You might classify your business as a small
business, but that doesn't mean you can't provide advanced call center
needs for your customers and clients. Effective customer service often
makes a major difference between vendor selection when product and
pricing are similar. These days, business phone technology and software
allow you to position yourself as though you have an entire high-end
call center at your disposal, even if it's just you and the intern in
the office. You provide a better service for your customers, and you
also come across as a larger business than what you actually are,
helping your vendors, clients and customers feel more comfortable about
doing business with you.
Establishing Your Call Center Needs
Before investing in phone system software or technology, you need to
determine exactly what your call center needs are. The most important
information you need for this process is determining what your call
volume is going to be like, as well as how many phone lines you need and
how many employees you're going to have on the line. If you only have
an occasional caller, and the rest contact you through email, live chat
or a ticketing system, you may be able to stick with a basic phone line.
If you have customers constantly calling in, you're drowning under
dropped calls and hold time and overall, you are too inundated for a
single phone to handle the issues, then a business phone line for a call
center solution is a must.
Choosing a Business Phone System
The phone system you use is the most important part of your call
center plans. A business phone system provides you with many features
that are necessary for a call center, as well as being compatible with
interactive voice response (IVR) systems so you can route your customers
to the appropriate representatives. For smaller businesses, you may
send the calls directly to whomever is available, unless a specific
extension is requested. For larger businesses and customer service
lines, an IVR gives you a way to filter out calls, redirect
non-essential calls to your website and work with a large call volume.
Some features to look for in a business phone system include multiple
extensions, key system units for multiple phone lines, private branch
exchanges for larger businesses, virtual receptionists, custom
greetings, call recording, hold music, disabling busy signals, voicemail
and call transfers.
Cloud-Based Call Center Software
Cloud-based technology has found its way into many aspects of
business life, and call center solutions is one of them. Instead of
hosting all of the call center technology and equipment on your own
location, a cloud-based call center already has the equipment set up.
They provide you with the hardware, software and resources you need to
run an effective call center, so the only thing you need on your end are
the phones. Sometimes, you don't even need that, as Voice over Internet
Protocol (VoIP) based systems work off of many types of headsets. A few
advantages of cloud-based call center software and services include not
dealing with the overhead costs associated with having all of this
equipment on-site, not having your business crippled if a disaster
causes damage to your building and dealing with a company that is on the
cutting edge of call center technology, instead of putting together
equipment in your resource range. These services provide nothing but
call center solutions, making them experts on what's out there and
available.
