You know how important it is for your customers to reach a helpful and polite person whenever they call you. Since deploying an on-site call center is prohibitively expensive for all but the largest companies, a virtual call center is the perfect option for smaller businesses.
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What Is A Virtual Call Center?
A call center is all about showing customers you are trustworthy and established. When people call and can’t reach anyone, they are very likely to go elsewhere with their business. In fact, research suggests that up to 85 percent of your missed calls could become missed sales.
A virtual call center supports your business by setting up a call center in the cloud. This system can be up and running no matter what happens at your physical premises. Your call center agents can be located anywhere in the country, or even the world, so there’s someone ready to answer your phones 24/7.
Most virtual call center providers supply all the software, infrastructure, and hardware you need. You simply sign up for monthly, quarterly, or yearly packages that can grow or shrink as your needs change. You can hire freelancers and other part-time people to answer the phones from home instead of paying full-time employees to work on your premises.
From your access point at your home or office computer, you can manage agents, listen in on calls, or even design a menu to direct callers to the best agent for their questions. The virtual call center provides easy-to-use software so you can be running things efficiently in no time.
Can This Really Help My Business?
Consider this scenario: you run an independent garage which offers inspections, oil changes, and repairs. You have room for five or six major projects at once, and you have the mechanics to take care of it all. You have one person on the front desk to help figure out what customers need when they bring in a vehicle, but that person also helps out with minor repairs.
What you don’t have is enough money to hire full-time staff to answer impatient customer calls about when a car will be ready, or how long it will take to put snow tires on a truck. Sometimes the phone doesn’t get answered at all, and when it does, it’s often a distraction.
With a virtual call center, these problems go away. When repair work begins, your people simply note that on the computer system. Your virtual call center agent can see estimated repair times online and is always there to tell customers when they can expect to get their vehicle, how long it generally takes to do a particular job, or how to schedule appointments.
Isn’t It Better To Answer My Own Phone?
There are several reasons why answering your own business phone can actually be a liability.
Here Are Some Things To Consider:
Are you making the most of your time? Every time you or an employee picks up the phone and answers a question, you are distracted from the task at hand. You lose focus as you hear it ring and decide to answer it, and then you try to remember what it was you were doing before.
Could you be losing credibility? The more established a company is, the less likely it is that a caller will actually talk to the owner or manager. If you call your child’s school, the principal doesn’t answer, of course. If customers call and reach you directly, they might wonder why you’re not too busy to be answering the phone.
A virtual call center lets you have the perks of a full-time receptionist without the expense or distraction. You can give customers 24/7 access to information, even when your physical location is closed up for the night. Most of all, it gives your company that personal touch that can mean all the difference between a missed sale and a loyal customer for life.
If you are interested in even more technology-related articles and information from us here at Bit Rebels, then we have a lot to choose from.
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