Call Centers: Inbound Vs. Outbound

By Author: DevBPO Outsourcing
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Call centers are essential to most of the major organizations in any industry. Basically, a call center is not anything but a workflow. The key difference in call center specialty is the course of the workflow: outbound or inbound. An Inbound and Outbound Call Center is ever so often an organization’s chief approach of interacting with its clients. Let us understand one by one.
In the Inbound setup, what happens is that clients call in and the system urges them for information. Then the call is routed to the applicable person and he or she handles the call. Dedicated programs can aid your organization manage and save information regarding the communications you have with your clients. To put it simply and inbound call center handles customer calls. In the inbound type, you have the following kind of communications that are set off by the clients:
• Customer Service: In this service, customers call in to ask any queries regarding the products or services. Customer service can be provided before purchase, during purchase, and also after buying products. Before ...
... making a purchase, a prospective consumer might call the customer service department to inquire for a particular service or product. During purchase, for example, a customer could ask for the shipping status. And after purchase, a client could call the call center if there is a problem with the product or service.
• Technical Support: An inbound call center could be used for technical support like for instance, customers could call in the inbound call center with queries on how to operate a product or use a service.
• Sales: Contrary to the perception that only outbound services are for sales, inbound call centers could also be used for sales like in a scenario where direct mails are sent to customers for advertising of products and in response to it, the customer calls in an inbound contact center where the agent tries to convince the customer to buy a product and closes the sale.
An inbound center can be used in taking orders and making reservations for flights, hotels etc.
On the other hand, an outbound setup is whereby the center makes the call to potential customers. Outbound services can include:
• Call center Telemarketing: This is a type of proactive marketing whereby a call center agent asks prospective clients to buy services or products, over the phone. This service is outsourced by many companies and there are a number of Telemarketing Companies that specialize in telesales.
• Debt Collection: Here agents initiate a call to the client in order to recover money for overdue bills.
• Nonprofit outbound contact centers: These are in the form of campaigns where calls are made to encourage donation, volunteering or even voting. These are also used to handle surveys, where the executives only ask for information or feedback instead of selling.
Irrespective the type of contact center an organization uses (some use both), the main aim is to provide outstanding customer service. Whether the call center executive is trying to solve a problem, pursue a debt, closing a sale or simply taking a reservation, the pivotal factor for their success lies on treating the client well.