4 Ways You Can Cut Down the Cost of Your Call Center

As competition in the market is brimming, customers are becoming a fundamental element of every business. They are turning out to be a tool that takes a company from bottom to the top of the industry, and vice-versa. Knowing this fact, startups and established brands are investing heavily in delivering exceptional services to their target user base. And, in this battle for customers, they are relying heavily on having a call center.

But, is this investment providing them with the right offers and services? If not, what challenges are they facing, and what are the right solutions?

Let’s find out the answers in this article – starting with a look back into the evolution of Call centers.

call center solutions

A Brief History of Call Centers Industry

EARLY COMMUNICATION: 1840S – 1960S

This was the period when the concept of call center came into existence, and the first phone call was made. Various firms invested their efforts and time into filtering calls using Automatic Call Distribution technology and assigning them to hired agents.

BEGINNING OF TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION: 1960S – 1980S

This period witnessed the introduction of the Interactive Voice Response technology. During this period, the term ‘call centre’ was coined.

THE INTERNET ERA: 1980S – MID-1990S

During this period, the Internet entered and disrupted the market – including that of call centers. It not solely brought major improvements in the business models, but also changed the term from ‘Call Center’ to ‘Contact center’.

CONTACT CENTERS: 1990S – EARLY 2000S

In this period, businesses started using different media channels including Social media to connect with their users quickly and effectively.

MODERN CONTACT CENTERS: 2000S – PRESENT

In the modern period, modern tech solutions are not solely considered for delivering an exceptional experience to customers, but also to add efficiency in agents’ work-life.

Now, as we are familiar with when Call centers entered the market, let’s look into what prompts businesses to invest in call centers, aka, its benefits.

Reasons Why Call Centers are Important

REAL-TIME AVAILABILITY

Users, these days, buy products/services from a website, mobile application, or Facebook messenger. They long for getting all the solutions and advice in real-time.

This is where call centers come into play.

These centers, with employees working in shifts, make it possible for customers to get a response whenever they call – regardless of if it’s day or night.

QUICK ACTION

75% of users believe that reaching a live agent for getting their problems tackled is a lengthy and cumbersome process. They want an instant action on their issue/challenge – something that makes call centers more critical.

These call centers enable customers to get replies on a phone call or message, which implies they need not wait for their turn. They can get solutions for their problems while doing their daily job – no special time allocation is required.

HIGH- QUALITY

Call centers employ different tools to record and analyze customer calls. This makes it easier for them to determine what challenges they have been facing more often, and make changes in their products/services. This eventually, helps businesses with delivering a high-quality experience to their target user base.

TRUSTABILITY

Above all, call centers build a sense of trustability by assuring customers that they will be entertained with the best of practical solutions anytime and every time.

With the aforementioned advantages, call centers are becoming an indispensable element of the business world. However, running a call center is not an easy task – especially when the competition is growing exponentially.

Businesses are facing different challenges in association to call centers – something about which we will talk in the next section of this article.

Challenges Faced By Call Centers Industry

GEO-POLITICAL CLASHES

In the call centers arena, most businesses go with outsourcing services. This seems a profitable effort unless there arises some political issue, war or protest, which results in a change in bills related to outsourcing. And eventually, bringing an adverse on the future of call center.

HIGHER CLIENT EXPECTATIONS

With a rise in market competition and ample of options available with customers, they are becoming more impatient and frustrated. In such a scenario, keeping them satisfied and engaged with your brand throughout has become a challenge for call centers.

LOWER EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

Due to repetitive tasks, increased interactions with customers, and stressful environment, call center jobs are turning out to be monotonous and hectic. Employees are finding it hard to remain hooked to their position for a long, which is ultimately resulting in a lack of resources.

TIGHT BUDGET

Another significant challenge faced by mobile application developers is cost. Call centers are finding it hard to handle the entire process of customer care with limited resources and higher competition in the market.

Though all these challenges are acting as roadblocks for call center industry, the one that is making the situation critical is a tight budget. It makes survival tough for call centers. It happens mainly because the growing market competition demands higher investment in promoting your brand and keeping both customers and employees satisfied.

Now, while we can’t control the skyrocketing market competition, we can cut down the cost to run a call center. Thus, add more years to brand survival.

Wondering how?

Let’s discuss this in the last section of this article.

Ways to Lower Down the Cost of Running Call Centers

LET AI-ENABLED CHATBOTS WITH CUSTOMERS

Chatbots are shaping the business growth, including that of call centers. They are making it possible to attend multiple customer requests at the same time with the power to mimic human interactions. They are keeping a check on their tone, words, and other behavioural segments to understand their nature better and thus, deliver personalized solutions.

Above all, these work day and night – with no demands like tea break, sick leave, promotion, etc.

This implies, every single chatbot is doing the job of two human employees on an average, which eventually means that you need to hire fewer employees or invest in their engagement activities.

Note: Though chatbots are making a huge difference, they are not yet prepared to replace humans at various fronts. So, it is better to go with a combination of both for ensuring better results.

STORE HEAP OF DATA USING CLOUD TECHNOLOGY

A bigger slice of call centers budget goes into creating and maintaining an infrastructure for storing a heap of customer data. Now here, if you replace the physical data storage process with cloud technology, you can save lots of money – which can later be used for other purposes. So, sit with your team and discuss storing your data online.

ENSURE SECURITY WITH BLOCKCHAIN

With the growing data breaches, security is becoming a severe concern for Call centers. To mitigate this issue, they are investing heavily in hiring more employees and tools, due to which they are getting out of cash more often.

Now here, if you replace all these efforts with an investment in Blockchain technology, you can quickly introduce transparency, security, and accessibility in the whole process.

And that too, without investing a considerable amount.

So, look ahead to invest in Blockchain app development.

EMBRACE SOCIAL MEDIA

Last but not least, introducing social media as a part of your process can also bring a drastic shift in your call center process and the budget. Social media platforms can help you to know more about your customers and connect them at different points. This action results in cutting down the cost involved with customer research and interaction.

Running a call center can be a hectic and expensive process. However, with the ways mentioned above, you can easily streamline your tasks. You can introduce comfort and productivity in your efforts, and plan for a brighter future – and that without making a hole in your pocket. So, look ahead to optimizing your Call center process with these ways and relish cost-effective benefits.