If your business has to deal with customers, a contact center is essential for communication with them. However, finding and training dedicated agents to start a call center business takes time and effort. That is when an outsource contact center comes into your business strategy. Contact center outsourcing is cost-efficient and can take the responsibility of customer management off your shoulders. This blog post describes what steps the company should take to manage the call center setup and benefit from the process. Keep reading to find out how to navigate the dead-ends of a customer service partnership.
Proper implementation of the outsourced contact center: step-by-step guide
1. Profound discovery & creation of business requirements
How to open a call center? A company should clearly understand its business processes and the core problems, e.g., what it lacks and why it needs outsourced customer support. The company can start by mapping out its needs and thinking about how a contact center can support them. Only by digging deeper into this issue the client will be able to compile a list of requirements for the outsourcing team and the conditions for its work.
2. Research of reliable providers
Companies should do everything possible to find the right vendor at this stage. They usually seek advice from their business partners or look for characteristics and reviews on platforms like Capterra, G2. It is vital to select the outsourced contact center service that matches your businessβ goals and values, so the work progresses in one direction. You can find reviews about the WOW 24-7 outsourcing contact center service on the Clutch platform.Β
3. Negotiation process
During the negotiation process, the provider and the client agree on the terms of cooperation. The client chooses a bundle or a tariff plan, the number of interactions, etc. For example, WOW 24-7 has three types of Shared bundles: Startup, Basic, and Semi-Dedicated. They are distinct by the number of monthly interactions agents can process, time for service provision, and training time, respectively.
– The Startup bundle can process about 700 interactions per month, spending 130 hours on your project. The training period takes 1-2 weeks.
– The Basic bundle can process up to 1.350 interactions per month, spending 270 hours on your project. The training period takes 1-3 weeks.
– The Semi-Dedicated bundle can process up to 2.000 interactions per month, spending 400 hours on your project. The training period is custom.
There is also a possibility of hiring a dedicated team whose workload and shifts depend solely on the clientβs needs.
4. Selection of agents
Depending on the selected tariff, the company can participate in selectingΒ agents for building a call center. The business needs to be confident in the professionalism of the chosen team, as the agents are the first representatives of the company. To train an appropriate tone of voice, they have to understand and interpret the business values and core mission. WOW 24-7 provides clients with the opportunity to interview agents and choose the most appropriate people to convey the companyβs vision.
5. Training process
The type of training process depends on how experienced the agent is. For experienced agents, this is another area of development: they know the basics of communication with end-users, they just need to understand the software that the customer company runs on and the essence of its business offering. If agents are beginners, they need to go through complex training where they will learn about the basics of how to set up a call center. They need to be proficient in customer engagement and core communication strategies to handle the customersβ inquiries successfully. The provider company entirely operates the training process. In WOW 24-7, the training process usually takes at least 2 weeks and depends on the project complexity.
6. MVP testing
At this stage, the provider company tests the agentsβ knowledge by doing theoretical and practical examinations on setting up a call center. They evaluate the quality of learning and communication, identify critical pitfalls, and work on avoiding them in the future. The client often takes part in this process to understand the agentsβ level of preparation.
7. Go live
After working on mistakes, an outsource contact center begins the real work, e.g., call center outsourcing. Special communication quality control managers supervise it. They make a monthly cut, listen to the recordings of conversations, evaluate them, draw up reports and send them to the client company so it is aware of the process.
Afterwords
It can be challenging for businesses to set up a call center individually, so an outsourced contact center is an excellent option for dealing with customer inquiries. Analyzing the companyβs business strategy and mapping out its needs are the first steps to starting a call center business. The client should also find a reliable provider by reading reviews on websites and agreeing on the most convenient tariff plan. It is also possible for a company to take part in the selection of agents and training process to be confident in the contact centerβs success. By following this guide step-by-step, the client can build a proficient outsource contact center that helps it flourish.
Interested in the involvement of an outsourced contact center? Book a call with WOW 24-7 and find out how we can help your business grow.
