Up next
THE NEW BUSINESSES OF 2020
While call centers used to be known for working with megacorporations or telemarketing firms, more and more small businesses are seeing the benefits a contact center can bring to their customers. Whether you’re an online retail business, construction, finance, or whatever else you can think of, a contact center could present an opportunity for you to grow your business. The increase in the use of contact centers makes sense, customers are interacting with businesses in a variety of ways, and managing all those incoming communications can be difficult.
Not all centers are equal, so you want to make sure to do thorough research on what your needs are and what kind of technology you need to meet them before committing. With that in mind, let’s go over some of the basics of using a call center for your business needs.
What is a Contact Center?
Most people think of a call center that handles customer service for multinational corporations, but now, they’re much more than that. No matter what channels your business uses to communicate with customers (social media, phone, email, etc.), a contact center can handle those communications for you.
You should look for a company that offers contact center as a service (CCaaS) software, which will allow your business to only pay for the technology you need. Everything is hosted in a cloud rather than in your location, eliminating a lot of your expenses. In terms of providing return-on-investment and security, a contact center is a great idea for many growing businesses.
How can a Contact Center Improve My Business?
It will allow your current employees to focus on productive tasks to grow the business and increase your profit margins, rather than responding to Facebook messages and answering the phone all day. You always want to be looking for a competitive edge for your business. When you’re comparing your facilities to those of your competitors, you can use a service like GoLookUp, which also offers comprehensive background checks, to provide information on similar companies.
If you can’t handle call volume and your customers are on hold when they contact you or waiting days for a response to an email, their opinion of your business is dropping and you might lose a sale, or a customer completely.
How do I Set up a Contact Center?
You can easily set one up online using a third-party like Bright Pattern. While some businesses have the resources to create a contact center in-house, most operations, especially small ones, would benefit more from using the resources provided by an already-established leader in the field. It’s important to make sure that you work with a company whose services are comprehensive. 60% of customers prefer digital points of contact to phone calls now, so you want to make sure that you’re not neglecting any of the modes of communication your customers prefer.
Having a contact center to be the central point of your communications operation is just a smart business strategy. Your employees can focus on tasks that are more productive and improve your business, instead of wasting hours on the phone or answering emails. A contact center allows customer service professionals who are available 24/7 to handle all your customers’ needs so you can focus on building your business.
There’s a lot of competition between businesses in every industry, sometimes the customer experience is all that differentiates you from your competitors. If you find yourself falling behind in communicating with people reaching out to your business and want to make sure your customers are getting the answers they need, setting up a contact center might be the right way to take your business to the next level.
