Virtual Call Center

For growing businesses, call centers rapidly become a necessity. If your staff cannot handle excessive amounts of calls and you do not want to lose that large portion of your customer base, look into implementing call center services. Call centers ensure that customers are satisfied and that all calls are taken in a timely manner. Call centers help businesses grow without requiring a lot of money or extra staff members.

Here are five major benefits of deploying a call center:

1. Increase Customer Satisfaction

Customers will be more satisfied because there will be a shorter wait time to speak to an agent. Call Centers route calls to the appropriate agent and ensure that agents do not have to handle abandoned calls, which saves time. This allows for them to talk to more customers in one day than they normally would. Also, for companies who make frequent outgoing calls, call centers can help increase agents’ dialing efficiency by automatically dialing the numbers in the call center system, avoiding blocked numbers or dead end calls. This helps agents reach and help more customers.

2. Increase Efficiency

Whether there is an influx of ingoing calls or outgoing calls, call centers help agents handle them. The number of calls that businesses can handle when they deploy a call center dramatically increases. Most call centers offer a predictive dialer for outgoing calls or an interactive voice response (IVR) menu for ingoing calls. IVR provides callers with a list of options, gathers information, and allows callers to be routed to the correct agent. Also, agents are presented with the information that the customer provided to the virtual voice response menu. This allows them to provide a personal service to the customer and it saves time because they do not have to sit on the phone and gather the information themselves.

3. Save Money

Most call centers are inexpensive and pay-as-you-go. This allows users to cancel the plan whenever they want to. Businesses do not have to hire new employees to handle the extra calls because the call center helps direct the calls. This, in addition to the increased revenue from the augmentation in helped customers can greatly escalate business profits.

4. Find Ways to Improve with Statistics

Call centers track the number of calls businesses make and receive every day. These data statistics help businesses evaluate their service, progress, and how they can improve. Certain patterns can show companies where they went wrong or right so that they can change their protocol for the future.

5. Ameliorate Overall Communication

Call centers can process forms of communication other than live calls. Call centers can process emails, instant messages, and even web conferencing calls. They help businesses avoid neglected emails. Call centers will instantly increase customer satisfaction while taking some pressure off of the employees to check all the different ways that customers contact them.

There are so many benefits of call centers for growing companies. Here are some recommended call center companies that are worth looking into if your business is considering deploying call center software.

• Call Fire
• Five9
• VoIP
• CosmoCom
• Contactual
• Transera
• VIP Desk
• Telemarketing from Home

Read about the specific features that each company’s call center software has to offer to determine which one fits your company best. You can find this information on the Virtual Call Center Blog or on each company’s website.

CallFire.com, a voice over IP (VoIP) developer and virtual call center provider, recently released their newest product, the Hosted Interactive Voice Response (IVR). IVR is a feature of advanced cloud-based virtual call center systems that eliminates the need for agents to do time-consuming tasks. It serves as a virtual receptionist and can handle thousands of calls at one time.

There are many advanced features of CallFire’s IVR system, including realistic ‘Text to Speech’, where the system can read text. This feature is useful for menu options and the virtual receptionist who speaks to the caller before they are transferred to an agent. CallFire’s Text to Speech option can even be used for outbound calls if companies want to send messages to callers. It can also send appointment reminders or survey previous callers. The press menu feature, which allows agents to gather information about a caller through key presses before they ever speak, is a feature of CallFire’s IVR. IVR can also transfer calls to specific agents, which saves time because callers are routed to the appropriate agent to handle their inquiries. If callers hang up, the calls are disconnected so that agents do not have to waste their time on abandoned calls. Users can even record their calls with CallFire’s IVR if they press the pound button before speaking.

CallFire’s advanced IVR system saves time, money, and prevents hassle. Agents do not have to waste their time gathering information from customers or transferring them to other agents because the IVR system directs callers to the appropriate person. CallFire’s IVR is very easy to customize because it has an IVR designer, which has a user friendly interface so agents can monitor past calls or change settings for future ones.

CallFire’s Customizable IVR Designer

While IVRs are generally used for larger companies, CallFire’s IVR is targeted for smaller to mid-size businesses. It is an easy to use system, where no programming skills are required. CallFire’s IVR is pay-as-you-go, at 5 cents per minute, so there are no installation or monthly fees. There is no minimum or contract, so users can stop using the service whenever they want. Hosted IVR services can be deployed in as little as a few minutes. You can sign up for a free trial on CallFire.com to see how it works for your company.

Companies often get ahead of themselves in marketing campaigns as they advertise their product with a special offer and ask customers to respond to a toll-free number. After these marketing campaigns, there is a great influx of calls. Unfortunately, most companies cannot handle these calls because they do not have enough agents or adequate call center software to handle the volume of calls. Vendors miss out on a large portion of their customer base because they do not provide themselves with the resources that they need to expand and handle the increase in clientele. This is where virtual call center software comes in.

Virtual call center software helps companies handle significant amounts of ingoing or outgoing calls. It ensures that customers do not have to wait longer than a designated amount of time before talking to an agent, which helps prevent abandoned calls. Virtual call centers are inexpensive but efficient, as opposed to call center outsourcers which many companies rely on. Call center outsourcing is when companies hire extra agents to handle calls- but this is both expensive and unpredictable because companies do not know how many extra agents to hire and whether or not the expenses of hiring them will even out in the end.

Transera is one of the best virtual call center companies today. Their innovative software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution improves customer service and reduces the overall cost of operations. Transera’s on-demand call center software offers a centralized global queue, reducing the abandoned call rate to less than 5% because it makes sure that customers do not have to wait for a long period of time before talking to a real agent. Transera also matches customer needs with qualified agents so that callers talk to product-specific agents. Customer data is presented to the agent on a screen, which reduces call handling times. This increases call efficiency, sales, and overall customer satisfaction.

Transera claims that their virtual call center software dramatically increases revenue and profits. It is a productive solution that companies should not hesitate to adopt. Their SaaS call center product is the future of call centers because Web 2.0 is expanding the capabilities and overall performance of call center operations. Transera is at the front of this trend.

Transera has many awards to back up their claims, including the 2009 Customer Interactions IP Contact Center Technology Pioneer Award and the 2008 Communications Solutions Product of the Year. To find out more about Transera and their virtual call center software, go to their website. On their site,  you can view webinars or online demos that explain their software.

With the airline industry continuing to post slumping sales figures, airlines need to come up with new ways to draw in and keep customers. With notoriously inefficient and confusing customer service provided by airline industries, improvement within customer service could be vital towards attracting and maintaining loyal customers.

Continental Airlines acted upon this perceived weakness in the airline industry by introducing its new Virtual Expert technology. With this solution, customers have around the clock support which allows easy interaction with customers in order to satisfy all customer inquiries that may come up. With this new technology, booking a flight has never been easier as all questions are quickly and easily answered by a qualified call center agent.

Customers would never know that there isn’t a human responding on the other line. This advanced technology has a programmed robot on the other line that is designed to emulate the voice of an actual human. With speech recognition as well as chat capabilities, this advanced robot can handle a vast majority of customer questions and provide quick and efficient customer service.

This Virtual Expert can handle a majority of the questions asked by Continental Airlines customers. With this new technology, customers are quickly satisfied as their questions are rapidly answered. Continental continues to maintain an advantage in the customer service arena over its other competitors as they continue to innovate and strive to provide the best service for its loyal customers.

Call centers are traditionally very organized, very efficient ways of providing customer service. With the focus on efficiency and productivity at many call centers, the focus on the customer and their experience is often lost or forgotten about. With many call center to choose from, companies may often try to choose the most productive solution with the lowest cost. However, this may not always be the wisest choice as many different platforms offer a wide range of features.

One popular solution to consider is Contactual’s On Demand Platform. With Contactual, companies can quickly set up their call centers at a very low cost. For companies focused on developing the customer experience, Contactual is a great choice. Its comprehensive features enable companies to do a lot more than other traditional call center platforms.

Contactual provides the capabilities for call center agents to easily work from the comfort of their own home or anywhere as long as they have access to a phone line. In addition, Contactual provides integration with other CRM platforms to make it easy to fit into your existing CRM System. With Contactual, companies save money while simultaneously increasing productivity, providing significant benefits to the company.

With Contactual, a wide range of activities are easily carried out that could not be done with other traditional call center solutions. Many of Contactual’s customers have found unique ways of utilizing their software within their organizations. For more information regarding this advanced call center solution, check out Contactual’s website today.

Call Centers continue to contribute to the increased efficiency of the current workforce. With the economy going in the tank, improving worker productivity is more necessary than ever before. Companies struggling to lower operating costs while maintaining productivity are looking for new ways to achieve these cost savings. Workforce Optimization is being an increasingly popular trend among growing companies.

Call centers continue to become a popular option for companies. These highly efficient customer service centers also have much room for improvement. Call center workforce optimization has experienced growth as companies continue to look for more efficient and less costly ways to conduct business.

Several call center platforms are available for companies interested in running call centers. Many call center platforms include comprehensive features which allow for easily optimized operations and provide significant cost savings over existing work processes.

One popular call center platform, Contactual On Demand Call Center, provides the rich features and capabilities necessary to smoothly manage all your call center operations. With a number of unique features and patents, Contactual provides its customers with features no other provider can offer.

The call center will continue to experience rapid growth as the recession continues. With its efficient operations design, call centers can become a very important component of many organizations in the future.

Connector-Plus recently decided upon CosmoCall to provide their contact center platform. Connector-Plus is a telecommunications solution provider that traditionally provides hosting and integration services to organizations in Mexico. By investing in the CosmoCall platform, Connector-Plus customers can now utilize the many features CosmoCall Universe has to offer without making large investments.

Connector-Plus assists customers in deploying call centers within their organizations. Connector-Plus has found its niche in providing its customers quick to deploy call center solutions that are easily outsourced. Connector-Plus stepped up to deliver these services and provides the necessary support and capabilities companies need to quickly get their call centers up and running.

With the CosmoCom platform, Connector-Plus is able to more easily manage its many customers. Now, a single system can manage all their customer call centers. There has been tremendous success with the CosmoCall services as businesses have enjoyed a reduction in telephony costs by 40% and operation processes have improved dramatically.

CosmoCom is being used in a variety of ways by a number of different companies in order to reduce response times and improve customer service. With CosmoCall, Connector-Plus is able to provide its customers with the capabilities necessary to address customer needs. This continued success shows that the relationship between CosmoCall and Connector-Plus should continue to grow in the future as they work together to provide top notch call center capabilities for their Connector-Plus’ many customers.

Angel.com has announced that it has released the newest update to its popular Virtual Call Center platform. Spring Forward, its newest release, is introduced as a product that puts the customer first.

Spring Forward is a solution that intends to improve customer service so that customers will continue to come back to you for business. Its features aim to improve the customer experience while increasing the efficiency in how calls are handled. With improved visibility over all that goes on within the call center, companies can make the necessary changes to improve upon areas that are deficient.

With the tough economy continuing to hit companies, it is very difficult for many companies to acquire new customers. This has made it essential for companies to retain current customers. Spring Forward helps companies maintain and improve upon existing customer relationships in order to keep them as loyal customers.

Key Functions of Spring Forward include:
- Customizable System prompts
- Voice Recognition Tools.
- Transfer Options
- Call Management

Any client based organization understands that customer service is the most important aspect of its operations. Adapting to the needs of customers is critical to maintaining a successful company. In doing so, organizations can ensure the most customer service possible and create the best customer experience for consumers.

Virtual Call Centers help companies maintain this customer service. Virtual call centers allow employees of certain companies to be accessible all day allowing customers to have around the clock support which improves the customer experience. Contactual virtual call center allows these organizations to perform efficiently without lowering the quality of their service

Virtual Call Centers offer companies  a number of advantages that include an easy to use interface as well as a much more productive workforce. In addition, customers can be happier with around the clock support as employees of the company are easily accessible.

For more information about Contactual Virtual Call Center, you can read the full article found here.

OAISYS has announced the released of its newest version of Tracer Software. Tracer Software is a technology that can greatly benefit a company’s call center. Some features of Tracer technology include call recording, call storing, telephone playbacks, and more. The newest release has a number of new features and functions that should provide a company with more options and a much easier time to use. Some of these new features including easier to use interfaces as well as more powerfull call management and recording tools.

The Benefits of deploying a technology for your call center can be great. In addition to provide call logs and records for a company’s calls, you can track employee performance. This should greatly improve productivity and customer service of the call center as employees know that their moves are being tracked and calls are being recorded.

For more information on this new technology, you can read the full article found here.