There are many small businesses in the country that rely heavily on outbound telesales. While they may not actively call themselves “call centers,” this is precisely what they are. Many of these organizations struggle with outdated technology (or very little technology at all), counting instead on onerous manual processes, paperwork and ad hoc management.
While call center software once used to be largely in the domain of bigger companies, the industry today is a positive candy store for smaller companies looking for solutions that will suit them. The good news is that these solutions offer features that can streamline processes, allow agents to make more contacts per hour and offer a more professional face to customers.
“Running your business's call center in-house can often be done more efficiently with call center software,” wrote Business News Daily’s Brittney Helmrich recently. “Depending on which software you choose, call center solutions can offer many features that go above and beyond just filtering calls to the correct agents and making the placement of outgoing calls much easier.”
Some of the features smaller businesses can expect from modern call center software include call recording and even analytics functionality, advanced dialer capabilities, integration with customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, social media monitoring, e-mail integration, instant messaging and more.
This allows smaller businesses on a budget to engage in true multichannel customer support and outbound sales, which is critical in these days of business-to-business and consumer social media. Customers today tend to “live” in social media, so if businesses aren’t reaching out to them there, they’re missing a lot of potential customers.
The end result is an improvement in the quality of customer support and sales efforts, which can translate directly to improvements in the bottom line. Agents can make more contacts per hour and be more likely to reach the right people with the right message at the right time.
"Call center software enables companies to listen, learn and react quickly to the changing dynamics of today's business environment, and can help set the path forward," Sue Brady, vice president of marketing and client services at RM Factory, told Business News Daily.
Limping along with outdated legacy solutions or manual processes may seem like a cost-savings move. But given that it’s causing many companies to miss potential customers entirely, it’s actually a practice that’s more likely to damage the business than grow it.
Edited by Alisen Downey