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A Three-Step Guide to Effective Contact Center Management

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In today’s highly-competitive industry, it is no secret the primary goal of every entrepreneur is to attract and maintain customers, ensure their business’s success in the long run. This is due to the fact that corporations go head-to-head when it comes to providing the same products/services, leaving consumers with a wide variety of choices and ultimately, giving them the power to choose which brand is better, which lacks the ability to satisfy consumer needs. In light of this situation, companies see the only way to increase sales is to make sure customers keep coming and keep purchasing. Hence the birth of a more elaborate and organized customer service and support system.

Not until recently, business owners saw the worth of customer service as a minor factor in the development of their corporation. But with the growing competition among industries, followed by rapid changes in market trends, corporations are forced to invest and provide more attention to customer service, to building relationship between the company and its target market. In line with this new marketing strategy is the birth of the contact center, a system under a company’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) department that handles customer issues. Generally, contact centers are the ones responsible in maintaining good customer relationship, it’s main role is to provide a clear communication line where customers can conveniently voice out their requests and concerns.

Here are three simple but essential steps to help you better manage your contact center.

Know Your Role

It’s hard to do your job if you have no idea what your duty really is. You’ll perform to your potential if you’re well aware of your role – the nature of your work, why it’s important, and what you’re doing it for. Knowing the importance of the contact center, as well as your company’s benefit, will give you detailed reason why the job is crucial. This way, not only will you learn how to act accordingly, you will also find some motivation to help you focus on your work.

Act the Part

However, knowing the nature of your job is not enough. The next step is to act the part. Once you understand your role to the full, it’s time to set goals that would lead to the success of your department and the company as a whole. It is essential that you and your team work in synchronized manner, with the same ideal in mind. Just like in a play/movie, each person has a role, and the whole cast/company has to perform as one unit for the play to really work. The same is to be said in contact center management: for the whole crew to build a harmonious connection with the customers, everyone has to play the parts assigned to them. Only in this way could the team achieve the set goals, which includes maintain a good relationship with the clients.

Own the Part

The ultimate role of a contact center team is to make sure customers get the attention they want and deserve. Meaning, a contact center system works for the sole purpose of endorsing their company’s good image, by presenting an excellent customer service performance. Contact center teams need to keep in mind the department exists to increase customer retention rate. This being said, they should know that their job as contact center personnel essentially means the success or failure of their company.

While it is true that modern technology is of great help in enhancing customer service performance, it can also be said that the technical aspect is not enough to build a strong foundation for a customer support. The real deal still fully relies on the ability of the employees to perform in accordance with the standards of their clients.

Elsewhere on this blog:

How’s Your Outbound Sales Performance Doing?

Five Tips for Providing the Best Customer Service Experience

Expanding Your Business Reach: Multilingual Contact Centers

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Expanding Your Business Reach: Multilingual Contact Centers

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The Philippines is a primary source of English-fluent customer service employees, no doubt a feasible destination for companies in need of business process outsourcing. Did you know opportunities also abound not just for Anglophiles, but for multilingual customer service representatives? What makes multilingual contact centers prime potential, for companies looking for cost-effective solutions to sales and customer support? Your business has a lot to gain, whether you’re a start-up or large corporation. How can you take advantage of it? Here are points to consider before you invest:

A Culture Open to Influence

Most Filipinos are at the very least bilingual—learning English side by side with their native tongue at the start of their schooling. Many even have third or fourth languages, dialects learned in childhood. Thoroughly exposed to Western culture, Filipino contact center employees are surely comfortable in dealing with foreign customers. Their openness to other aspects of foreign cultures help them adjust and adapt to change, too—from their knowledge of Western pop culture to the influences of Malay, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean culture in their vocabulary and lifestyles.

Moreover, outsourcing employees who are well-versed in more than two tongues is an easy feat, given the prevalence of students studying in language institutes across the country.

Crucial Aspects in Maintaining a Good Multilingual Contact Center

Having a vast talent pool of people fluent in English, Mandarin, Spanish, Korean, or other languages is a good start. However, it’s better if you find other essential aspects before you invest in the country. This includes building a solid sales team who can easily fire on all cylinders to scout new demographics. Furthermore, it’s important your talent is thoroughly trained to be language and culture competent.

Investing in human resource outsourcing means investing in their potential. Employers must require more than fluency, since the customers they face will have different temperaments. For instance, German and Japanese customers are more likely to expect more efficient responses, given the importance of time in their cultures. Moreover, train your employees to know the variations in spellings in English—no matter if it’s American, British, Australian, or other varieties.

Developing a multilingual contact center pays off in the long run. So long as you make the most of your teams’ potential, you’ll always have someone able to step in to handle foreign-language clients.

Elsewhere on this blog:

3 Big Reasons Why You Should Hire a Graphic Designer

3 Great Benefits of Outsourcing Data Entry

Hiring Your First Offshore Employee – Outsourcing Tips for Beginners

The Perks and Benefits Working in a Call Center Company

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To be a call center agent means that you have what it takes when it comes to tackling rush hours, managing work load, and camaraderie. Working in the call center industry in the Philippines is no easy job compared to other Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies in the country, but it does have its cool perks and loads of benefits!

The Big Pay

The call center industry offers higher basic pay for fresh graduates, experienced agents and even for working students. Other benefits like performance-based, night differential and allowances may differ among call center companies, but they do get higher in percentage (%). For some employers in the Philippines, on top of the 13th month pay, they also offer a mid-year bonus, Christmas bonus, cost of living allowance and more!

Free Trainings and Career Growth

Working in a call center company gives you the benefit of free trainings on languages and management. This helps employees to communicate better with customers, potential clients and provide superb services. Some call center companies even provide their employees with post-graduate studies scholarship.

Promotions and incentives are faster inside a call center company than any other BPO company in the Philippines. Employees’ efforts and hard work are easily recognized and quantified!

Being a call center agent doesn’t just limit you to accepting or making calls; you can also be a language translator, an online tutor or an effective operations supervisor or manager.

Health Benefits

Because call center companies are notorious for their rush hours, Holiday and rotating shifts, employers have developed the perfect Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) to help their employees with their medical and dental finances. Not only that, different call center companies in the Philippines even provide sleeping quarters for employee who will be changing shifts the same day, a computer and gadgets room to satisfy the gamers, unlimited supply of coffee and juices if that’s what you’re into, and spa vouchers so you can have your tired body relaxed after work.

Do You Have What It Takes?

To be a customer or technical support professional is not for all. A call center agent might have already told you the amounts of stress he or she had. But no work is stress-free! Even an elite company’s CEO gets stressed from time to time; they just know how to handle it, so should you if you want to be a part of the call center industry.