Via: Avaya Lists 10 Communications Trends for 2010
In the past decade, a sea change has taken place in how voice and data communications are structured, delivered and used by businesses. Here are the top 10 areas Avaya Inc. executives expect to see action in 2010:
1. Regulatory mandated proactive communications. In an era of increasing regulation, proactive communications applications will automatically initiate contact with customers and guide interactions, in compliance with regulatory requirements. Under the Homeowner Modification Program in 2009, for example, Congress mandates that mortgage companies increase their proactive communications with borrowers. READ MORE
Having someone in your office answering the phone or making sales calls for you is inefficient and can end up costing you sales and money. If you are looking for a way to increase sales and lower business costs, you need to use call centers. These contact centers can offer order taking as well as lead generation for a fraction of what you pay someone who sits in your office.
Today, more than ever, it is important for any business to lower their costs. Whether your business depends on lead generation or offers customer service such as technical support, you can make call centers work for you.
Sales calls are only one way to make use of this outsourcing service. If you provide customer service for your clients such as technical support for your products or services, you cannot afford to rely on a staff working nine to five in your office to handle incoming calls. You need a center that will not only offer full customer support, but will also act as an answering service. This way, you will never miss another call and your customers will not be frustrated when they are unable to get in touch with your company. People today expect to have service support around the clock, but this is not feasible with an on site staff.
In addition to offering around the clock service and support, you can also use contact centers as way to take orders as well as offer email support for your business. Many of these centers also offer live chat options for those who would prefer to get answers right away by using their computer.
Every time you shut off your business phone, you run the risk of losing business. People will not want to talk to an answering machine and wait for a return message. In the world of today, people expect to receive answers as well as place orders for products and services around the clock. When you use outsource lead generation and customer service to call centers, you not only save money when it comes to costs, but you also end up giving customers the full time support and service that they have come to expect from other providers.
Take a look at contact centers and see what they can do to help your business increase sales, customer satisfaction and generate leads for your business and at the same time save you money.
Call Centers are an innovative approach to sales without the pressure of overhead costs for a storefront. By incorporating a call center into your existing business, you can increase your sales and order size. You can also decrease your overhead cost by running an operations crew from 9 – 5 while having a call center open twenty-four hours a day, 7 days a week. There are several different ways to utilize a call center in your business. Many of them include an answering service, live chat, and email support. It is most certainly the most cost effective approach to increasing your business while lowering your overhead costs.
Using a outsourcing center as an answering service after office hours is an excellent way to assure that you do not miss one single important phone call or message. An answering service is most important for service based businesses such as plumbers, contractors, electricians. These types of call centers are already in use by many offices that include medical professionals. These are primarily used for emergency situations but can be tailored to meet any need you as the professional might require.
Another essential use for outsourcing is order taking. Your business can be increased by at least 20 – 30 % just by utilizing a call center for all your order taking and customer service needs. A call center is open twenty-four hours a day, 7 days a week therefore allowing your customers to place their orders at any time they choose. They can order from the privacy of their own home at their convenience.
Technical and email support is also a productive use for call centers and outsourcing. You can provide support at any time of the day for anyone who has any issue with your product or company. Email support and live chat can be provided without the use of phones and the labor costs associated with this endeavor can be kept relatively low while still providing the ultimate in customer service to your clients.
Sales can be increased by providing a call center number for customers to leave their contact info for lead generation. Many people are irritated by telemarketing calls but if they call YOU and request that a representative call them during a specific time period, the chances of a good sale have just increased by 60%.
Increase your sales today by implementing a call center into your business without the additional setup cost of labour, equipment and overhead costs associated with expanding your own office.
Call Centers are an innovative approach to sales without the pressure of overhead costs for a storefront. By incorporating a call center into your existing business, you can increase your sales and order size. You can also decrease your overhead cost by running a miniscule operations crew from 9 – 5 while having a call center open twenty-four hours a day, 7 days a week. There are several different ways to utilize a call center in your business. Many of them include an answering service, live chat, and email support, order taking, and lead generation. It is most certainly the most cost effective approach to increasing your business while lowering your overhead costs.
Increase your sales today by implementing a call center into your business without the additional setup cost of labor, equipment and overhead costs of a building or storefront.
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Excerpt:
Teleservices firm
ICT Group is hiring for inbound customer service agents at its St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada contact center. Radio station VOCM reports that the facility has and continues to grow rapidly since its opening in 2002.
EXCERPT:
While some investors frown at the thought of no longer working with an individual banker or broker, some people in the financial-services industry say a call center isn’t necessarily an inferior solution. Having someone on the phone to entertain account queries could be better than being neglected by a personal broker.
“If well executed, clients can receive better services through call centers,” says Bing Waldert, a consultant at Boston research and consulting firm Cerulli Associates.
Still, call-center operations have had some hiccups. Brendan Intindola, a spokesman at the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, says complaints of poor service have come up during periods of high market volatility and volume or when a firm experiences technical issues.
LINK: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123549387374860649.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
EXCERPT:
Economic-development agencies are beginning to realize they need to focus on contact centers to get people employed rapidly. As opposed to manufacturing, any office building with sufficient broadband can serve as a contact center location. In addition, you can get a call center up and running in a matter of months — not one-plus years.
Throughout past recessions, call centers picked up the slack and hired what amounted to millions of Americans to make and take calls. From 1990 onward, economic development agencies worldwide began to court contact centers to help them solve their job loss problems. Typically they recruited outsourcers from the TMC Top 50 Teleservices list as well as smaller, faster-growing companies
LINK: http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=002000002RYG
EXCERPT:
Managing contact center performance has never been more challenging. Not only are operations facing even more pressure to cut costs amidst a difficult economy, but are often also being asked to maintain service levels and to cross sell/upsell to retain customers and grow revenues. Many of the solutions to these needs lie in the data contact centers collect. It can be used to identify problems from customer information such as spikes in calls, find out what is going on, then report issues to prevent or limit rising costs and customer churn. It can also help improve sales and collections. The insights that can be gleaned from them can help justify existing [budgets] and possibly budget increases and investments in new solutions.
The sources of this data are in the vast amounts of reports: from ACDs to call recording, CRM 
, CTI, predictive and progress dialers, and workforce management (WFM) that contact centers receive. Yet these sources are too often rarely if ever consolidated to give that clear picture.
“You can’t understand what is going on if you’ve got 25 reports sitting on your desk,” explains Jim Davies, a research director with Gartner. “You need to have that single view so that you can then start to dig into data and look for trends, patterns, and correlations between the different applications and data streams.”
LINK: http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=00200076GWHW&page=1
EXCERPT:
SpeechCycle and Jingle Networks have announced a new partnership to help contact centers embed contextually relevant sponsored messaging within the caller experience. The companies said that this will monetize contact center interactions while also improving customer loyalty. As per this latest agreement, Jingle Networks (News – Alert) and SpeechCycle will provide interoperability between SpeechCycle’s RPA OnDemand platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and the JingleConnect audio advertising network.
LINK: http://callcenterinfo.tmcnet.com/analysis/articles/51459-speechcycle-jingle-networks-team-empower-contact-centers.htm
