7 Essential Steps to Launch a Virtual Call Center in 2024
Significance of Setting Up Virtual Call Center in 2024
Today, offering good products does not guarantee business success, but top-notch customer service experience is equally critical. This is why companies are switching from the traditional model wherein customer service agents receive calls over landline phones, to the virtual model to access broad business opportunities. Virtual Call Center in 2024 is a strategic move to answer customer concerns and make sales. It can be defined as a smart way to combine customer service and sales operations turning the world in your office. Thankfully, starting the internet-based setup is surprisingly quite easy and you can launch it following 7 important steps, let’s explore how.
Step 1: Determine Your Business Objectives – Why You Need Virtual Call Center in 2024?
Start with clearly identifying your goals and objectives which you want to achieve through a virtual call center. Do you want to improve customer support, sales, marketing, or all these processes? Many companies fail to establish a proper communication system because they don’t have a clear vision. This is why defining your primary objectives can help you make smart decisions about technology, employees, and operational strategies.
- Inbound Calling: Some businesses invest in a virtual call center to improve their customer service experience. They can set up an inbound virtual call centre to address all issues regarding inbound calling. This also means your virtual customer service agents can receive incoming calls from their homes. Moreover, companies can employ top global talent to ensure top-notch customer service experience.
- Outbound Calling: Companies can benefit from a virtual call center setup to increase sales and revenue or to reach a maximum audience. Outbound calling is the process when sales agents initiate calls to prospects and existing customers for product promotion or market research. This calling type is useful for lead generation, customer surveys and telemarketing campaigns.
Step 2: Set Key Performance Indicators to Evaluate Performance
Another important step to begin a virtual call center is setting up KPIs to let your sales representatives and customer service agents understand their daily and weekly targets. Managers can see the daily and weekly progress of the agents’ work remotely. This will ensure that their employees achieve their required productivity levels.
- Average Response Time: Companies can measure ART in two ways. It is measured as the time in seconds a caller had to wait for a customer service agent to receive the call. Meanwhile, the second way includes the time, a dialer or agent waits for an outbound call to connect.
- Average Handle Duration: This KPI includes an agent’s average time on each call. If AHD is high, it means sales reps spend more time pitching products to leads or resolving customer concerns.
- Average Abandonment Rate: AAR can be defined as the average number of calls customers disconnect. Customers usually leave calls in inbound calling to avoid long hold times and unsatisfactory answers. However, they did this in outbound calling when not interested in any product or services.
- Lead Conversion Rate: It is a simple measure to get an idea about the lead percentage converted into paying customers. Agents need a structured sales process to convert leads into customers.
- Customer Satisfaction Score: This measures customer satisfaction by determining how many customers are satisfied after receiving service, products, and customer support.
Step 3: Develop Best Technology Infrastructure
Leveraging advanced tools in virtual call centers can increase your agent efficiency and keep all your teams on one platform. It automated various routine tasks saving your agent’s time on repetitive tasks. For instance, companies can implement cloud technology to scale business operations. Likewise, a virtual private network (VPN) can connect devices from different locations to connect all your teams. It offers better data protection, privacy, and customisation options but is difficult to scale. Cloud call center software is a good way to get the features you need to streamline your inbound and outbound calling processes.
Step 4: Integrate Business Tools & Apps for a Better Experience
After deciding on the type of call center and technology setup, you should focus on integrating business apps and tools to streamline your call center operations. These include:
- Quality Monitoring System: You can use quality monitoring solutions to obtain call recordings and analyse speech and script quality. This will ensure your teams are representing your brand in a proper manner.
- Data Security Tools: Companies can integrate data protection and privacy tools to secure their client and business information.
- CRM Software: This solution integrates customer data from various channels, allowing companies to track customer journeys, manage customer interactions and offer personalised services.
Step 5: Hire Talented Agents & Trained Them
Virtual call centers empower companies to employ motivated and professional agents from a global talent pool. Virtual call center agents can work remotely so companies can hire agents from different zones and offer around-the-clock support. Once the hiring process is complete, they should focus on systematic staff training to give them knowledge of business products, services, technology and communication skills. This will keep them updated on the latest industry trends and practices.
Step 6: Create An Engaging Workflow Environment & Use Management Tools
Developing a virtual infrastructure does not mean you no longer need to engage your employees. Companies must implement tools and strategies that promote team collaboration and communication. Additionally, implement management tools to control virtual call center activities and run operations efficiently and smoothly.
Step 7: Build a Good Culture & Promote Your Virtual Call Center in 2024
Make your workplace supportive for everyone regardless of their position. Appreciate your hardworking staff members and celebrate small wins to make all feel valued. Leverage the latest technological tools to lower agent load. After putting in all your efforts and resources, you should promote your business on websites or social media accounts to start growing and expanding.
Closing Thoughts
Although establishing a Virtual Call Center in 2024 is highly beneficial for companies, some companies still hesitate to take on this challenge. Setting up a virtual setup is quite an easy process for new-age enterprises. Contact CherryBerry UCM services to upgrade to an advanced virtual setup.
