What is Inbound Call Center? Definition, Types, Uses, and Tips

Do you know that 90 percent of customers judge businesses in terms of the level of customer service they provide? No wonder why growth-oriented businesses should consider investing in inbound call center services so as to be able to address customers’ queries in a timely manner and to set up a full-time customer support team that would remain life at all hours of the day to cater to their clients’ needs. Many small businesses find it difficult to focus on customer service due to a lack of funds to hire in-house staff.

Such businesses can consider outsourcing inbound call center services from reputed providers at a fraction of cost that they may need to invest in hiring and training in-house staff. If you are facing a similar situation, you may consider hiring a call center that specializes in delivering inbound support. In this article, we have covered what an inbound call center is and how it can help you grow your business by enhancing your customer service operations.

Importance of Inbound Call Centers for Small Businesses

Overview

1. What is inbound call center?
2. Services provided by an inbound call center
3. So what work does an inbound call center actually does?
4. How should inbound calls be handled?
5. The upsides and downsides of outsourcing inbound customer support
6. When should your business outsource to an inbound call center?

Inbound calls are voice calls made by customers to the respective call center regarding any queries or support. Customers usually call the customer support team if they have any queries or complaints regarding the product or service.

An inbound call center is a customer support function used to manage customers’ incoming calls to resolve their queries. The incoming calls encountered may be from different contexts which include: 

• Ordering a product 
• Issue handling 
• Flight reservation/cancellation 
• Product refund
• Question and answer interactions and more. 

The quicker you respond to the calls, the better will be your reputation of the brand. For this, you would need qualified and proactive call center experts onboard who can deal with the calls efficiently. When we say inbound call centers, it acts as the point of contact for your business and the call center agents would be the voice for your brand. Hence it is important to onboard skillful agents who are well versed in using tools and technologies as required.

Call center executives do not just handle phone calls and their responsibilities stretch beyond that. That’s the reason why call centers are often renamed as contact centers. Today, executives need to have other skills such as email management, texting-based marketing, social media management, and live chat management. These executives are required to ensure a positive customer experience by delivering services through several channels. Inbound call centers may provide different services depending on their clients’ needs, however, there are certain services that are commonly delivered by most call centers:

The most reputed call centers can provide multilingual customer support, thereby helping you deliver better customer service to customers who live in different countries and speak in different native languages. You may often have an app installed on your mobile phone, which would allow you to communicate with your customer service team and evaluate their performances.

Your inbound call center team is primarily your back-office support team that is in-charge of incoming call handling on your behalf. Such employees have specific call center skills that are mainly communication-oriented. They are also the front-end of your businesses because they directly deal with your customers. So an inbound call center team is an extension of your organization, which is operating from another location or another country. They are your outsourced company representatives who handle your customers’ calls and address their queries in appropriate ways.

Managing inbound calls may appear to be a very simple task, but professional call centers do know that receiving calls professionally and answering them in an appropriate manner is an art as well as a science. Inbound calling is all about having excellent communication skills and practising a high level of patience so as to be able to serve customers in the finest possible way.

So what’s the best way to handle incoming calls? Let’s explore this with an example:
Let’s say a customer is utterly dissatisfied with a product that he purchased from your company. So your customer goes through the manual and then finds the tool-free number online to contact your business. At first, the customer is directed to automated messages that fail to address his specific queries. He calls in the same customer support number again and gets to talk to a representative who transfers the call to another department. The customer feels disgusted one more time. Then he starts flooding social media platforms with negative messages about your brand. And other prospects reading these messages would never ever buy from you. This is an example of poor inbound calling.
So a person handling inbound calls should be:

• Patient: An agent should be patient enough to listen carefully to an unhappy customer’s grievances.
• Empathic: An agent should place him in the position of the customer and try to feel what he is feeling. This will not only let him bond with the customer well, but would also allow him to deliver effective solutions.

• Proactive: An agent should be smart and proactive enough to detect an upcoming issue that may be related to an existing issue to prevent it from getting bigger.
• Solution-oriented: An agent should have a mindset to solve issues. They should focus on solutions and find an appropriate way to solve customers’ problems, however complex they may be.

Your Content Goes HereJust like other business decisions you make, outsourcing inbound calling services has its own sets of benefits and drawbacks. Here’s what you may want to know before making a ‘go’ or ‘no-go’ choice:

• Lower and anticipated costs
  If you want to set up a call center on your own, you need to make huge investments in software, hardware, equipment, infrastructure, recruitment, and in training new staff. But when you opt for outsourcing, you will bear lower costs and you will have to focus only on the main functions as you will now be utilizing the infrastructure of the call center company and its already trained and experienced staff. This way, you can skip hassles as well as reduce costs.
• Overcome staffing issues.
  Reputed call centers hire people with relevant experiences. This means that you do not have to take the burden of hiring staff on your own. This saves you from recruitment and training expenses.
• You can get 24/7 customer support.
  If you serve clients across the globe, you need customer service on a 24/7 basis to remain connected to your customers round the clock. When you hire inbound call centers, you can make sure that your customers can get their queries addressed quickly by the contact center staff even during odd hours of the day.
• Enhanced Productivity
  If you have too many calls to handle daily and have lesser number of staff to handle the requirements, then you can consider hiring inbound call centers. You will be able to utilize the services of trained agents and would be able to serve your customers better. In really-busy days when you need to handle several calls, your outsourced agents would manage your workload on your behalf.
• Use of Advanced Technologies
  Modern call centers deploy sophisticated technologies that would allow you to address call-related issues or to monitor results. Your outsourced call center service experts can also let you know about the strategies and the products that are actually working to contribute to your success. Your call center would also get their software updated on a daily basis, which would allow you to serve your customers better.

• Low Degree of Control
  You would not have direct managerial control over the outsourced agents. You have no opportunity to maintain quality regulations or to evaluate performance using KPIs.
• Language Gaps
  If you are hiring an off-shore service provider, then there are chances that language gaps may pose as barriers. If your agents are not able to deliver support in your customers’ preferred languages, you have a risk of causing customer dissatisfaction.
• Lack of Knowledge
  When you outsource agents, there are chances that your outsourced team does not have enough knowledge about your company or products. So if a customer asks questions, there are chances that an agent will fail to satisfy him with proper responses.

If your business is constantly expanding and you find it difficult to manage a large customer base, then it’s time for you to outsource inbound calling. Call centers hiring specialized staff would be able to address your unique needs in the most professional manner. Here are the typical scenarios when you should opt for call center outsourcing:

• Customer-loss
  Poor customer service leads to customer loss. Smart agents can promote customer retention and they can also encourage your one-time customers to come back to you again and again.
• Increased-complaints
  If you report frequent complaints, then your customer service has some really big issues. Take complaints seriously and find out what’s wrong with your service.
• Inconsistency in brand voice 
  If your in-house employees are answering the phones in different ways without paying attention to your brand voice, you may hire a professional inbound call handling team that can properly handle interactions and can help you maintain a brand voice.
• The necessity to have 24/7 support
  With an inbound calling service, you can remain live to your customers even after the closing hours.  When you hire an after-hours phone answering service, your customers can reach you at any time of the day.
• Staff-Shortage
  If you do not have an adequate number of staff to handle your communication channels, you can hire call center staff to deliver multi-channel customer support.

In a nutshell, call centers allow small businesses to grow by improving the level of their customer service. If you are owning a small business, there are two primary reasons why you may choose to hire inbound contact support service. First, your requirement may be as simple as message taking on a 24/7 basis and second, your requirement may have a broader outlook with full-fledged customer service as its component. So what do you actually need? Take time to think and get back to us. We can advise you on effective call center strategies and approaches.