subject: Upgrading Answering Service for Better Results [print this page] If you are planning to hire answering service, you are most likely to look for technological innovations and use of the latest tools in phone answering work. That is the outlook that the call centers units has to deal with. Many BPO units take it easy when they find that their inbound call center desk is working fine. They feel that with the right call center services, they can cover up their lack of technological investment. However, this is one glaring gap that you cannot cover without finding out leaving loopholes big enough for clients to bypass your BPO service. To be up there with the best, you need to have technology on board with you. That would mean upgrading the system that you have in place. Here are some ways in which you can do that.
Step 1: Answering service these days is all about being web-enabled. The phone answering system has to be coordinated with the internet so that you can talk seamlessly over the continents, with minimum static distortions. Callers are more likely to be based thousands of miles away from the call center agent who receives and processes the call. That is so because most clients hire offshore BPO destinations. With the phone calls traversing that much of a distance, the only way out is through the internet. Any distortions in the phone lines reflect poorly on the client's brand image. It also counts as poor customer care services. Web-enabled BPO service is a sensible and important innovation that all call centers need to do.
Step 2: Streamlining the process of the inbound call center is also a sort of upgrading. Answering service agents have the responsibility of providing the callers with an experience that reflects well on the client's brand image. So, the phone answering agents have to be really quick in whatever they are doing. The processing of the queries and information requests need to be done at the earliest. The practice of passing the call between call center agents is very regressive. That has got to change and give way to something like getting someone on the phone that can actually solve the problem. Callers don't mind waiting as long as they find that their problem is being tended to by the BPO unit. It's only when they are put on hold that they start to get really impatient.
Step 3: Innovation is another way of upgrading the answering service desk of call centers. Innovated inbound call center would mean that the agents are responsible for their calls and also have the authority to deal with each call on its merit. They may put the call on a conference mode so that the caller gets the solution to the problem without having to repeat their information at different desks manned by different agents. It also means that the phone answering agents talk to the callers casually, without reading out from a prepared script. This makes the experience less robotic for the callers who chose to talk to a live voice. Such new ways of call center work will definitely free this department off the taints that it has collected over the years.
