Call Centers are one of the most famous domains if industry since a long time. The call centers came into prominence in the late 20th century. The world has seen a lot of change in this industry ever since. The technological advances made by the human civilization have served the purpose of parallel progress of the call center industry. For a long time call centers services were considered to be trivial and these services were performed by the workforce that had no specialized skills or training.
As the time passed by, competition within the industry increased due to the increase in the number of companies. This increase in the number of companies started to jostle with each other in order to acquire the near constant customer base. The more the competition rose, the more the emphasis was laid on the customers. The customers eventually became the eternal boss and all the companies started to concentrate more on facilitating the customer.
Due to this drastic change in trends, call centers started to train their employees to engage the customersand create interest towards the company. Call Centers were no more confined to delivering customer support and newer services emerged which tapped different arenas that the companies had to take note of. The quick starters innovated and evolved these services and generated maximum profit with the help of call center services. What was considered to be a trivial non-core function started to be a key player in the success of different companies. Thus the call center trend started to pick up and more and more companies started to utilize these services in order to achieve success.
The call centers today are so advanced that they can single handedly accelerate the performance of an average product in the market if performed by dexterous workforce. The services performed under a call center are today are manifold and thus are divided into two sects namely inbound and outbound call center services:
Inbound Call Center
Inbound Call Centers perform the services that involve the functions of a call center performed when a call is initiated from a customer towards the call center. These services involve solving customer queries to performing inbound sales, an inbound call center performs a wide array of services.
The workforce involves specialized skills that need them to be patient and considerate towards the customer. The agents here are usually involved in troubleshooting tasks and thus are responsible for customer retention tasks in general. But a few tasks involved here also focus on customer acquisition as well as sales.
An inbound call center is the oldest form of a call center and the services involved are time tested and proven to provide an impetus towards success to the company. Thus the inbound call center companies have the responsibility to perform with high efficiency and achieve success for the company.
One of the biggest consumer of call center services is USA and thus has a lot of call centers running there. The inbound call center companies in USA are known for their finesse due to the high standards but the only problem is he cost of performing such services as the workforce involved requires a much greater pay than the workforce in any call center in developing countries such as India. Thus the trend for inbound call center outsourcing services is on the rise.
Outbound Call Center
The outbound call centers are responsible for performing the services that aim at reaching out to the customer in order to produce more sales as well as enhance the customer base of the company. Outbound call centers since their inception have been pivotal in playing a huge role in enhancing a company’s performance in the market. These services generally deal with tasks that aim at increasing the revenue of the company by trying to sell a product or increasing awareness about the product or a company. These services represent the company’s efforts made to reach out to their customers in order to produce great results.
The workforce involved needs to be well trained as well as highly skilled in order to effectively perform these services. The services require an agent to have strong persuasive skills that help them to convince the customers as well as impress them regarding the product or the service they aim to sell. They also perform surveys for the company in the tryst to deliver the company an idea of what the customer needs are for the future plans as well as give customers an assurance that their voices are heard by the company and their opinion drives the decision making within the company. That makes the customers inculcate a sense of belonging towards the company and creates a long lasting relationship between the customer and the company.
The outbound call centers came into existence after the inbound call centers and have been an equally important part of the call centers ever since. An outbound call center directly influences the revenue that a company produces. Today almost every company aims to utilize the services provided by an outbound call center in order to maximize their performance in the market.
As one of the biggest production house of the world is USA, thus there is also no dearth of outbound call center companies in USA. The outbound call center companies in USA are known for their great efficiency but cost efficiency is something where they lack heavily due to a high cost involved in operations as the workforce involved require a much higher pay than the workforce in the developing countries like India. Thus the trend to outsource outbound call center services is picking up.
Conclusion
Be it inbound call centers or outbound call centers, the finesse in their performance is the key the key to the success of any company. The inbound call center deals with the effort made by the customers to contact by the company and aims at minimizing the efforts made by the customers as well as optimizing the services to facilitate them at every step possible. On the other hand, an outbound call center deals with the efforts made by the company to reach out to the audience in order to increase the awareness and building a reputation among the audience while capitalizing on it to produce sales and increasing the revenue of the company. Thus both these services are equally important and must be taken with utmost seriousness in order to uplift the performance of a company.
