These five questions to ask when outsourcing your call center give you the basis for an informative conversation with any prospective agency. If you don’t like the answers they give you, it’s time to seek another company to help your business succeed in customer service.
How Do You Measure Performance?
Measuring success through clear metrics that transparently show wins and areas for improvement is crucial for a successful relationship with your company’s call center. Can you track data in real-time? Does the call center assign a point person to help you understand the data? A company that isn’t willing to invest the time in guiding you through their point-by-point plan to drive engagement and complete more calls with satisfied customers isn’t worth the dollar investment.
Get a Personal Dashboard: A log-in area where you can view the unvarnished performance metrics is mandatory. Going with an outsourced call center like Novasors gives you access to monthly reporting and deep analysis of how the company is actually serving your customers.
Can You Tell Us About Your Technology?
Outdated call center tech causes more headaches on the customer side than it saves you in cost. Ask the call center to describe their platforms, including the last time they updated software, the strength of their communication lines, and how quiet the offices are during work hours. Dropped calls lead to angry tweets that can easily amplify across other social networks, dragging your company’s good name down in the process.
How Secure Is Your Data?
Data breaches lead to front-page headlines on major news outlets and no shortage of lawsuits from affected customers. Just because your call center’s outdated security is to blame for the thefts doesn’t mean your business will avoid liability. Ask your prospective call center about their security measures and require them to explain these safeguards in detail. Make sure you cover both protection of data in-flight across their network — inbound and outbound — as well as data storage, including the storage site and who has access to the information.
How Do You Hire and Train Staff?
Pre-screening of potential employees is important to make sure your outsourced customer service solution has the highest caliber of workers staffing your phones. Does the call center only hire workers with previous experience? Do they demand college educated applicants or special certifications?
Ask what training programs the call center conducts for current employees and how they keep workers up to speed on the latest techniques and emerging technologies. Does the company invest in the business development of their own workforce? If you choose a solution based in the United States, like Novasors, you’ll get a partner that wants to have a thriving workplace environment for their own employees, which is why they only hire specialists who show drive, intelligence, and the will to advance in their field.
Are You New to My Industry?
If the call center doesn’t know the nuances and legal requirements of your industry, hiring them to outsource customer service is a dangerous game. For example, if you’re a healthcare billing company, having outsourced workers that don’t know federal laws related to the sharing of medical information could cost your company hundreds of thousands of dollars in civil penalties. You want the call center to give you examples of previous working relationships in your industry, including client names for reference purposes and proof of business model knowledge.
Outsourcing your customer service or inbound calls to the skilled representatives at Novasors does more than reduce overhead. Your move is a statement that you care about the service experience your customers and clients receive.
You can also check out part II, 5 more questions to ask when outsourcing a call center.
