Inbound Call Centre

1. What is an inbound call center?

A call center consists of a team which is responsible for incoming calls. When a customer calls, the team at the call center picks up and takes care of the customer's query by providing them assistance on the matter at hand. It is designed to man the requests of:

• Businesses
• Government agencies
• Non-profit organizations, etc.

Call center agents are trained to provide exceptional customer support to keep customers loyal to the brand.

2. What's the difference between an Inbound and Outbound call center?

Call centers are divided into 2 major categories i.e:

A) Inbound call center

B) Outbound call center

A) Inbound call center:

Inbound call center deals with those customers who are trying to reach your brand to get assistance from you. They ensure that your customer's queries and doubts are solved to provide them with a satisfactory experience and hence making them loyal to your brand.

B) Outbound call center:

The outbound call center is the complete opposite of the inbound call center. Here the agents connect with your customers first to promote your brand or to get feedback from your customers. 

They also make outgoing calls to potential and existing shoppers to inform their potential/existing customers about the lastest:

• Deals
• Discounts
• Offers, etc.

It all depends on the needs of the company, they can either opt for just one service or can go ahead with both the services depending upon their needs of the business.

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3. How many calls can an inbound call center agent take?

There isn't any fixed answer to this question as the answer to this question varies depending upon the company and the agent. This is because it is highly affected by internal and external factors.

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The internal factors include:

• Type of technology used.
• Number of employees working at any given point in time.
• Skillsets and the efficiency of the employee, etc.

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In external factors include:

• New promotional offers
• Festive season
• Limited period offers/ recall, etc.

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This can result in receiving more calls than normal days making it one of the deciding factors.

But there's one way to calculate these metrics. The company can calculate the total number of calls received every month and then divide it by the total number of agents working during those times. You then need to divide that number by the number of days the call center was open. This will help you in giving proper clarity on how many calls a representative/agent needs to answer on a daily basis.

4. What services does an inbound call center provide?

Call centers are about more than just managing phone calls, and that's the reason you might see them being called as contact centers nowadays. This is because many of them now, also handle:

• Emails
• Social Media
• Live Chat
• Text messaging marketing etc.

A lot of contact centers are providing full-scale customer service to improve the overall experience. 

Outsourcing these services would help businesses to get proficiency around their business. Many of these call centers/contact centers are very flexible in the services they offer. Some of their basic services include:

(i) Responding to Messages:

Collecting your user's data and helping them by providing them assistance over a message.

(ii) Call Patching:

Transferring the call to the relevant agent to provide the best possible service.

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(iii) Take Orders:

They can also take orders or assist your customers in ordering the right product as per their needs and requirements. They can also upsell or cross-sell your customers while doing so.

(iv) Provide Excellent Customer Service :

Providing a good customer experience by solving customer queries is one of the most basic and important reasons for outsourcing an inbound call center.

(v) Solve Customer Complaints:

Inbound call centers also play a crucial role and understanding user problems and help the brands in retaining those customers by effectively solving their problems.

(vi) Technical Assistance:

If your product/service deals with a technical product, the inbound call centers can provide you with technical support services. This would help your customers in understanding your product in a better manner. 

5. How to decide whether your business needs to outsource an inbound call center?

It is important to understand whether your business needs to outsource an inbound call center or not. If your business has a good customer satisfaction rate you might not pay attention to this option but if you want to maintain the same level of customer support as your business grows you might have to take a look at this.

To make it simple, you need to outsource an inbound call center:

• If you're losing way too many customers in a short period due to lack of engagement.
• If you're receiving a significant level of complaints about your customer support experience.
• If you're not able to maintain a single voice of your brand.
• If you're unable to cater to your global audience at all times.
• If you have a small team size which currently needs to focus on other internal aspects of the business.

If you're facing any of these above problems, it advisable to outsource an inbound call center.

6. What are the Advantages of Inbound Outsourcing?

The advantages of inbound outsourcing are:

• It provides you with more time to focus on your core business.
• Reduces your fixed costs.
• Reduces time and costs of training new employees.
• Helps in scalability, etc.

7. What are the pricing models of the Inbound call center?

Inbound call center works on different pricing models, the most common ones include charges:

• Per-minute
• Per-hour
• Per-transaction
• Per-agent, etc.

Some of them also charge a flat rate per month, therefore the rates depend on the call center and your usage from them.