertising. Many small businesses find it difficult to use the pay per click services after wasting countless hours. This brings me to the savings a business can realize in manpower required to manage pay per click campaigns. With pay per call, you don’t need to manage anything. You simply pick up the phone during business hours. Prospect Direct Marketing provides this cutting edge pay per call service and will even pay for a call center to take your calls after hours. You don’t even pay for 800 toll charges which are typically incurred. Prospect Direct is an all inclusive pay per call marketing company that handles everything, leaving you to devote more time to your clients.

This service works best for businesses that offer a higher end product or service that typically requires phone contact prior to making the sale. Pay per call is becoming popular with professionals such as accountants, attorneys, insurance agents, mortgage companies, and real estate agents. Many other businesses can benefit from pay per call if they have a business in which they primarily make a sale by phone or in person. Pay per call can be segmented by region down to major metropolitan area so even sales agents that meet with local clients can enjoy this type of marketing.

Pay per call is a newer technology that hasn’t gotten a whole lot of publicity just yet. Once more people start to realize the benefits of paying per call, the costs could increase as demand increases. But for now, this is a hidden treasure for those that get in early. The Kelsey Group, a market research firm, estimates that pay per call will become a $1.4 billion to 4 billion dollar industry by 2009. That would roughly parallel the recent growth of pay per click advertising which jumped from $100 million in 2000 to $3.1 billion last year, according to Jupiter Research. Remember when pay per click rolled out about 10 years ago and you could pay 1/5 for the same key word today?

Why outsource inbound call centers services?

 

Inbound calls are the calls which are made by customer to the center for receiving some kind of service or to take help or assistance related to a product / service. Inbound call Center Services are used by companies to service their customers  24X7—The customer can talk directly to an online executive from the call center to solve their queries/requirements.  These centers are also used as to make their on the spot sales and let customer place orders real-time.  These centers are popularly used as helpdesk centers where customers can get help on the product of the concerned organization.

 

Call Center Outsourcing has many benefits.  This is necessitated primarily because of the requirement of niche skill sets in that area and its availability. The call centers today have professionals who are experienced in wide areas in various services that they can provide. The call center today keep a track of every client transaction be it voice or data.  The tracking of these calls are made to deliver better CRM i.e. Customer Relationship Management.  These records are used by companies for analyzing and for taking preventive action to avoid recurrence of dissatisfied customer’s calls. Thus increasing chances of achieving “Customer Delight”

 

However, these benefits are only a tip of the iceberg. The prima-facie benefit is that outsourcing ensures that companies who outsource their CRM solutions can focus on what they are best at and avoid themselves getting overwhelmed by the trivialities especially when specialized professionals, world class infrastructure and software are available at their disposal.

 

Why give preference to India?

 

Outsourcing Inbound call center services to India is a fantastic option as call center industry is booming in India. Various other reasons that make India a safe haven are:

 

Availability of educated professionals

 

In comparison to any other Asian country, India has the most educated and, good English speaking population available and which is an ever increasing figure by the day as English is being taught in India throughout from the primary classes till the High School / Post Graduation level. 

 

Ample technical talent is also available, which enables India to provide the required technical services without any hiccups.

 

 

Value for money

 

Large English speaking skilled manpower which is readily available at a lesser compensation then their western counterparts. High value of US$ vis-à-vis the Indian rupee.  Good infrastructure, specialized software and innovation for increasing the quality and  reducing cost all help in providing India the best services at very low cost.

 

24X7 services

 

Time zone advantage that India has with major countries enables India to provide 24X7 customer support.

 

Government support

 

Indian government has been giving its support and encouragement to the IT / ITES industry.  This has been visible in terms of building of high tech IT parks in various major cities.

 

Handling of multiple services:

 

Indian call center industry also demonstrated the capability of handling larger number of services which include voice inbound support, online web helpdesk and backend data processing (banking/insurance).

 

 

What are services provided by inbound call centers in India?

 

Some of the popular services which are provided by the Inbound call center in India are given below.

 

Order taking service
800 Answering Services
Phone Answering Services
Upselling and Cross Selling Services
Claims Processing Services
Product Information Services
Class and seminar registration
Inbound sales
Live web chart

 

 

In last few years the Indian call center industry has demonstrated the capability of handling multiple services provided related to customer support and due to its quality services more and more organizations are willing to outsource their customer support services and backend processing to India.