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Maintaining Customer Experience in the Time of COVID-19

Businesses across the world have come to a standstill due to the spread of the deadly Coronavirus. While some businesses that fall under essential service providers are still operating at limited staff capacity, others are managing with their staff working from home. The customer support industry is facing a lot of challenges in these times as most of these companies had not adapted to the work from home model. In countries like India where the govt had earlier not allowed BPO companies’ staff to work from home, now they too have relaxed regulations to allow their staff to handle customer’s calls from home.

With many businesses not able to cater to their customers, the customers are in a lot of stress about their services and how their issues would get resolved with many companies’ support staff working in a limited capacity. This actually puts more pressure on the support staff that is working. Calls with panicking customers are on the rise and companies have to face the challenge that how can they maintain their customer’s positive experience in the time of COVID-19.

Here are some steps that can help you maintain or improve your customers’ experience in these times –

Reach out to customers proactively

When you know that there are some services that you may not be able to provide your customers with, do not wait for them to call you to complain. Proactively reach out to them via phone calls, emails, text messages and whatever methods you can think of. Understand the challenges they are facing and explain to them that you are doing everything possible to get things moving in the right direction. Positive reassurances are crucial for your customers to know that your company is still working for them.

Be Empathetic

Empathy has always had a crucial role in customer service. Now more than ever, it is needed. Make your customers feel like you really understand what they are going through. Do not make false promises to them that you know you cannot keep. Give them practical solutions to their issues and if you cannot help them with an issue, request them to remain patient while you find a solution.

Pivot Your CX Strategy

Different situations call for different strategies. Even if before this crisis your customer support/experience strategy was on point, it may not be so today. After understanding all the new challenges that your customers are facing and the challenges being faced by your own team, come up with a new plan of attack that is customized for this global environment we are all operating in.

Support Your Team Wherever Possible

Your customer support team is going to be under a lot of pressure. You need to make sure that their concerns are understood as well as taken care of. You cannot expect your team to help your customers through this difficult situation while they themselves are feeling uncertain about their future and working conditions. If your team is working from home, understand what challenges they are facing and how your company can help them through it.

For staff that is coming to the office, make sure their health is a top priority and they have all things necessary to stay safe and hygienic.

Summing Up

When times are tough, that is when our customer experience teams need to be at their best to be there for the customers. Good CX provided now will go a long way in maintaining customer loyalty once the world moves out of this global crisis.

Original Source: https://www.theoctopustech.com/maintaining-customer-experience-in-the-time-of-covid-19/

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Maintaining Customer Experience in the Time of COVID-19 | Octopus Tech

Maintaining CX in times of COVID-19 is essential to ensure that customers stay loyal to your brand. Learn how you can do your best to improve CX in these times.

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Should Call Center Teams be Worried about the impact of AI?

In a blog post, we published on our site in January of 2018, we talked about how artificial intelligence was reshaping the call center industry. In that post, we shared out opinion about how customer service was and is going to be impacted by the use of artificial intelligence and automation going forward. In this post, we see the current scenario and see how the customer support teams that do the work at the ground level are being impacted by AI and whether they should be worried about it.

The Impact of Automation on Customer Support

Over the last few years, the impact of automation can be seen worldwide. Many b2c companies that have a huge volume of customers calling their support or trying to chat with them have employed AI and automation to reduce the burden on their support teams. As a result, the number of support agents required in those companies also had to be cut down, which resulted in job cuts.

IVR software was used on a greater scale to help customers get basic information and get their basic queries resolved. This trend is seen the most in e-commerce companies. Customers that have inquiries like “when will my order be delivered”, “how can I cancel my order” and “where has my order reached” can all be answered using IVR.

If any customer has a more complex issue, then they have an option to communicate with a human representative. However, the IVR system has reduced the number of calls that land to the support executives, thus reducing the number of customer support execs needed. So, in this sense, automation has hurt the customer support teams of many companies. And for companies that outsource customer support, this ends up hurting their outsourcing partners.

Another form of automation and AI is the chatbot. Chat support is one of the most preferred modes of communication for today’s generation of customers. Companies that once employed hundreds of chat support agents now have reduced their numbers as well to the double digits. The key reason behind it is the use of chatbots on their apps and website. Just like the IVR, chatbots help customers with their most basic of queries which are more often than not the most asked questions. Since a majority of information needed is provided by the chatbots and the FAQs provided, the number of chats that reach actual executives reduces, hence the need for chat agents.

Customers’ Point of View

From the customer’s point of view, automation is being received in a mostly neutral manner. While some customers like the fact that they can get a quick resolution using automation others miss talking to actual human beings and fret having to go through a lot of steps to reach a representative.

The issue arises when there are complicated issues that need a human understanding to resolve the matter. There is only so much that can be done without human intervention. That is also a cause of joy for the customer support teams and a fact that will always make them indispensable.

The Flipside of Automation in Customer Service

While on one side there are some valid fears over automation and AI taking jobs, there are others in the customer service teams that are thankful for automation reducing the burden on them. According to a study shared by Pega, 60% of customer support representatives want AI to be used in customer service and believe it would complement their customer support efforts.

While only 15% were concerned about the use of AI, this study shows that a majority of customer service professionals believe technology is a boon for their industry that will help them serve customers better, reduce redundant tasks and relieve some pressure from their over-burdened shoulders.

The Final Word

AI is here to stay. Businesses are adopting it at a break-neck pace. Certain industries are using it more than others but this technology is bound to reach others as well. While this has reduced the workforce and increased productivity to some point, the human touch will always be needed.

Complicated issues and frustrated customers can only be best served with the help of actual human contact of representatives. While automation helps them reduce their workload, the customer support staff can focus on more critical issues and help give customers the best resolution possible.

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Tips for Creating the Perfectly Optimized Blog Post as Per SEO Standards

Using images in your blog post is always great to engage your readers. Well designed and high-quality images that complement the text of the post is something that many content marketing experts would call a good practice to follow. But if you are using images in your post, you need to add relevant alt-text to every image.

Another step to take with images would be to ensure their size is not too big as it would cause the blog page to become too heavy and increase the page loading time. Try to compress large image files and upload the compressed version in the post. In most cases, it does not impact the quality too much but reducing the page loading time by a large margin.

Content is the most important tool for any website when it comes to online marketing, increasing traffic and overall SEO. You cannot go through any how-to guide about SEO these days without reading about how essential good content is. But it is not only about having high-quality content on the site. It also needs to be well optimized according to Google’s SEO guidelines to rank well for the intended keyword or key phrase. A well-researched and high-quality blog post would be worthless if no one ever finds it online.

So, how can you improve your SEO and optimize your blog posts so that they may rank high on Google and other search engine’s SERP? Well, that is exactly what we are going to learn in this blog post today.

Tips to Optimize Your Blog post for SEO

Keyword Research

The first step in content creation is always keyword research. Whether you are writing a blog post or content for web pages, you need to know which keywords to use. You determine this based on the topic of the content. Once the topic is decided, you can use one of the several keyword research tools that are available online to find out which are the main keywords relating to your topic that have the most average monthly search volume.

You also need to check the competition of those keywords as well. If a keyword is relevant but has extremely high competition, you may want to choose an alternate one that might have less of a search volume but a lower competition as well. This would give your post a better chance at ranking for that given search term. Google’s keyword planner is the most trusted tool for keyword research that has stood the test of time.

Keyword Placement

Once you finalize the keywords that are to be used in your post, the next step is placing them in all the right places. As per SEO best practices, the focus keyword of your post should be used in the title of the blog post. Apart from that, it needs to be present in the meta description as well along with the H1 tag of your post. Do not forget to use the keyword in the URL of the post too.

Along with these three places, it is to be noted that the primary keyword for your post should repeat itself in the post depending upon its length. For a 1000 to 2000 words post, you can insert the keyword 3-4 times in the post without it being considered keyword stuffing which is a bad SEO practice.

Write catchy Meta-Title and Meta-Description

When your blog post appears in the SERP, the web surfers will only see your title and meta-description. Whether people choose to click on your link or others depends on how catchy and relevant your title and description are. By relevance, I am referring to the topic of the post as well as the search term of the user.

Meta-Title and Description also play a role in the ranking of the post. They should meet the SEO guidelines that exist. The title’s length should be 60 characters while the optimal length of the meta-description is 160 characters. However, Google does pick a snippet from your page’s content and display that in place of the description these days in search results depending upon how relevant it is to the search term. This might make the meta-description obsolete in the coming future.

Optimize the banner and internal images

Using images in your blog post is always great to engage your readers. Well designed and high-quality images that complement the text of the post is something that many content marketing experts would call a good practice to follow. But if you are using images in your post, you need to add relevant alt-text to every image.

Another step to take with images would be to ensure their size is not too big as it would cause the blog page to become too heavy and increase the page loading time. Try to compress large image files and upload the compressed version in the post. In most cases, it does not impact the quality too much but reducing the page loading time by a large margin.

Internal Linking

Internal linking is an age-old SEO technique that has become a key part of on-page SEO for every website or blog owner. Internal linking allows you to link your current posts to older posts that may be related to the current topic. You can use anchor texts for the internal links as keywords of the post you are linking to.

Internal linking also helps your older posts get traffic that they deserve. The important thing to keep in mind is that the post you are linking to should be related to the new one. The anchor texts used should be as natural as possible in the content and not for the sake of adding links.

Proper Implementation of Tags

In blog posts, we can create several tags and categories that can help us group similar posts. It is a great tool for users to help find content related to the topic of their choice easily. Categories and tags are a great navigational tool for websites and blogs to improve user experience.

Each tag created a new page with a unique URL containing the topic of the tag. Be careful to not create too many needless tag pages because you would need to optimize each tag page separately with a title and meta-description. If your blog suffers from too many needless categories, it is best to add a no-index tag to them or disallow them in the robots.txt file.

Allow Integration with Social Media

                                         Image Source: Flickr.com

Last but not least – Social media. Social media is a very powerful platform to boost the reach of your content. If your topic is sharable and something that can go viral, it would be shared on several social media channels and would increase your online traffic exponentially. However, all this would become much easier if you can integrate social media sharing in your blog itself.

Several WordPress plugins can be used to add social sharing buttons on each blog post. This makes it so much easier for your readers to share your content with their own social media connections and followers.

Parting Words:

SEO guidelines and best-practices would keep on evolving year on year and we need to adapt our strategies accordingly. The tips shared in this post can help you improve Google search ranking and visibility of your post as well as make it reader-friendly. After all, that is at the heart of any well-optimized blog post.

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Website Not Mobile Friendly? Follow these 10 Tips to Remedy It

Optimizing your website to give your visitors a positive UX is crucial in today's times. Follow these 10 tips to know how you can do it better.

Ensuring that your website is mobile friendly is no longer an after-thought. Today nearly 50-60% of all web traffic comes from mobile devices. This means that if your site is not optimized for a positive experience on these devices, you are alienating a big chunk of your potential customers. Not only is having a mobile-friendly site important for user experience but it is also critical for

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Does Telemarketing Still Have a Place in Lead Generation?

Generating leads is one of the most vital functions of any business team. New leads are the life-blood of a company’s financial growth as it ensures a solid flow of new clients. New clients mean more growth for the company and all the stakeholders involved in it. These days businesses have so many different channels for lead generation. Some are tried and tested, others are more experimental but give good results. One of the tried and tested ones is telemarketing services.

Does Telemarketing Still Work?

For decades, businesses have relied on telemarketing as one of its key tactics to reach out to new and existing customers. It could be to convert them into leads, close sales or up-selling to current customers. Either way, telemarketing has worked and that is why even decades later it continues to be used.

However, with so many different methods of generating leads, do people still respond to telemarketing as they did before? That is a tricky question to answer. Let us look at some of the arguments for both sides.

Arguments against telemarketing

a) People are busy

It’s that simple sometimes. Telemarketing is considered as interruption marketing where you are interrupting someone when they could be in the middle of work or something personal. Today’s generation of customers has a very high sense of personal space that they believe telemarketers invade. This creates a negative mindset which makes them not respond to telemarketing calls.

b) Call blocking apps

There are several apps available both in Google’s Play Store and IOS’ App Store that help customers block telemarketers. It makes reaching customers that much difficult. Once your numbers go into the database of any of these apps as spammers, your calls are automatically rejected by these apps.

c) Do Not Disturb

Every country in the world has its version of the “do not disturb” or “do not call registry”. This is a government-led initiative that lets customers opt their phone numbers out of marketing lists to officially state that they do not want any spam calls or messages. The numbers that are added in this list are potential customers that business losses.

Arguments for Telemarketing

a) Essential for Maintaining Personal Touch

Even with all the different methods of lead generation like email marketing, SEO and social media, you still need to communicate on a human level to close the deal. This is truer in B2B markets where long term contracts are signed. No company ever does a deal with another without talking to a human being on the other end of the phone. This makes telemarketing still a vital part of lead generation.

b) Important for Lead Nurturing

Let’s say you generate leads using various other methods mentioned before. You still need telemarketing to nurture those leads. Again the emphasis is on human contact. Through telemarketing, you can reach out to your leads, understand their requirements, do regular follow-ups during the important stages of conversion, and then finally close the deal by taking the customer across the finish line.

c) Telemarketing has Evolved

Telemarketing has grown beyond just calling and selling products. It has become about creating brand awareness, getting customer feedback, enhancing customer experience, improving customer engagement & loyalty and increasing customer retention. This new and evolved telemarketing will always have a place in the modern business world.

Moving Forward with Telemarketing

Telemarketing as a concept may seem simple enough but in today’s complex business world, it needs to be merged with a larger lead generation strategy. We need to bring today digital marketing, offline marketing, and telemarketing together to create a customer acquisition roadmap.

Many companies choose to outsource either their entire lead generation or outsource telemarketing services to expert BPO companies that can help them get the most results and increase their overall revenue. By leveraging this outsourced telemarketing, companies can focus on the larger strategies while letting a dedicated team of telemarketing professionals helps convert their leads. In the end, it leads to better synergy in the entire conversion process.

Original Source: https://www.theoctopustech.com/does-telemarketing-still-have-a-place-in-lead-generation/

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The Many Advantages of Outsourcing your Medical Transcription Services - Octopus Tech

Outsourcing medical transcription has proven over time to be of great value to the healthcare industry, aiding you in every step of clinical documentation process

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How Call Centers are Shaping the Real Estate Industry of Today

While most of the real estate professionals happily look forward to visiting properties with their trusted clients, there are only a handful of realtors who consent to the task of cold calling, an equally important task which helps them gain new clients. Though real estate cold calling is a simple task that helps them build a business, nonetheless it requires skilled agents on your part to increase the customer base.

Hold on, if you are thinking here of maintaining a dedicated in-house team of cold calling professionals, do not forget to add on the extra cost of hiring and training these agents, keeping them on regular payrolls, providing them various employee benefits along with furnishing them with infrastructure and extra office space to name a few.

However, outsourcing real estate cold calling to a professional service provider can be the best bet if what you’re looking for is to improve profits and reduce overhead costs. Why outsourcing? Because these firms are already well versed in all the cold calling guidelines and possess the required skills to tactfully pursue the prospects.

Moving forward, let’s have a look at what else the real estate industry has to gain by outsourcing its call center department to professional service providers:

Answering Service

Call center agents undertake all the inbound and outbound calls, leaving you ample time to evaluate opportunities and close more deals.

a)In today’s highly competitive real estate market, it’s far better to allow your customers to reach an actual live person in real time rather than relying on automated voicemail systems.

b)Since call centers agents have years of experience handling thousands of calls from home and business prospects looking to buy and sell a property, they impart their knowledge to help these prospects make a decision.

c)Call center agents are well known for offering personalized services and are experts in developing a script well suited to your clients’ needs be it buying, selling, loan modifications, cash investing or mitigation inquiries.

Customer Service

With the help of real estate call center services, you can easily provide your customers with a courteous and responsive 24/7 support without sacrificing your freedom.

a)Since real estate transactions usually involve huge sums of money, it only seems logical to use call center agents that excel in building trust with customers instead of using autonomous voicemails.

b)Another benefit is, call center agents utilize client databases and web portals used on a daily basis in order to provide your customers with accurate and up to date information without disturbing you.

c)The ultimate benefit is gaining the trust of your clients who know that even if they cannot speak directly to you, you are within reach whether they need assistance after work hours or on weekends.

Lead Processing

As you set up your marketing campaign, the leads will start flowing in. With a professional call center processing your real estate leads, you can easily capture every detail without even picking up your phone.

a)One of the many benefits of outsourcing your real estate lead processing is that it allows you to focus only on your business without missing important phone calls or losing leads.

b)A professional call center agent works as an extension of your business and follows your specific instructions to offer a customizable solution along with letting you determine what information to be collected and how to deliver it to your business.

c)Call center software integrates directly with CRM to allow you to directly input leads into your system. These technologies are what make lead processing an efficient and seamless addition to your operation.

Appointment Scheduling

To avoid scheduling appointments from becoming an expensive distraction, outsource your call center services to ensure that all your appointment related phone calls are handled professionally.

a)Today, most people simply do not have time to schedule during your working hours. But with call center services, you can easily accommodate all your clients’ scheduling needs at a time most convenient to them and make more profits in turn.

b)While call centers help your customers schedule their appointments, you can refocus your staff to concentrate on other important tasks such as creating specs or working out some billing issue.

c)Call center software is also quite flexible which can not only be easily integrated with your existing scheduling software to accommodate any scheduling scenarios but can also send you instant updates and any vital personal regarding the booking time.

Closing Thoughts:

Now we know that real estate cold calling requires professionals with a necessary set of skills to give you the ability to remain open 24/7 and carry out the sensible conversation with the prospects regarding the properties for rent, lease, buy or sell along with taking advantage of every potential opportunity that comes your way. Thus, it becomes highly imperative for real estate firms to adopt the services of a renowned call center in order to ensure that all leads are captured and followed up properly for high conversion ratio.

Original Source: http://www.theoctopustech.com/2018/07/how-call-centers-are-shaping-the-real-estate-industry-of-today/

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Why is it Imperative for Businesses to Incorporate Multi-channel Call Centers?

While looking back at the evolution of communication technology in modern times, who could have thought we would come so far from sending smoke signals and carrier pigeons to sending and receiving calls, texts, emails etc. in the blink of an eye over long distances. But here we are, taking pride in what we have achieved and what is yet to be.

Almost all the sectors around the globe have benefitted from the advancements in modern communication technology, one such sector is the call center industry which, I believe, has gained the most be it hands-free phones or cloud-based call centers or business intelligence analytics and seeing its current progress one thing is certain, it isn’t going to slow down.

Though the evolution of this industry hasn’t been a smooth one. Not that long ago, the primary task of call center agents was receiving calls and handling only the basic issues while the complex ones were transferred to the manager. But that was then, the call centers of today use multiple channels to handle more complex issues than ever before.

And the result? More and more businesses nowadays are leveraging multi-channel call centers to offer various support services to its clients in order to meet the ever-growing expectations of customers from the same organization.

What is a Multi-Channel Call Center?

A multi-channel call or contact center is basically the merging of multiple communication channels into a single, centrally managed platform. These multi-channel services include,

a) Call Center services

b) Email support services

c) Video chat support services

d) Social media customer support services

e) Chat support services

These services also serve the need of the hour because today customer dependent businesses working with any one customer service channel will miserably fail to ensure customer satisfaction, hence a multi-channel contact center.

Benefits of Incorporating Multi-Channel Call Centers:

Over the recent years, we have seen more and more businesses incorporating multi-channel contact centers in order to provide better support services to their customers. But what are these key benefits these businesses are getting, let’s have a look.

Instant Support

The current technologies of today have made our customers impatient and in need of instant gratification. Offering instant support through live chat, providing answers on social media, faster replies to emails etc. is the only way businesses can curb these gratifications before arising or, in other words, nipping the issues in the bud.

Deep Customer Analytics

Multi-channel call centers help in better customer analytics by offering a single point access to all the customer-related information which also includes a knowledge repository of past behaviors and the deep analysis of how these questions were answered. These analytics help businesses tweak their sales tactics based on customer demands.

Multi-Tasking Operations

Multi-channel call centers make it much easier for individual agents to multi-task and move swiftly across different channels because of the presence of a single version of customer data located in a single application. As a result, a single agent can easily navigate through any channel to resolve customer queries and helps reduce the burden on voice agents.

Omnipresence

Another great way a multi-channel call center can help you is by being present across all the available channels to offer support to the customers and collecting all the information stored at one location. So, if your customer switches in live chat and moves on to FAQ, to social media sites and at last to a voice call, your agent will still have a single record of that customer with all the necessary data required for any future reference.

Upsell and Cross-Sell

With the availability of all the customer related information at agent’s fingertips, he will be better able to understand their sentiments and suggest associated products and services that might interest the customers. These suggestions are different as they are based on facts contrary to the ones made by traditional call center agents based entirely on hunches.

Improving Corporate Image

Multi-channel call centers that are available on all the channels frequented by the customers contribute greatly in establishing the brand image for the organization by showing genuine interest in what the customers have to say along with proactively answering customers comments and being aware of any change in customer sentiments.

End Thoughts:

Day by day the competition is getting tougher. Apart from promoting their interests in mass media, companies must work hard on their customer relationship too. And for this to happen, the companies must allow their buyers, the freedom to choose their mode of communication, be it social networks, fax, email, SMS or anything else they deem fit. This is the only way the customers can enjoy their experience with the company.

Original Source: http://www.theoctopustech.com/2018/06/why-is-it-imperative-for-businesses-to-incorporate-multi-channel-call-centers/

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Working with B2B vs B2C Telemarketing for Business Growth

Telemarketing has always been an invaluable sales asset among entrepreneurs throughout the world, though no matter how successful a campaign you run, the difference between its success and failure will always boil down to the techniques used in planning and proper execution of those campaigns.

Now B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Consumers) are some such techniques used in the corporate language that refers to the two business marketing models that are as different from one another as they can get (apart from sales which are the end results in both these and almost every other marketing model).

Understanding B2B, B2C and Telemarketing

B2B, as the name signifies, is a type of commercial transaction where two business houses perform the purchasing and selling of merchandise such as the entity providing services to other business or entity supplying material to another for production.

B2C, however, is the businesses selling goods and services directly to the final customer. Now traditionally, this could be referred as anything from diners eating in a restaurant to individuals shopping at the malls for clothes to even subscribing to pay-per-tv at home.

And finally, Telemarketing is the overall process of selling goods and services to the potential customers over the telephone, mostly unsolicited. Remember those calls at dinner time from companies encouraging you to switch from cable TV to a dish TV? That’s telemarketing. Moving on, let’s have a look at some,

Differences Between B2B and B2C Telemarketing

1)Sales Opportunity

If we talk of B2C organization here, the strategies to increase sales are very crisp and mostly depend on the salesperson in charge whereas, in B2B, there’s a proper channel that handles all the end users.

2)Emotional/Rational

Investments in B2B telemarketing is completely rational in nature as it is based on present business values but B2C, on the other hand, is more about emotional purchasing, comprising of things such as price and desire, the brand of the product etc.

3)Involvement Level

B2B telemarketing solely depends on calls to the decision makers that represent their corporations in order to manage sales with different businesses in the market, however, B2C telemarketing’s main strength is targeting individual customers who are directly interested in buying the company’s product or service.

4)Lead Nurturing

B2C telemarketing, in this case, is transaction-based that involves a single step buying and selling process whereas, B2B telemarketing comprises of longer sales cycle that needs to nurture the leads for it to work.

5)Target Market Size

When compared with B2B telemarketing whose target area though is small but is more focused indeed, B2C telemarketing offers a target market that is simply vast and comparatively much larger which includes almost every possible consumer.

6)Maintaining Relationships

Since B2B marketing focuses mainly on initiating sales with other businesses, the choice of the communication channel is of utmost importance here whereas B2C marketing major focus falls on masses whose interested in the product, therefore B2C sales doesn’t necessarily require engagement or interaction with the brand.

Conclusion:

When one looks at the statistical reports and the success stories of the recent years, it’s not that hard to imagine why more and more businesses are responding positively to B2B and B2C telemarketing. From what we have gathered so far, B2B marketing is more suitable for generating leads whereas B2C is more favorable toward upselling.

Original Source:http://www.theoctopustech.com/2018/05/working-with-b2b-vs-b2c-telemarketing-for-business-growth/

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Number of Ways Telemarketing can help Grow Your Business

A telemarketing service is a quick and affordable method that uses the telephone to contact prospective customers in order to help generate leads, make sales along with gathering marketing information. Besides agents calling directly, pre-recorded sales talk is also used to be played over the phone upon automated dialing. It is a highly interactive tool that is used by various companies to make sales by contacting customers.

Telemarketing is also considered as an effective marketing technique that comes action-packed with tons of advantages irrespective of whether you run a small business or is the head of a multinational corporation. It’s main advantage, as we all know, is gauging the interest of your customers immediately in your company’s product or service. Its other benefits include-

a) Generating leads and appointments.

b) Help create rapport with your customers.

c) Promotions go non-stop 24 hours a day.

d) Provide direct feedback from the customers.

e) Efficient with cross-selling and up-selling.

f) Helps expand your sales territory.

And a plenty more. However, the common misconception that most people hold in their mind is that telemarketing is only limited to cold calling sales activities and nothing else. But trust me, this is just the tip of the iceberg, there’s much more than what meets the eye. There are a number of ways you can use telemarketing to turn various opportunities into business. Let’s learn about a few,

Customer Support

Telemarketers can be effectively used to offer customer support service to your clients in order to sort out their complaints and queries. Just make sure your agents know how to address the issue properly as bad reputation often has a way of traveling faster than its good counterpart.

Debt Collection

We all know how overdue payments and outstanding invoices has a way of crippling a business and hindering its progress. But a team of telemarketers can go through your debtors’ list to identify defaulters who owe money to your organization also ensuring that you have the current contact details for them. After that, your telemarketing team can send reminders and start the recovery process.

Launching Products

While planning to launch a new product or service into the market, it always comes in handy to do a survey by phone of potential customers beforehand in order to learn their opinions and understand their demands before you go into production. Not only that, you can even call your existing customers to know their thoughts on this matter as well.

Market Research

Market Research is another one of telemarketing’s time-tested features. Apart from using it for customer feedback and product review (as we have learned above), telemarketing, with the help of latest integrated technology, can also be used for collecting a full range of qualitative and quantitative data that includes everything from small executive level surveying to gathering customer feedback on a national scale.

Soft Lead Generation

Soft lead generation is basically the way of determining if the prospect shows any future promises of doing business with your company or not. This is done with the help of an approach that is tightly scripted along with preparing a list of relevant profiling questions to be asked before finalizing leads. This soft-sell approach is turning out to be more successful than an overt sales approach.

Seminar Reminder

In case you are holding a seminar, having a telemarketing team at your side will greatly assist you by calling the attendees the day before in order to reconfirm the starting time and the venue. Once the agents start calling, you will be surprised to know how many of them have already forgotten about the seminar and the related details.

Data Cleaning

In today’s fast-paced world, we know how quickly the information in our database goes out of date. However, an expert telemarketing team can easily go through your data, allowing you to edit, delete or amend the details of your existing customers as per the requirements. And since it is also a legal requirement in many sectors, so you can easily keep your nose clean with industry regulations.

Assisting Retailers

If you happen to be in retail business, you can always put your telecallers with the task of checking up on store managers to know about how your goods are selling in the market and depending on their answers, you can offer them a demo or some advertising materials to display in order to help them increase sales. This act on your behalf will go a long way into strengthening relationships.

Conclusion:

This is just a small list that I presented above, but you can also use telemarketing to promote events, trade shows, winning back your non-active customers, selling advertisement space by designing a campaign, informing your customers of new developments and much, much more. Telemarketing isn’t what it used to be in the past, use it wisely and it can permanently change your entire business for the better.

Original Source: http://www.theoctopustech.com/2018/05/number-of-ways-telemarketing-can-help-grow-your-business/

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Advantages of Outsourcing Web Development Services to India

If you consider today’s global economy, outsourcing services from a web development company in India provide a much better alternative when compared to hailing services from the US or other such Western European countries. Just the passion or the expertise with which a dedicated Indian outsourcing company handles web design every day is hard enough to compete.

Indian companies have, since long, been immersed in the world of web design and during the period have helped create countless sites for companies of all shapes and sizes. Not only this, even the employees that work in these companies shows an unwavering passion and drive to want to work in this industry on a daily basis. What more can you want? Well, probably a lot.

So, let’s look at some of the best advantages of choosing India over other countries as your primary outsourcing destination when it comes to delivering quality web design services.

Saving you Tons of Money on Every Project

The biggest advantage associated with outsourcing web design services to India is the cost-effectiveness. When compared to designing web services from UK or US, web design services in India offer a much budget-friendly choice. Mostly, there are two important factors at play here that makes hiring Indian outsourcing agencies that much affordable-

a) Highly competitive environment

b) Value of Indian currency in the international market

I mean come on, why would anyone in his right senses consider spending $5,000 on something that he can get done at $500?

An Abundance of Development Resources

When someone mentions India, the general image that forms in the eyes of most people is a country with over a billion population, little did they know that over 65% of the Indians fall below 35 years of age group and every one out of four individuals is related to the IT industry whether directly or indirectly. I am sure now you have lesser doubts when I mention the availability of abundant resources in the Indian subcontinent.

Superior Quality of the Project Delivered

This is usually your primary expectation from your outsourcing service provider and professional web design companies outsourcing in India know very well how to meet these expectations of clients to provide maximum work satisfaction. In order to maintain work transparency, outsourcing firms provide regular updates from time to time.

Plus, the professional experts hired by these firms have a 360-degree thought process while working on your projects and clients can always feel free to discuss their plans so that the work is executed accordingly.

Time Zone that Works for your Advantage

Everybody understands this fact well enough that since the demand for mobile and web development have skyrocketed in the recent years, time is valued nothing short of gold in the IT world. And with such an abundance of resources readily available to be put to use, various outsourcing firms operate 24/7 to meet the demands of their clients.

To put in simple words, a client from any Western European country can ask for whatever changes he/she deemed fit while going off to bed and can wake up in the morning to see his requirements met. Entering into a partnership with Indian companies will allow you the freedom to access the number of resources as per your need.

The Use of State-of-the-Art Technology

Another benefit of outsourcing your project from a web development company in India is the unlimited access to latest tools and technologies which, in any other case, would have been very expensive to purchase. Also, if you look at the technologies used in India compared to that of the west, you will realize that they are identical in every aspect. There is simply no work difference you can expect to get if you compare both the end results be it in terms of them being highly-effective, user-friendly or action-oriented.

It’s Efficiency to Deliver Projects on Time

Outsourcing projects to web designing company in India is a highly time-efficient option. Not only will you be able to save a significant amount of time and effort on hiring, training and managing an in-house team to get the job done but also when compared to other outsourcing destinations, India holds a much better reputation of meeting time commitments, even working with hard deadlines. Now you don’t earn that type of reputation by falling short on deadlines, just saying…

Conclusion:

So, as you can see, outsourcing to India offers considerable advantages over other countries and is one of the best ways to get an amazing site built at a reasonable rate. But this is not the only reason to choose India. Another reason is, by choosing to outsource for your web design, you not only take a major step towards turning your dreams to reality but at the same time, helps put money back into an economy that needs it and thus helps in encouraging more growth and more job creations.

Original Source: http://www.theoctopustech.com/2018/05/advantages-of-outsourcing-web-development-services-to-india/

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A Beginner’s Guide to Implement Social Media Customer Support

Gone are the days when the consumers expect support after they had purchased the product. Today, in the age of social networking, customers expect companies to offer their support long before they have made their mind to purchase and way after they have made that purchase.

Nowadays, customer service is not just a stand-alone process but an essential part of the entire buying cycle. And that’s why it’s no longer considered only as a support service but an inseparable part of marketing and sales.

The corporate giants are well aware of this fact and that is the reason they leave no stone unturned when it comes to utilizing every medium available to interact with the customers and take advantage of every such interaction to impress, offer value and make the sale.

One such medium which carries a vast potential within but is often ignored is Social Media (no, it’s not just used for liking and sharing posts or tweeting). Gartner also supports this fact, claiming that by 2020, 90% of the companies will be using social media for customer support.

Are you still planning to ignore social media for offering customer support? Probably not, but where to start, what guidelines to follow? Luckily for you, I have compiled a list of beginner’s steps to follow in order to effectively implement social media strategy into your support service.

Hire the Social Media Friendly Staff

Everything is public and viewable by customers as well as prospects when it comes to using social media platforms, so it’s highly recommended to prefer individuals who have experience in business processes and communication rather than going after interns or candidates with flawlessly written communication skills but are clueless about how social networking works.

Plan Well your Social Media Strategy

By planning well, I mean engaging your customers in meaningful conversations and valuing their time on social media. Your strategy should also include syncing in with other popular channels that your customers might be using to communicate about your brand and using it effectively to solve customer inquiries in such a way that they feel compelled to recommend your brand with their friends and colleagues.

Listen Closely to Social Conversations

Listening to your customers’ talk on social media will help you identify the areas that need improvement along with whether your social strategy is lacking in marketing or service. Here’s what you can do,

a)Learn what is being said about your brand.

b)Try to read in between lines i.e. understand their sentiments.

c)Figure out the objectives and expectations behind those comments.

Prepare a Project Plan

After having a general idea about the social conversations, define your objectives (such as what resources are needed, the processes that need to follow and how to measure performance) as to what you expect from the implementation of social media into your customer service. Also try to include features that aim to improve the resolution time, reduce the cost of service, and enhance user experience.

Install a System to Respond Quickly

After getting acquainted with the queries, comments, and complaints that are mentioned often by your customers, try to find what are the best ways to respond to them as quickly as possible. Mostly there are two options available, either you can hire a team member solely dedicated to replying to social messages or can segment responsibilities between staff members according to different social platforms available.

Use the Element of Surprise to your Advantage

Though many times, customers use social media to inquire or complain but you cannot deny that often times they drag you into debates just to troll your company (one reason being they don’t expect you to respond). But you can turn this to your benefit by reaching out in a friendly way to help them solve the issue. Receiving a warm response from your end will serve as a nice surprise to them when they aren’t expecting any.

A Tip: when you realize the trolls getting out of hand, steer clear of the conversation but do not under any circumstance feed this troll by sinking to their level.

Switch Modes of Communication whenever Necessary

Now I understand when the customer reaches out to you on social media, you should also respond therein, transparency is essential when it comes to providing quality customer service but sometimes, switching the conversation to private seems a more viable option, the key here is to understand when to make the move.

For e.g. too much tweeting and retweeting on both ends will not only sabotage the image you are trying to build for your company but can also be equally frustrating to your Twitter followers.

Conclusion:

Once you have learned how to use social media effectively for solving customer queries keeping in mind all the above-mentioned points, you can gladly encourage them to share their positive experience on the very same platforms. Who knows, you might be able to convince them not only to delete the original (negative) messages but also to replace them with the positive reviews after receiving a satisfactory response.

Original Source: http://www.theoctopustech.com/2018/04/a-beginners-guide-to-implement-social-media-customer-support/

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Why Customer Relationship Management Matters to Your Business

Throughout the history of the business world, customer relationship has played a crucial part in creating a strong personal bond with people. Regardless of what industry you belong to or what kind of products or services you deal with, relationship with customers is the single most defining factor that will ensure the success of your business. As customer relationship holds such high regards for any business, people long since have been looking for ways to excel at it. And this is where CRM comes in.

What is CRM?

CRM or Customer Relationship Management is the overall process of maintaining healthy and productive business relationships with existing customers along with winning back former customers and turning future prospects into customers by tracking and analyzing all the interactions with them. It not only helps you focus on your company’s relationships individually with customers, suppliers, colleagues, service users etc. but also provide support and add-on services throughout the relationship. It is basically of 3 types –

1)Operational CRM that involves direct interaction with customers.

2)Analytical CRM that helps in analyzing customer data.

3)Collaborative CRM that allows easier collaboration with customers.

Why CRM matters to your Business?

CRM strategy can work wonders for both a small scale and large-scale business if implemented in a rightful way. Below I have mentioned some such points as to why CMS matters to your business. Read on –

Better Time Management

With CRM, you don’t have to waste your valuable time or even a great opportunity waiting for the system to be uploaded as it offers a centralized system for the data to be integrated that can be accessed at any time and on any device.

Upsell and Cross-Sell

CRM maximizes the chances of cross-selling and up-selling of products or services by interacting with the customers on a regular basis in order to understand their wants, needs and the patterns of purchase so that offers can be made to them accordingly.

Enhanced Communication

CRM makes it possible for employees to continue offering high-quality service even when the customer’s main point of contact is unavailable for any reason by providing customer related information to whoever needs it.

Cost-Effective

Since the deployment of CRM system apart from being cheap requires a very little amount of paper and manual work which in turn requires lesser staff to manage and even lesser resources to deal with, it’s no wonder it is highly cost-effective in nature.

Training In-House Employees

Apart from its numerous other benefits, a CRM system can even help train your in-house employees on how to analyze important data and which data to focus on along with gaining experience on maintaining healthy relationships with customers.

Better Risk Management

CRM helps you provide a seamless transfer of responsibilities to different sales or support reps in a matter of minutes by using global edit reassignment task and territory management functions in order to shift accounts and responsibilities.

Acquiring New Customers

CRM uses ‘Opportunity of Business’ to identify targets as well as store important data into its system for future use, thus helping you not only to track the history of these targets or newly acquired prospects but turning them into customers as well.

Work from Anywhere

Installing a cloud-based CRM software means you can access the system from literally anywhere be it in the office, on a train, at home and on any device (a laptop, smartphone, tablet etc.) which can be accessed by anyone who needs it from the sales team to the customer representatives.

Automation of Day to Day Tasks

Apart from the managing the surface details of a sale, CRM also relieves you of hundreds of tasks such as form filling, report sending, addressing legal issues that must be completed alongside everything else in order to acquire smooth results.

Increase Business Revenue

Applying a CRM strategy will ensure that the product promotions, with the help of data collected, always reach a brand-new set of people every time which will further aid in popularizing marketing campaigns in a more effective way thus increasing your company’s overall revenue.

Wrapping Up:

Customer Relationship Management isn’t just your average data storage device. If applied correctly, this strategy will not only help you accomplish all the above-mentioned features but also enable you to respond and close service cases much quicker, send customized emails, nurture leads more efficiently, speculate web traffic, improve conversions and much more. CMS isn’t about working harder but rather smarter in order to achieve what you want and provide what your customers want.

Original Source: http://www.theoctopustech.com/2018/04/why-customer-relationship-management-matters-to-your-business/

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Meeting Customers’ Demands for Tech Support in the Age of IoT

http://www.theoctopustech.com/2018/04/meeting-customers-demands-for-tech-support-in-the-age-of-iot/

The explosion of billions of physical devices, systems and technologies around the globe and into our lives have provided us with an opportunity to connect to the internet while collecting and sharing data. The resultant connectivity has created efficiency and solution along with a level of digital intelligence to devices that were earlier dreamt of only in science fiction stories, thanks to the cheap processors and wireless networks, today it is possible to turn literally anything into the part of IoT or Internet of Things.

Why IoT matters for your business now more than ever?

As an entrepreneur, if you haven’t already, you should seriously start thinking about ways to support this enormous growth in the number and complexity of devices. One way of doing it is providing effective self-service along with the option of getting expert customer service to help with easy installation, usage, and troubleshooting of these smart devices.

Provide your customers a simple and accessible way to avail IoT-related tech support and within no time, you will see yourself in a spot far ahead of your competitors. But, as every moon has a silver lining, offering tech support in this age of IoT is not without its own challenges. Let’s look at a few-

 1) Not only the individual smart devices but the overall technological ecosystem lays a huge impact on your customer’s experience which, in due time, will only increase and present more complex issues for tech support to resolve.

 2) At an average, a broadband household in the US at any given time have at least 8 devices connected to the internet. It will only increase in the coming time and with it the demand for more tech support providers.

3) A wide range of devices connected to IoT, that are probably made by different manufacturers will be harder to keep tab of and will eventually make the job for the tech service provider that much harder.

 4) Since IoT is a whole new concept which is being rushed to the market without much field-test, it is yet to see what new complications it may create and how the IoT tech support team with its innovative ways resolve it.

  5) As the dependency on smart devices increases so will be the risk of getting them hacked. This will be another challenge support centers must face while maintaining high-security standards along with providing remote support.

But all is not lost, I may have exaggerated a bit. Believe me, there is a lot of potential in this industry for those who know how to harvest it. For those who don’t, here are a few guiding principles you should follow in order to meet customers’ expectations for tech support services in this age of IoT.

  Keeping your Support Program Up to Date

You can start this by conducting seminars on a regular basis to keep your customer support team up to date about the various new devices introduced into the market. In this way, you will be prepared when the customers start calling you on new devices. It will also help to know a bit about these device manufacturers and what technical problems are being reported so far about them.

  Making Security Concerns Top Priority

As I have discussed above, security reasons by far exceed every other concern the customers will face when it comes to devices connected to IoT. Even now, the majority of the home device owners are worried about the data generated by these home control devices apart from any unauthorized access. To counteract this, start educating your support team about the various security services.

  Working in Collaboration with other IoT Partners

Traditional call centers work within the close proximity of their client company only but with IoT, things are about to change. Since interconnected devices involving different programs, hardware and devices often make it hard to pinpoint the root cause of any technical error, collaborations between vendors, manufacturers and service providers is a must to diagnose and fix any IoT related issue easily.

  Make your Tech Support Service Customer-Centric

First of all, understand this fact that the Internet of Things is nothing else but the Internet of Services. Next, understand that customers have great expectations with products, failing which they expect the customer service to resolve the issue quickly. So, if you are planning to offer IoT related tech support, then offer it on a full scale, regardless of the associated difficulties.

Closing Thoughts:

With a heavy heart, I must say that the simple days when call centers were expected to deal with simple issues and provide basic support are coming down to an end. And its place, in near future, will be taken by IoT-related issues which will make the job of call center operators much more complicated than what it used to be.

So, will our IT call centers be ready in due time to meet the customers’ demands for tech support in the age of IoT? Only time will tell…

Original Source: http://www.theoctopustech.com/2018/04/meeting-customers-demands-for-tech-support-in-the-age-of-iot/

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Applying ORM Strategy via Call Centers to help Build Brand Loyalty

In our modern times, the internet has turned out to be the most reliable source of information about a person, thing or a business and is currently preferred by 2 out of every 3 individuals. It happens because, with each passing day, our lives are becoming more and more entwined with the online world from smartphones to smart televisions to self-driving cars, Internet of Things hold a firm grasp upon our lives like never before. It also means you have more than one way of leaving an impact online (be it positive or negative- that’s up to you).

But then one question remains, does anyone really care about our online reputation? Yes, they do, though these people might be anyone,

a)Former colleagues using the internet to share their professional talent.

b)Employers doing pre-research before finalizing prospective candidates.

c)People searching for their parental heritage.

d)Landlords checking in the reputation of prospective renters.

And many other…

Studies also prove that 97% of individuals go for online reviews while looking for local business and 2/3rd of them have rejected a company because of a bad reputation online. That’s how important building a positive online reputation is for your business nowadays. But how can you maintain this reputation, since you have your company to run as well?

And that’s where call centers fit in. Apart from their many services such as customer service, helpdesk, technical troubleshooting etc. offered by them, call centers have recently introduced ORM or Online Reputation Management service to help companies keep tab of customer reviews and take necessary steps to correct any inaccuracies. Let’s talk about some such benefits that call centers’ ORM service offers-

1)Call Centers cannot only remove negative reviews about your brand from the top rankings but can also downplay or completely remove irrelevant content, thus freeing up space for the positive listings.

2)Call Centers help your business build up an online reputation by providing positive reviews about your products/services which in turn will help you attract more traffic.

3)If you compare the expenses associated with damaged online reputation due to lack of trust in customers with the meager amount you invest in ORM, you will soon realize how cost-effective this service is.

4)Call Centers help you improve the quality of your output by gaining insights from the customers about what they like or dislike about your company products or services

5)The viral nature of the internet combines with the level of participation can build or break the brand reputation within no time, call centers specialized in ORM can ensure that this digital word of mouth remains positive

6)Call Centers can also strengthen natural search results by letting you gain insights into keywords and key phrases used in user-generated

7)Applying ORM strategy will also let you get hands-on better talents when you start looking candidates for hiring since everyone wants to work for companies that hold a good reputation.

8)Call Centers also help your company gain an understanding of the relationship between the traditional forms of online media such as news, print etc. and the user-generated

9)Since more people depend on the opinion of others, building a trustworthy online reputation through ORM is crucial for your company in order to maintain a strong brand loyalty.

10)You can even gain insights about your competitors by applying this ORM strategy as to how their customers feel about their products and services.

Conclusion:

From the above-mentioned points, you must have understood that why it is so important for your online business to focus on maintaining a good reputation if you wish to gain a significant edge over your competition. Involving a call center for applying the Online Reputation Management strategy for your business will help you monitor what others say about your brand on social media and other online platforms along with taking actions which will help change the customer’s perspective in a positive way.

Original Source: http://www.theoctopustech.com/2018/04/applying-orm-strategy-via-call-centers-to-help-build-brand-loyalty/

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Steps to Track your Call Center’s Performance using KPIs

Call center monitoring is an ongoing procedure of collecting data, analyzing it and giving feedback. Since it directly affects the customer satisfaction, employee retention, and your bottom line, it is essential to carefully navigate the implementation of certain KPIs or Key Performance Indicators into your call center working strategy to work to your advantage.

We understand being a contact center manager is a tough job as apart from managing your team, you have to successfully identify and choose from the vast pool of metrics, your KPIs to measure the overall performance and measure them accurately along with a focus on improving your key metrics to make your call center thrive.

Step 1

Before diving any further into the list of suitable KPIs, let’s have a look at the few things you should consider before choosing your key metrics.

1) What is the type of your call center, is it related to sales, service or support?

2) Are you assisting your agents with necessary feedback to help them provide excellent service to your customers?

3) Empathy and rapport building is essential in engaging customers, are your agents providing that?

4) Do you expect different queue time depending on the channel?

5) Can metrics be used more effectively to personalize interactions with customers?

Step 2

The previous step outlined the need for a game plan, once that’s sorted, you will know which KPIs to track in order to yield the most value and actionable insight. Below are mentioned some such KPIs to choose from.

a) Operational Efficiency Metric is the overall measure of the capability of the call center to deliver services to its customers in the most cost-effective way possible while still maintaining the quality of the support service.

b) Average Handle Time or AHT is the average duration of one transaction taken during the initiation of a customer’s call to the end moment till the issue is resolved. It includes any hold time, talk time and related tasks that follow the transaction.

c) Wrap-up Time is the follow-up process that includes the measurement of the time spent by an agent performing ACW or After Call Work once the transaction is over. It also includes entering notes or any tasks related to the closure of the customer-related

d) Forecast Accuracy basically provides us with a simple measure to help us access the quality of our forecasts. It enables you to forecast calls correctly in order to ensure you are not under or overstaffed at any given time.

e) Cost Metrics measure how well the contact center is managing their costs which also involve operating expenses along with costs per call, agent attrition (customer loss due to retirement and resignation of employees) and agent absenteeism

f) Customer Satisfaction is a metric that measures how the support services provided by a call center meet or surpass a customer’s expectation. It is essential as it provides the contact center manager with a metric that he can use to manage or improve his call center

g) First Call Resolution is keeping the tracks of every inbound and outbound call that addresses the customer’s needs during the first time, thereby eliminating the need to call again thus ensuring satisfaction in shortest time.

h) Self Service Usage is the track keeping of customers that are using self-service options to resolve their own issues without the need to get in touch with the service agent.

i) Average Wait Time is the average amount of time customers wait in a waiting queue before an agent addresses their calls.

j) Agent Performance KPI measures the performance of help desk agents by tracking the effectiveness of the agent using various metrics such as-

   1) Agent Job Satisfaction

   2) Agent Tenure

   3) Training Hours for New Agents

   4) Annual Agent Training Hours

Step 3

Now, last but not the least, since we know what areas to work on and what are some of the top KPIs to choose from, let’s learn a bit about KPIs in general in order to better utilize its applications.

   a)Use KPIs to enhance your knowledge about the workings of various platforms and channels.

b) Use KPI to track the NEV (Net Emotional Value) in order to better serve your customers.

c) Understand that in this ever-changing world, you need to change KPIs on a daily basis to meet the current requirements.

d) Use 2 or 3 KPIs to generate better results as no single KPI can guarantee 100% performance.

Closing Thoughts:

You cannot hope to track all the indicators at once as it would be too time-consuming, and the amount of data would be completely useless to examine for human analysts. You would miss the forest looking for trees.

What you can do is create a scorecard of performance aspirations and quality control and focus on one or two KPIs for each study period.

Original Source: http://www.theoctopustech.com/2018/04/steps-to-track-your-call-centers-performance-using-kpis/