Unlock the ROI Potential of Your VoIP Call Center System

Your business has taken off and you are making and receiving so many calls. You just launched a new service and your employees have been calling clients to give them more information and sign up. In the first couple of weeks everything was going smoothly, but then emails stopped going out, spreadsheets weren’t being made, and employees were starting to complain that the calls were taking away from their time to finish their work. Now you’re in a dilemma because your employees are generating great leads but the company will not succeed if everyone can’t do their role. Something needs to give. If you find that your employees are spending a lot of time answering calls that are interrupting them from their work, chances are it’s time for a call center. Click here to learn more: http://www.voxtell.com/

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1. Unlock the ROI Potential of Your VoIP Call Center System
2. Unlock the ROI Potential of Your VoIP Call Center System Your business has taken off and you are making and receiving so many calls. You just launched a new service and your employees have been calling clients to give them more information and sign up. In the first couple of weeks everything was going smoothly, but then emails stopped going out, spreadsheets weren’t being made, and employees were starting to complain that the calls were taking away from their time to finish their work. Now you’re in a dilemma because your employees are generating great leads but the company will not succeed if everyone can’t do their role. Something needs to give. If you find that your employees are spending a lot of time answering calls that are interrupting them from their work, chances are it’s time for a call center. A call center is the hub for all of your incoming and outgoing phone calls. The need for a call center is a good one! This means that your business is growing. A call center helps your employees finish the tasks they need to do, because the call center handles all of the customer service needs clients may have. This will only help to streamline your business and propel it into the next phase of growth. Setting up a call center can be a daunting task. But, if you do it the right way, you can save money in the long run and have a bigger return on investment (ROI). With such a huge investment, you want to make sure you are not wasting your time going into this venture. Your ROI helps you figure this out. ROI doesn’t only deal with finances but also efficiency. To unlock the ROI potential of your VoIP call center system there are a couple of things you need to know: • How to Set up a Call Center • Advantages of Outbound Centers • Call Center Agent Qualities • Call Center Metrics • Call Center Software HOW TO SET UP A CALL CENTER Setting up a call center lays the groundwork and gives you the opportunity to start on a good foundation. You want to be able to get a good return on this huge endeavor you have taken. Starting off on the right
3. foot, helps you minimize the chances of risk and error. To set up your call center you should: Make a business plan to stay organized To set up a call center successfully, you need to have a plan in place. Yes, things may not go as planned all of the time, but having clear goals set up and a vision in mind can help you stay focused. You should start asking yourself questions like: • What do I want out of this call center? •  Is there any licensing that I’m going to need? •  Do I want to have an inbound call center or a virtual one? • How am I going to staff the call center? •  Are there requirements for call center agents I should know about? A business plan allows you to know what you have in place and what you are going to do, which helps you stay organized and on task. Create and stick to a realistic budget When creating your business plan, your mind probably goes straight to the money. With budgets, you have to be realistic and not plan more than you can afford. The first thing is to decide: what is the maximum amount of money I am willing to spend on this call center? Break down what everything costs and make sure that you leave room for contingencies. When you have a set budget in place, you can determine where to go from there. Now you know how many agents you can have, what solutions are available for your price range, etc. Having a budget helps save money because you know what you can safely spend. Opt for a virtual call center instead of a physical one A virtual call center is when your agents are dispersed through various locations. This can be another city, another state, or even another country. Going virtual saves you so many costs. Most agents work from home for your company and allows you to save in having to find a facility, which can be a hefty
4. price. This is also great for people looking for call center jobs, because the benefit of working from home can be appealing and help with employee turnover rates. You also can save on equipment, because a virtual call center usually has a monthly or yearly fee and provides the hardware and updates. ADVANTAGES OF OUTBOUND CENTERS Another option you have in call center is an outbound one. Outgoing calls are an outbound centers primary focus. These calls include, but are not limited to: telemarketing, sales, and collections. The major benefit of outbound call centers is the ability to have a group of people solely focused on your calling needs. These people or call center agents, are specialized experts in your industry that know what they are talking about. They make it easier to: 1.  Save time and money: The call center takes over the calls to free up employees time that needs to be spent on their work. This benefits the company because now employees are happier and have more time, but it also benefits the customers. Customers have someone who is only interested in them and can cater to their specific needs. This helps save money down the road by putting your business in a more efficient atmosphere. When a business is more organized and has designated departments for certain things, there are less mistakes that may cost a pretty penny. 2.  Acquire new customers: Your website has been generating leads for you and those leads are then sent to your call center to reach out to potential clients. What’s great about outbound call centers is that the agents know about your company and also know about the customers. Following up with the customer right away, let’s them know that they are valued. Even if the customer exits out of the website earlier on, the call center still has the ability to
5. track information and move smart in contacting them. A little human contact goes a long way in the customer’s head. It really makes a difference. 3.  Retain Customers: Customer service, customer service, customer service. Outbound call centers can also take incoming calls, even though their main focus is outgoing. As an agent, they will know the customer. Over the phone is one of the best possible ways to communicate aside from face to face. They create a personal relationship with the consumer and create a unique experience for them. They will know the problems customers are facing and can offer them help or a different service because of their knowledge of your company. When a frustrated customer reaches out to a friendly, knowledgeable agent, there is a huge chance for service failure recovery. CALL CENTER AGENT QUALITIES You’ve got the foundation for a good call center so you need to start to decide who is going to represent your brand. Your call center agent may be the first contact a customer has with your company. This is why it is so important to know the qualities that agents should have for exceptional customer service. Customers will call asking questions about your product, problems they are having, and to purchase your product. The skills need to be applied to how they will help the customer. Here are some top skills and qualities a call center agent should possess: Communication Skills Great communication consists of speaking clearly, professionally, and respectfully but a big part of communication that people forget is listening. Communication is a two-way street and as a good communicator, you need to actively listen to your customers and really take in what they are trying to say to you. Active listening allows you to assess the situation and answer accordingly. Take the time to listen to all that they have to say.
6. Organizational Skills Though the main job of a call center agent is receiving the calls, they also have to take notes, update the CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and check the knowledge base when on the phone with customers. Organizational skills include time management, being able to focus, and also keeping your workplace area neat. You have to be able to multitask. Being organized, helps reduce errors while you’re doing multiple things at once. It allows you to do your tasks quickly, accurately, and efficiently. Flexibility Being flexible as a call agent is being able to adapt to any situation you are thrown in. You will be experiencing a lot of calls in one day from different people with different problems and personalities. You need to know how to adjust your communication style to fit the consumer’s needs and their communication style. You also need to know how to adapt to the behavior of the consumer. You have to be able to bounce back from a customer who was extremely difficult to a customer who is a easier to deal with and vice versa. Craft the dialogue to fit the needs of the customer. Empathy Empathy ties in with being a good communicator and being flexible. Being empathetic involves listening to the customer and understanding what they are feeling while adjusting to their tone to know how to respond to resolve the problem and calm them down. Customers will call in with problems; it is inevitable. Having the quality of empathizing with that customer not only will make them feel heard but also personalize their experience. This helps create a positive relationship between the customer and the call center agent, because the customer feels that they can trust them. Knowledge Retention Since the agent is a direct representation of your company, they need to have knowledge of the company. Knowledge retention gets better with more experience, but the agent should have already studied up on basic knowledge of the company. Basic knowledge includes knowledge of products, services, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and if they don’t know an answer or can’t help the customer, they need to know who they would transfer that call to. Any time an agent doesn’t know, they should take that opportunity as a learning moment to find out and be able to answer the question the next time a customer calls asking it.
7. OPTIMIZE CALL CENTER METRICS Now that you’re on your way to a successful call center, you may be wondering how do I measure that success. The answer is simple: ROI and call center metrics. You’ve probably heard about ROI a million times; it is your return on investment. By analyzing your ROI, you can answer the questions: How much is this call center saving me and how is it profiting my business? One way to measure the ROI of your call center, is through call center metrics. These include: • productivity metrics • cost metrics • service level metrics • contact handling metrics • quality metrics • agent metrics Here are 3 steps to understanding metrics to help boost your ROI: Set objectives for your company. You are probably wondering, why are you telling me something I already know. We know how important it is for any company to make sure they have a clear set of objectives in mind because it is good to know what you want to accomplish to stay on task. However, when you have goals in place, you can start to pair metrics with them. What this accomplishes is a way to measure your goals. Some goals are harder to measure than others, like social and emotional ones. Taking a look again at our agent metrics, if one of your goals was to have satisfied agents, we would take a look at the agent job satisfaction metric. This then allows you to put a number to your goal and you then can decide if you want to improve it. Know which metrics are right for you. Since there are so many call center metrics, you have to decide which ones are right for you. Of course you can measure and take a look at all of them, but you are going to notice that there are some areas you are lacking in and some areas you are succeeding in. The areas that are lacking, may be the metrics you need to concentrate on the most. You have a lot of metrics to choose from.
8. In the agent metrics category alone, there are 8 different metrics to measure. Some of the metrics include how to measure if agents are satisfied with their jobs, how efficient an agent is, and how engaged they are. Break down what is important to you and apply most of your effort in those areas. Convert metrics to save money. Now that you know the metrics you would like to focus on, you can start converting them. When you see the figures you are getting, you can properly determine where you need to increase or decrease to cut down on costs. For example, we’ll take a look at average handling time (AHT). The AHT is the time it takes during the call and to process it. You realize that it is taking your agents approximately 30 minutes to do all of this, but if you reduced the amount of time by 2 minutes, it could save you more money. Knowing the numbers allows you to do the math to see what can save money. TOP CALL CENTER SOFTWARES When switching from a full phone system to VoIP, you want to make sure you go with the best option for your small business. There are numerous benefits and features each VoIP host service offers, so look for a flexible plan that includes the details you need. For example, an in-person call manager system can be replaced with a virtual one that routes calls for you and reports on how many calls your business receives at a certain time, how many are abandoned, and how long an average call takes. Take a look at what you should know when choosing the best business VoIP call manager systems for your small business. What kind of small business are you? It’s simple - different call manager systems will work for different small businesses. If most of your business is between you and very few people, you have different needs than a small business with different divisions or constantly rotating employees. If you’re in a specific industry, like hospitality, medicine, law, or finance, you might have very unique requirements to abide by in addition to customers accustomed to a certain level of care. Be sure to know exactly what kind of small business you are and what your customers need from you before considering call manager system options. Finally, consider your competition and potential growth - are you local, trying to stay ahead? Or are you planning to expand across a region or state eventually? Keep those kinds of goals in mind when you compare your options.
9. What do you need for your small business? Every call manager system should have at least the basics for you to benefit from the service. Features like efficiently scaling the volume of calls, especially per employee, can be monitored and improved upon to make each call experience better. The detailed analytical insight metrics and reports might seem overwhelming, but they can help improve your business-client interactions and show you where you need to strengthen the communications. You can also use this as an opportunity to effectively train employees and ensure customers are receiving consistent and correct information each time they call. Additionally, make sure the call manager system you are considering will reduce your costs overall and every time you get a call. What else should I consider? Do you need an app for you or all of your employees? Do you need a personalized approach to your call manager system, or will one-size-fits-all work for you? How long do you need your contract to be, and how often do you want to pay? What about customer support - how involved do you want your provider to be? All of these questions go beyond the needs of your small business into the necessities of your plan. Further consider the features and cost comparisons of major VoIP providers to make sure you’re getting what you need. The greatest benefit of using a VoIP call manager system is that your provider will deal with all the hassles and details of the service, making it a worry-free experience for you. This starts at the beginning of your working relationship - look for service providers that offer a customized quote for the flexibility and cost-effectiveness your small business needs to survive. Another great service provision is an on-site network audit. Since VoIP uses your internet connection, you’ll want to ensure your current level of service can handle the extra use. This is where finding a local VoIP provider could save your small business in the long-run. On the same note, installing any necessary equipment, like phones or additional internet connections, should be free. If you decide to DIY, make sure you purchase phones that offer plug-and-play so you don’t spend precious time just setting up your new phones.
10. Call center software is the brain of the whole operation. As mentioned before, for a great ROI, you need to be organized. Software does that! You want a software that works with your needs by being completely customizable. When picking a software you also want to keep in mind price. You want a program that is a balance of a good price but doesn’t compromise on quality. Luckily, VoIP providers usually have a call center software already integrated into the program. VOXtell has a great call center feature that keeps the business owner in mind. VOXtell offers: • No contract • No setup or activation fees • Real time reporting of call volumes and times, queued calls, and abandoned calls • Set up for a vanity toll-free phone number • Improve quality by recording your agents to monitor them Call centers can be very expensive, but they are also your customer service hub. As a business owner, especially small businesses, customer service is key to maintaining business growth. Integrate into your business plan, a phone software that has call center features like: automated attendants, visual voicemail, phone call recorder, and music on hold. A top phone system provider, that has call center software is VOXtell. What makes VOXtell different is that it’s customizable to your needs and since it is based in the US, it is easier to get support for any problems you may have.
11. 7901 Kingspointe Parkway, Suite 20 | Orlando, FL 32819 P: 1.844.869.8355 | O: 407.288.8142 info@VOXtell.com | VOXtell.com ABOUT VOXTELL VOXtell delivers a robust cloud-hosted business VoIP phone system, enabling small to mid-sized business to do more and better serve customers. Our service can be described in six words: simple, affordable, mobile, unlimited, complete, and reliable. WE’RE DEDICATED TO HELPING YOU GROW Our cloud-based business phone solutions give you the freedom to work anywhere and provide your company the tools it needs to succeed. Being able to manage and control your accounts online, as well as call recording features for training and compliance are just some of the options available to you through VOXtell. WE’RE REAL PEOPLE Unlike some business VoIP service providers, our company is based completely within the United States. We are equipped with a knowledgeable and helpful staff on-site to assist you with your complete VOXtell experience. WE’RE TECHNOLOGY DRIVEN The technology we use at VOXtell was built from the ground up, allowing us to quickly fix any issue, create new features, customize the system to your needs and do so much more for our customers that other VoIP services simple can’t.