24/7 Call Center Services

How to Choose the Right 24/7 Call Center

Outsourcing your call center operations is a big decision. It can be challenging to let an external service provider handle your call operations because of the changes to your hiring culture and business processes. If you're having call center efficiency issues, it may be time to seek support from an outside provider. Don't have enough in-house resources to maintain a call center team? Are you having issues supporting your customers with after-hours call center help?

Below are some of the things you have to consider before outsourcing your call center operations to an external team.

Understand The Service You Need

Most call center operations are categorized into inbound and outbound services. Outbound means reaching out to customers or prospects mostly for marketing or sales purposes. Inbound means receiving prospects' or existing customers' calls for support on products and services. If you're looking to reach out to customers, choose outbound. If you have a program or software that you like to support customers on, choose inbound. 

Regardless of which option you go for, tracking the success of the campaign is important. Request if the service provider has a reporting feature containing important metrics such as call completion and refusal reports. Always check the metrics to know if you're getting value from your investment.

Agents Location

If your business or establishment is US-based, then you are better off choosing a call center service with agents within the country instead of in an offshore location. When your customers call your representatives, you want to be sure that they can provide the needed support and be helpful. You also want the same thing when your reps make outbound calls.

Agents in overseas call centers where English is not the first language native English speakers may struggle to communicate effectively. Time zone differences are another factor. You want to ensure that when your US customers are calling, the agents aren't in bed. 24/7 service is important to your customers getting the support they need.

Dedicated or Shared Agents

Dedicated call center agents are assigned only to your company, which means you have their full time and attention. On the other hand, shared agents handle calls for more than one business.

Call center solutions with dedicated agents assigned only to your account are more expensive than shared agents. If your business processes and offerings demand familiarity and consistency, you may have to go the dedicated route.

Another option, known as a semi-dedicated model, is a blend of the two options. In this arrangement, the agents work with one or two other businesses in addition to yours. Even though they are not entirely focused on your business operations, their attention is less divided, so you can still expect to get quality service from this arrangement.

This third option is less common, so ask if this is an option the call center facility offers.

Compliance and Security

Run a business or an establishment in a highly regulated industry like healthcare? Then you know how critical it is for call center service operations to comply with HIPAA and other regulations mandating the protection and privacy of client information.

Security measures should be in place for disaster recovery and redundancy. In today's business landscape, most call center vendors use cloud solutions, which means they don't have to install and run their servers on-premise. This could mean limited control over the server. On the other hand, vendors with on-premise installation have full control over their IT resources.

You can choose an on-premise service provider if you are not sure about the security measures of cloud services. Note that most call centers operate over the cloud. This helps them to deliver cost-effective solutions, which is a better option for center operators with agents serving from multiple locations.

Overall, choosing a call center that operates over the cloud improves cost efficiency and agent flexibility. Just be sure to check how strong their security defenses are and see what regulations they comply with.

Ease of Integration

As mentioned earlier, outsourcing your call center operations to an external provider requires changes. To ensure little to no disruption to your business processes, you want to know how easy it is for the call center operator to unite their software, hardware, and other technology with yours.  With experienced operators, your system integrations can be easy.

At TeleDirect, we make integration into your existing business systems, such as CRM, seamless. We also provide outbound and inbound call center solutions. Depending on your needs, you get shared or dedicated agents. Additionally, our call center professionals are in the United States to facilitate fast and efficient communications.

Ready to get your 24-hour call center operations running in no time, contact us today.