subject: Non-Sync Work in BPO [print this page] There is some disconnect between the various call center services which results in some losses for the BPO firm. The disconnect lies in the outbound and inbound call center departments. Often the products and services that are sold invite complaints from the customers because they misunderstood some features or they were misinformed about certain details. It's something that happens when in their zest to make a sale the lead generation team commits itself to features and services that may not be included in the brochure provided by the clients. They make some minor distortion to raw fact to make the proposition more saleable for the customers. When the customer laps it up, they are faced with issues. They don't find the services/features that they thought were part of the deal. They complain to the answering service department. And the brand name suffers because of this.
The customer care department has no respite to offer the customer. The agents manning the phone work strictly under the authorization that they have. They have a difficulty in understanding as to how the customers are expecting more from the offer than there is. On closer scrutiny they may find that the customers misread or misunderstood something. In that case, it is the duty of the phone answering agent to explain the irate customer and have the problem sorted out.
However, there is also the possibility that the outbound call center team fudged certain data and offered the clients a wholesome deal that is not part of the offer. In such cases, they are left to clean up the mess. Then their duty is not just to prevent the customer from a slapping a legal suit. It's also important for the agent to protect the reputation of the BPO. They have to make it seem like a whole big misunderstanding, while knowing fully that it was not.
To avoid any such problems, the lead generation agents have to careful about what they are telling the customers. While they have to hit a daily target, which admittedly is stiff, they cannot endanger the reputation of the BPO unit they are working for. They must offer only those features and services that they are authorized to. If they are going overboard in their bid to make a sale, they will only push the answering service department in a condition where they will have to answer questions.
The responsibility of branding lie with the entire call center services, across all departments. Telemarketing is a team effort and each part of the process has to support the other. There can be no headway unless each of the departments is complementing each other in the work that they are doing. There is another gap in the BPO work that needs to be sealed. That is the one between the lead generation team and the sales team. The generated leads have to be qualified and passed to the sales team. However, if the sales team doesn't follow up swiftly enough, the leads would turn cold and become unproductive.
