Customer relations call center : Principles & Functioning
Companies in France and abroad are increasingly looking for solutions to improve their customer relations. They need to find an efficient, cost-effective way of managing the various customer demands, without neglecting service quality or sales performance.
Solutions exist for this, such as the creation of a corporate call center. In fact, the creation of this service, coupled with call center software, offers a number of significant advantages: improved customer relations, increased productivity, improved sales performance and data centralization and analysis.
In this article, we’ll look at why it’s important for a company to set up its own call center, and how to make the most of it, both for customers and against the competition.
Call center definition
A call center is a service set up by a company to handle incoming and outgoing calls. It consists in creating a team of agents or teleconsultants, whose main mission is to provide the company with effective technical and commercial support.
Agents can also be asked to carry out additional tasks, such as making appointments or managing customer relations.
What is a call center?
A call center is a service that provides companies with a professional solution for handling customer communication tools. This can involve both inbound and outbound calls, as well as chat, SMS, email and social network interaction. This structure can be integrated into the company itself, or outsourced to a specialized service provider who will manage the service.
How does a call center work?
The operating principle of a call center is as follows:
- The company sets up a team to manage incoming and outgoing customer requests. The people in this team are generally referred to as agents or teleconsultants. Their primary mission is to manage and improve customer relations. However, other teams are linked to this structure, such as sales and marketing.
- To manage customer relations, the company sets up a system that creates a dedicated line to receive incoming calls and make outgoing calls. Incoming calls are handled by call center agents who respond to customer requests and help them resolve their problems.
- Outgoing calls can be made for prospecting or marketing purposes. Call center operators make calls to customers to offer them products or services. Call centers, or contact centers, can also be used to provide additional information and updates on products and services offered by the company.
- It should be noted that customer relationship managementwithin a company's call center can also be carried out via other channels (SMS, Chat, Social Networks...). This is known as omnichannel strategy.
To manage this technical set-up and maximize performance, one solution is to use dedicated call center software like that from digiCONTACTS. By coupling it with your CRM or business applications, your performance will be enhanced, both from a relational and commercial point of view.
What are the objectives of a call center?
The main objectives of a call center, or contact center, are generally as follows:
- Improve customer service quality
- Reduce technical assistance costs
- Increase customer satisfaction and promote the company's products and services
- Develop sales using other communication levers
Obviously, a company may decide to set up a call center for one reason rather than another, but it's important to understand that the gains associated with this decision are manifold. Indeed, beyond the customer relations/satisfaction aspect, productivity, sales performance and team spirit can also be positively impacted by this decision.
What are the advantages of setting up a call center?
If you decide to set up a call center within your company and pair it with a dedicated solution, you'll gain a number of advantages:
1.optimize customer relations
Managing your customer relations is essential to developing your company's business.
Knowing how to contact, respond to and inform your customers will enable you to qualify them and build their loyalty. As a result, your customers are more satisfied, more loyal and more likely to recommend you. So you can look forward to increased sales.
Enterprise call center software lets you :
- Better manage simultaneous call flows
- Effectively guide your customers
- Reduce waiting time
- Build customer loyalty
Good customer relationship management depends to a large extent on the organization of agents and their workload.
For a call center to be successful, three basic elements must be in place:
- Average waiting time
- Average conversation time
- The volume of calls handled daily
Thanks to a high-performance call center solution tailored to your company's needs, your agents will be able to increase their productivity. This makes it easier for them to meet the basic criteria. Ultimately, this will considerably improve customer satisfaction and service quality.
2.increase your teams' productivity
By implementing call center software in your company, you'll increase the efficiency of your teams.
This type of software will enable them to :
- Avoid answering machines
- Handle multiple calls simultaneously
- Chain calls efficiently
Your operators can handle more calls thanks to this tool. They're also more efficient, thanks to complete monitoring of their activity. So you can control your costs and grow your business at the same time.
3.optimize your sales force's performance
An easy-to-use call center solution can make your sales force more efficient by streamlining their workload.
Teams perform better when they have time-saving tools at their disposal, so they can concentrate on customer relations and sales development.
This type of solution makes the day-to-day work of your sales force much easier. Not only does it distribute incoming calls to the right person, it also offers the possibility of setting up outgoing call campaigns.
Your sales teams can optimize their telephone prospecting with features such as automatic dialing and intelligent callback management. They also save a great deal of time in organizing appointments, thanks to calendar synchronization and geolocation.
4: Analyze data to improve performance
You can monitor the quality and performance of your teams in real time, thanks to detailed statistics such as the percentage of missed calls, waiting time or length of conversations.
You can also provide training for your sales agents, and resort to listening, blowing or recording. In this way, you can identify any difficulties in the course of the scenario and make the necessary adjustments to improve the quality of the customer relationship.
The experts at digiCONTACTS can help you set up a customized telephony solution that will enable your sales force to significantly improve results.
What tools and technologies do call centers use?
Enterprise call centers use a variety of tools and technologies to deliver optimal customer service to their customers. These tools include voice call management systems, telemarketing systems, online chat solutions, as well as mobile and web platforms.
Agents can also take advantage of appointment scheduling services and access to databases to quickly find answers to customers' questions.
Why use digiCONTACTS call center software?
For over 15 years, we have been helping companies in France and abroad to implement solutions to improve and manage customer relations. Present in 25 countries, over 4,000 users are now satisfied with our services.
Our teams are available every day of the week to help you with your needs. We can help you with installation, training and support.
If you too would like to benefit from our experience and discover our software dedicated to enterprise call centers, contact us via the form at the bottom of the page for a free demonstration!
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