The Most Common Mistakes in Telemarketing

Telemarketing is concerned with making sales over the telephone. These telephone calls go both ways, meaning that there are situations when companies initiate calls in order to sell their products and/or services, and there are situations when consumers are the initiators of such calls, with the purpose of purchasing something. The request on the part of the consumer to make a purchase may come as result of a form of advertising that he or she has encountered, such as mailings.

Telemarketing is maybe one of the most controversial ways of marketing, simply because just as they are many legitimate businesses conducted in this way, there are also many cases of abuse, when con artists take advantage of unsuspecting individuals. The amount of money that fraudulent telemarketing supposedly robs consumers off annually has reached $40 billion. But although fraudulent telemarketers are those breaking the law, it is after all the consumer’s responsibility not to buy a product that seems suspicious, because no one can force another person via the telephone into making a purchase.

Telemarketing, in its broader sense, is not a complicated process, as it involves no more than three components. These are identifying the customer, executing the call, and follow-ups. The last component is the most critical of this entire process, as it determine whether or not telemarketers have reached their goal. There is no doubt whatsoever that the systematic use of the telephone was once a very good sales and marketing strategy, as it offered probably the most direct way of reaching potential customers. However, there is a very thin line between convincing clients to try your products or services and irritating them. This is the main reason why telemarketing laws are more strict now than they used to be a couple of years ago.

The huge mistake that telemarketers made was to call just about any number on any list, hoping to achieve something, instead of carefully targeting individuals who would have been most likely to make purchases. The job of a telemarketer is now all the more difficult, as any campaign must fulfill two important conditions in order for companies to get results. The conditions are that the campaign be professional and highly targeted, otherwise the risk of damaging your business reputation and wasting resources is very high.

In the United States for instance, the restrictive telemarketing laws go as far as forbidding calls between 9 pm and 8 am, giving consumers the possibility of registering with a national do-not-call list and of suing telemarketers when they have broken these restrictive laws.

It is extremely important that your business be in the hands of telemarketing companies or callcenters whose service capabilities are proven and who are reputable. This is an essential condition when it comes to the prosperity and reputation of your own business.

As you well know, telemarketing companies operate based on a callcenter. Its management is vital to the success of a business because no caller wants to wait for hours before having his problem solved or finding the information he or she is looking for. In order to maintain high service quality, sufficient staff must be provided. However, staff costs are sometimes too high, which leaves the management with two options. One refers to minimizing the number of staff present., while the other is concerned with acquiring cheaper labor. This, in fact, was one of the most controversial strategies in the telemarketing industry, because at a certain point callcenters were installed in prisons. You can imagine the violent reaction of potential customers at hearing their names, addresses and phone number were in the hands of convicted criminals!

Fortunately, this is not the case with reputable telemarketing companies, and the services they provide are excellent for both businesses and consumers.

Article Source: http://www.1articleworld.com

If you want to find more useful information about Telemarketing or about Callcenter visit this links. For the Danish version please visit Mødebooking.

Take some self defense against the lead generation killers

A couple of years ago, I was at a party where the host challenged guests to remove a cork from the inside of a wine bottle. It was quite a challenge, the host proclaimed.

One by one, people tried and failed to remove the cork. Then the host began explaining the tricky and complex solution, and people were impressed. However, the host was unable to remove the cork after 15 minutes of fiddling.

Growing impatient, I asked the host if he really wanted the cork out of the bottle. He said yes. So I broke the bottle and handed him the cork. He wasn’t happy with that solution. Apparently it just wasn’t clever enough, even though it worked instantly.

Read More Article...

Promoting Local Call Centers: Xenophobia or Good Business?

Several British companies, including energy supplier Powergen and financial services company NatWest, are promoting the fact that they only use call centers based in the UK, reports CIO Today. So is this xenophobia or just good business?

Read More Article...

The Rise of Outbound Call Centers in the 21st Century

Outsourcing emerged as an ubiquitous term in the business world which is actually referring to the act of commissioning another company to do non-core activities of your company. One of the most recognized type of outsourced work is the call center. Call center industry became an emerging industry in countries like India and Philippines. These two countries are the rivals in terms of call center outsourcing services.

The two countries are known to be the best in the world of call center outsourcing. Being two of the best English-speaking countries respectively, this had helped them to be acknowledged and advantageous in the business. Moreover, both countries possessed skilled IT workers.

Read More Article...

Now, Telemarketing Calls Will Not Trouble You

Register yourself with National Do Not Call Registry and bid goodbye to unsolicited calls.

Thursday, June 07, 2007: For every unsolicited call or SMS to the unsuspecting customer registered with the National Do Not Call Registry (NDNC), telemarketers will be fined Rs 500. They also stand to lose their telephones connections if they make such calls for the third time, announced TRAI.

Read More Article...

Outsourcing of Customer Services & American Labor Force?

Outsourcing cannot be considered a new phenomenon even though the rising attention toward this subject has brought lots of important issues into the daylight. Lots of service and even manufacturing companies started creating jobs overseas to gain wider access to foreign markets. They act as consultants auditors and perform other functions where their customers are. Putting it in other words, they have found customers and came to serve them. Another reason for a big number of emerging foreign companies oversees is saturation of the domestic markets. Approximately 60% of the profits of American information technology companies are estimated to come from overseas. This practice is not unique in number of industries ranging from banking to consumer products to. The leading firms in foreign markets state that their overseas revenues exceed their domestic sales.

In most cases a great many companies focus their efforts on their core competence, in other words things they do better then their rivals. They delegate most of their activities to domestic suppliers. Looking at this issue from that perspective, overseas sourcing is not a major part of the trend to decentralize business operations. Outsourcing often helps a company operate in an increasingly competitive international marketplace. The key factor for the firm's position in the modern global economy is the ability to maintain costs low. Another positive feature of outsourcing is enabling a business to provide 24/7 exposure to the customers, especially for those who need around-the-clock support. This is one of the core issues in today’s business world, whoever gets customer happy wins.

The secret to the customer’s love and devotion lies in good and most important always available customer service. Regardless of whichever industry a business is a part of, customer care is of primary importance. With growing competition worldwide, new technological innovations and constantly improving services and products, consumers are being attacked with too many attractive offerings and to win them over it is vital for the company to ensure that customer loyalty programs are being implemented. It’s important to understand that acquiring new customers is essential but holding on to existing ones is crucial. It is obvious that if existing clients are satisfied they will spread the word about your company’s outstanding customer service.

Some of the main problems customers have are of unresolved complaints, pricing issues, competing companies offering better deals, or simply they just feel that they are not being taken seriously enough. Thus companies have to be constantly tuned in to a customer's needs. Determining what they want is an important factor in organizational success. Since the market is in constant movement a consistent and dedicated approach is needed in order to determine and understand the changing moods of a consumer. The problem occurs when customer care is not one of company’s core activities, as often firms lack the expertise, resources, and finances to ensure good customer services. Then outsourcing to skilled and dedicated customer care professionals would be a great option; one that many global companies have adopted.
Although outsourcing sounds appealing and in most cases it is that way, there are number of problems that American businessmen have to take into consideration. They probably will bump into a variety of difficulties dealing with unfathomable legal systems, in protecting their intellectual property, and meeting the requirements of different tax and regulatory agencies. Corruption in public sector also might be a problem.

Many people have been speculating on the concern of overall disadvantageous impact of outsourcing on the national economy. Looking at this problem in-depth provides however a different picture. The visible part this concern is extensively discussed by the masses and it states that U.S. employees lose their jobs or get transferred to less desirable locations. In past years because outsourcing has gained such popularity that this issue may have been lost its real origin. Any serious analysis of this matter must be taken to another level, where all pros and cons would be evaluated. In reality much more of U.S. employees keep their jobs because outsourcing helps the company stay competitive on today’s demanding market. Taking for instance call centers which can be defined as a place of doing business by phone with combined and centralized database and automatic call distribution system. Recently call centers have grew to become sophisticated business entities which provide incorporated services that are vital for the success of the corporations they were created to serve. Major call centers’ goal is to become the encouragement for business transformation while freeing up businesses from a number of routine tasks in order to focus on their core activities. When establishing a huge call center which could be a reservation center for airlines or hotels, or a big telemarketing center it is often believed that people who used to work in those areas in the States are simply laid off. In reality though many of them get new and even better positions because the firm enhances its financial strength, and focuses on the competitive advantages. For example, as companies upgrade their software systems, there may be less local demand for basic programmers, but higher for better paid systems integrators. In most cases companies simply change their mix of corporate needed skills. Currently they emphasize more managerial experience, enhanced knowledge of business processes, and understanding the domestic customer an essential point which cannot be outsourced from oversees, but has to be researched on the spot.

Cost reductions from outsourcing also opens up new market opportunities for U.S. companies and helps create additional work places here at home. Stating the benefits of service outsourcing in a common way yields more resources for the business which allow it to improve its performance. With implementation of outsourcing and the reserves it produces is the beginning of the modification processes in the company. Outsourcing permits firms to buy new equipment and expand training programs for the personnel thus investing in further development and growth of the business. Also American higher labor costs can be offset by higher worker productivity.

Outsourcing does not only bring immediate results for any one given company in form of lower costs and higher productivity, it has overall positive influence on the national industry. For example service outsourcing brings positive feedback in a number of ways. As developing countries such as China and India build up their economies, new markets are created for U.S.-made products and services. China in two recent decades has become a major importer of industrial and consumer goods and soon India is likely to do the same. Another reaction of the economy is the rise in salaries firms are paying to those countries providing outsourced services. For instance compensation of IT personnel in India is reported to be growing at 15-30% a year thus quickly reducing the financial gap between Asia and America.

Over the past few years far more new U.S. jobs were created than outsourced. Labor market in the States is one of the most open and that is the major cause of the nation’s economic strength. Approximately 1,000,000 workers quit each week and just about equal number is hired in their place. In contrast with European and Asian labor market, American employers are much more willing to hire new working force, because they cannot afford their business to stand still. Also many foreign companies are hiring American professionals to work at their offices, when setting up new businesses abroad or for other functions. It becomes clear that outsourcing especially in customer service sector can hardly be a cause of stagnating American labor market. In case of professionally set up activities and presence of trained workers in oversees locations, Americans only win freedom for undertaking new strategies for further development.

It also has been researched that the foremost causation of huge layoffs as well as new hires, is the technological breakthrough. Due to innovations and its implementation on the market many jobs have been eliminated while many new created. Again we have returned to the point that constant movement of the labor market is the best coordinator of resources; when someone is fired, another is hired. It’s a never ending process which brings about positive results just as outsourcing does.

Jeff Stats is a writer at essay writing service Mindrelief.net. Order quality custom essays from our essay service.

Source : http://www.articlewise.com/

Luring Customers with Local Call Centers

Finding that the cost savings of offshoring are offset by losses in client retention and satisfaction, British companies are moving support operations back home.

It's no secret that there's something of a consumer backlash against offshore call centers. Some companies, including Dell (DELL) and US Airways Group (LCC), have even pulled some of their call center work back to the U.S. after complaints from customers about everything from foreign accents to the quality of support.

Read More Article...

The Birth of Call Centers in the Modern-day Technology

Indeed, the up-to-date technological phenomenon worldwide has helped in the advancement of business function services in the Philippines as proven by the state-of-the-art break through service provider called call center outsourcing.

In the business world, everything, as much as possible, should be in fast pace. And as the technology progress rapidly, businessmen take advantage of this to enhance quicker business functions and to provide expertise in a certain field that an ordinary internal employee of a certain company can’t do proficiently – and there, call center outsourcing was born to provide customer service and product sales.

Read More Article...

Philippine Call Centers Are Music To The Ears of American Callers

The playwright George Bernard Shaw famously quipped that "England and America are two countries separated by a common language." Any American who's called tech support lately might feel the same way about India.

Many tech firms are outsourcing their call centers to India, thanks to its surfeit of high-tech workers at low wages who speak English. But that English, inherited from Britain and processed through Indian phonemes, can be hard for Americans to understand.

Read More Article...

Call Centers Prefer Women as Agents?Why?

Does this signal women empowerment or gender versatility in the modern day business? Men are known to be the dominant ones when it comes to the working industry especially when it comes to working over night.But recent statistics show that 95 percent of workers or employees in particular companies are women. Yes, women who happens to be the ones doing most of the household chores. It is practically a way of showing gender versatility that men are not the only ones who can do the opposite responsibility but women as well are capable of doing heavy tasks like sitting while talking over night over the phone dealing with different kinds of people for sales purposes or for help or assistance services. As well, women dominated over men when it comes to the top manager level, 6 to 4. A certain company's job market advertisement for customer servive representatives caught the attention of a number of applicants everyday.

Read More Article...

At what extant the call center services are helpful for your business ?

is a centralized office used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone. Nowadays, a client will normally expect to be able to contact a company representative more or less twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, either by phone, fax or email. So now a new word is emerging and most of relevant call centers using the service web-based customer support solutions. Moreover, the quality and scope of outgoing calls remains important, as global competition for clients is fiercer than ever.

Call centers design specialty software that is customizable for a client company’s sales, marketing or any other telecommunications application. One of the first steps that a call center takes when contracted for a job is to ask their client a series of specific questions that will assist the call center in tailoring their software solution to meet the client’s specific needs.

Here are just some of the services that inbound and outbound call centers need to provide to be competitive in today's business world. Agents must be able to take orders, process transactions, respond to requests for services and information, and provide effective help for clients who are having problems with the company's products.

A team of customer service operators takes inbound calls from customer contact telephone numbers and the Internet site of clients. Call Center Services manages the operator resources to ensure callers get through first time to fully trained operators answering and acting as skilled customer service staff of the client company.

Outbound telemarketing outsourcing has become a viable option for many businesses in recent years. Generally, when customers call a business that they have received a service or product from, they have questions regarding that service or product. It’s crucial that the company you rely on for call center outsourcing understands your product.

Telemarketing companies need to evaluate the telephone disposition of each of their telemarketing representatives. This should be done before the individual is hired, but also after, while they are actively working for the firm. The first element appraised should be whether the telemarketer has a positive approach. Being knowledgeable is certainly important as well, but if the telemarketing representative is unpleasant, it makes no difference how knowledgeable they are on the product or service they are selling.

Conference calls have become the new way to have conversations with more than one person at a time when needed. Conference calls pricing, however, can range from a small amount for three-way calling to a large amount for adding in phone lines that can be connected to each other for conference calls.

Today, call centers handle a high volume of calls and depending on the ease and helpfulness of service, a customer will feel comfortable coming back to use these services. The service helps to save money, as well as increase the potential profits of a business or company. The best way to find a great call center it is know the services that they offer. Each call center is likely to operate under different rules and regulations; therefore, it is safe to assume that different call center services will be offered at different companies. call center services are likely to vary from call center to call center. However, there are common call centers services that are offered by most companies. One of the most common call center services is that of sales.

Mridhu is the author of call center services. She was inducted into this profession just three years back.

Source : http://www.articleblotter.com/

Indian telemarketing professionals

When we concern about Indian Call Centers and Employee working there, one intimation directly towards the charmed skin guys. Yes, They all are coming from the North East Indian States. Ever you attend any glance on this calculation? I am saying it is true at least for Indian national capital city New Delhi. Similarly this sour is also going towards other cities also letting them out for other countries too. So the Call Centers are like a boon for all these guys.

There are stark differences among the eight northeastern States with respect to their resource endowments, levels of industrialization, as well as infrastructural facilities. The economy of all these States remains underdeveloped and primarily agrarian with very weak industrial sectors and inflated service sectors. The industrial sector has mainly developed around tea, oil, timber in Assam and mining saw mills and plywood factories in other parts of the region.

These states are far away from our Metropolitan Cities and if we want much luxury should find there sorry. Rather students during schooling get much similar English there what is popular in USA and Europe also their accent is being similar. They also believe in self-dependent tradition.

Now, suppose a boy has finished his schooling belongs to North East States. If he thinks to get some higher education may be college or other than college what he can do? See, he is trying to shift in any metropolitan city. He migrates from his native place. Comes to Delhi. Reaching there, gets he can solve one of his problem here that is higher education. Unlike their states gets some conditional puzzles like language, atmosphere, Infrastructure. Being in touch with other migrated peoples he mould himself for the new challenge. He found here much difference in earnings also. Left the rest part, being an independent he tries to get job here to run his life with appropriate education. Finally decide to be set in Call Center Industry.

So we can say these students are trump card for Call Center industries. They are taking part in the growth of City indirectly targets our country development. We know here in India better chances for a good BPO. One who wants to rum a call center here founds cheap manpower, well educated youngsters, best infrastructure and one most prominent thing honesty. All are helpful for growing customer care outsourcing services. That is the reason most of US & European Call Center looking India for their new branch.

About the Author
Mridhu is the author of Indian Telemarketing Professionals.She was inducted into this profession just three years back.

Article Source : http://www.goarticles.com/

Kenya: Cheaper Technology for Call Centres

Potential investors in the outsourcing of business systems, or call centres, now have a cheaper platform to launch their services on. Panamax Group, a leading information and communication technology (ICT) firm from India, Broadband Telecoms and Skyweb Technologies Limited have linked up to introduce cheaper technology for call centres.

Read more Article....

Answering Call Centre Services

If you are in a business where your company needs to answer calls quickly, reliably and professionally, then call centre answering services may be the best business option for you. There are a number of situations where call answering services will work well for you:

• If your profession needs to attend to calls quickly but don't have the resources, call centre answering services help by taking messages for you and faxing, emailing or texting these to you - even calling you directly or patching callers in the case of very urgent enquiries.
• If you have a high call volume which you need to screen and only answer the important ones, a call answering service may do this for you by only taking bona fide messages and screening out cold callers.
• If you are expanding your business, then you may want to outsource to a call centre answering service.
• Call centre answering services benefit you in more ways than one:
• They help in saving you time and money investment in terms of infrastructure and manpower by providing you with both.
• They help you in providing better customer care service and support to your customers, making them feel important, and dealing with their problems correctly.
• They maintain your professional image and may even help enhance this.
• They help increase your profits and income by increasing your market share and accumulating information for your customer database.

There are a number of service providers who offer call centre answering services. Fully-fledged call centers provide all services such as taking messages from customers and callers, customer service, providing other technical assistance, etc and taking orders.

Armchair Answercall is an established service provider that offers professional telephone answering services to suit your business needs. The wide range of services includes:

1. Answering/ Message Taking Services: They answer calls from your customers and provide them assistance and take their messages, when your staff are unavailable.
2. Brochure and Order Line: They provide skilled operators who take orders from your customers, help in filling forms and collecting data, and processing credit cards. They even help in cross-selling your products, thus, increasing your business profits.
3. Lunch-time Receptionist: Their customer service executives answer your customers' calls seamlessly, as if they were working directly for your company, when your staff are away for lunch/ break.
4. Holiday Cover: Their highly experienced staff take calls on your behalf in a seamless manner, providing technical support and assistance to your customers even during holidays.

There are other services also to suit your needs, including Recruitment Hotline and Late Opening. You can discuss your needs with the sales team who will suggest to you the best service to meet your business requirements.

About the Author:

I write articles on call center services provided by http://www.armchairanswercall.com

Source: www.iSnare.com/

Insurer to hire for call center

Atlanta insurance company ZC Sterling plans to add 120 jobs at its Triangle call center by the end of 2009, a company executive said Wednesday.

The company, which provides real estate tax services for borrowers and hazard insurance to homeowners, is boosting its local ranks to handle more customer-service calls, said Tracy Siler, the company's vice president of administration.

Read More Article...

Philippine call centers and outsourcing

Believe or not, animation outsourcing is one of the subsectors that the Philippines is trying to penetrate and eventually take a big slice from. In fact, animation is one of five subsectors in the outsourcing industry that the Philippine government is heavily promoting overseas because the country’s leaders believe that the Filipinos have the talent and artistic skills to excel in this market. The other four subsectors the government is pushing for are the call centers, medical transcription, software development and business process outsourcing.

The Philippine animation industry is expected to make an impact on the animation outsourcing industry because local animation studios have been doing subcontracted animation work for almost two decades now for American animation companies like Hanna-Barbera, Warner Brothers, and more recently, Cartoon Network. It is also now a known fact that several Filipino animators were involved in Pixar’s huge hit 3D movie Finding Nemo. Although India and Korea are years ahead of the Philippines in terms of 3D animation, the country is relatively strong in 2D animation. The reason the country is behind in 3D animation is not because of talent and skills as evidenced by a number of Filipinos working for Pixar, the company that pioneered full 3D animation movies, but because of the lack of local technology.

Local animators simply cannot keep up with latest 3D software like the Koreans or the Indians because of the prohibitive costs. This is one reason why the government is greatly promoting animation outsourcing in the country so that local animators would be exposed to the latest software and technologies, because in terms of skills, Filipino animators are just as good as anyone in the industry.

The call center boom in the Philippines has spilled to the provinces as well. With the premier cities headed by Makati being crowded by call center operations, many companies have started to set sights on nearby provinces to as far as Cebu and Mindanao. Cebu, considered as one the most progressive provinces in the Visayas region, has positioned itself as a main hub of information and communications technology services. Already, some 14 call centers have started operations in Cebu, including big companies such as Sykes, PeopleSupport, Convergys, eTelecare and Global Alliance. More companies are intent to follow suit. Other firms that are exploring opportunities in Cebu are Ambergris, Teletech, Daksh, Vision X, Teleperformance and Wipro Spectramind.

Cebu becomes the second choice for these call centers after Metro Manila because of the province’s strong local government support and its familiarity with large foreign investments. But the main advantage of Cebu over other provinces is its large pool of English speakers who meet world-class service and language standards demanded by call center operators. Many Cebuanos are better English speakers than they are in Pilipino.

According to the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions, it is important to increase the number of call center operations outside of Metro Manila as the demand for the industry continues to pour in from the United States and Europe. With about only five out of every a hundred who apply in a call center actually get hired in Metro Manila, the growing demand of these foreign companies would be hard to meet unless it is channeled through the provinces. Thus, the government, through the Department of Trade and Industry, is pushing for the development of more IT hubs outside of Metro Manila. The DTI is also encouraging the enhancement of communication skills among students to improve the hiring rate in the call center companies.

Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_120355_15.html/

UK Watchdog Outlines Privacy Breaches

Britain's data watchdog outlined a "horrifying" number of security breaches by major retailers and banks Wednesday, saying they risked losing customer confidence.

The Information Commissioner's Office said it found 12 banks discarded customers' personal details in unsecured bins outside their premises. Separately, the office was considering what action to take against the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for failing to secure online visa applications from India.

Read More Article...

Uganda: MUK to Set Up $1m Call Centre in Sept

Makerere University's faculty of Computing and Information Technology (CIT) will spend a US$1million to set up a call centre that will provide national directory services and in future move to attract offshore work.

The call centre will be housed in the newly constructed 12,000m2 complex, an extension of the existing faculty building scheduled to be officially opened in September this year.

The Dean of the faculty, Prof. Venansius Baryamureeba told Business Week in an interview that the faculty's strategic plan has a component of preparing the country's human resources to work in the outsourcing industry and they have identified setting up a call center as the appropriate first step in that direction.

Read More Article...

60% of small call centres to be shut

NEW DELHI/GURGAON: When Jitendra Sharma, a school passout, joined a swank Gurgaon-based BPO in the last week of May, he believed he was on the high road to a stable career in the industry. Barely a month later, Sharma and many of his colleagues who had joined the start-up company are jobless. Last Wednesday, around 40 of them were suddenly asked to 'stop' coming to work.

After a round of slogan-shouting outside the office of the BPO - Gnome Business Solutions at the Global Business Park on MG Road - the management issued the sacked staffers post-dated cheques by way of a final settlement. "We hadn't even got our first salary when we were suddenly told there was no work for us. Our dream has been shattered,'' Sharma, still in his late teens, said.

Read More Article...

CRTC plans crackdown on telemarketing

Regulator releases rules for `do not call' registry

After enduring years of delays, Canadians are one step closer to hanging up permanently on annoying telemarketing calls.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission released its long-awaited rules yesterday for a national "do-not-call" list that promises to slash the number of unsolicited calls that invariably disconnect people from their dinners.

"Once an operator has been selected and has taken the necessary steps to put the list into operation, Canadians who prefer not to receive unsolicited calls will be able to add, at no charge, their numbers to the database," the commission said in a release.

"Telemarketers will be prohibited from calling consumers who are registered on the list."

Read more Article...

Call Center Operators Begin To Work At Home

If you ask any answering service owner what the biggest challenge that they face today almost all would answer employees. For a number of years employers have tried a number of methods to find a desirable employees to work in what is sometimes less than desirable circumstances. Today technology has delivered these answering service owners a new alternative; the stay at home operator.

Thanks to VoIP services it is very easy for an answering service operator to log on and work off premise with the same advantages as an operator has in the war room of the call center. There are several advantages to such technology and call centers who have implemented these advances are seeing major changes. Some of these answering services virtually had to beg for employees and the pickings were slim. Now these same businesses actually have a waiting list for employees, with highly qualified candidates.

Another advantage to the stay at home operator is that it allows the answering service to be able to fill peak time periods and cover absenteeism more efficiently. The answering service now has alternatives when there are weather related emergencies as well as filling those difficult to handle shifts. There are offices that will staff overnight shifts with work at home operators.

Still other offices have been slow to embrace this type of technology while other offices reluctantly use this technology only for emergencies or supervisory tasks. There is a general misconception that these operators are more difficult to supervise and that the only way to run a call center is from a centralized location. With the advanced statistical reporting capabilities that most answering services possess, coupled with voice recording technology these employees are as easy to supervise as they would be in your office.

As the answering services that utilize at home operators continue to flourish, others are following their lead. At home operators now make up the fastest growing segment of employees in the answering service industry. In addition this new trend seems to be an alternative to overseas outsourcing. With the advantages offered to work at home operators, answering service owners and the industry as a whole, stay at home agents seem to be the trend of the future.

About the Author: Todd Cardin is the east coast marketing team leader for Specialty Answering Service.http://www.specialtyansweringservice.net

Article Source: http://www.iSnare.com

Going Virtual, Way Cool

Anytime you call 1-800 anything you are calling a call center. Your call might be directed to Salt Lake City, to the Philippines or to India, but it is likely going to a brick and mortar facility at a great expense to the company at hand. A call center is any sort of telephony operation handling sales, customer service, inbound or outbound needs of a company. When a company forms and realizes it needs these services fulfilled, up until recently it had very few options.

Forming one's own brick and mortar call center is a labor and cost-intensive program. Here are a few of the steps involved; renting the facility, leasing the hardware, insuring that hardware, hiring the workers and supervisors, training them, the list goes on. The process might take up to 3 months to even begin the operation with massive expenditures at stake.

Companies like West Interactive realized this dilemma for businesses and created the first of call center solutions - the outsourced call center. Outsourced call centers gave new flexibility and ease of entrance because they took on the overhead, opened the facility, hired and trained workers. A company would call up and say, I need one representative answering calls from 9-5, handling sales and returns inquiries and transactions. West would say, we're happy to service you, send over the proper script and all other information to familiarize our worker on your company and we'll get them talking - for approximately $1.85 per minute.

The most recent call center solution dawned with the advent of VOIP – voice over Internet protocol technology. VOIP allows for remote locations of Teleworkers, which means the ability of a home-based worker operation. With reduced long distance pricing and the removal of such overhead like the brick and mortar, savings are quite tremendous. For only $99 per monthly seat plus 10-30 cents a minute for direct labor, the economics are incredibly compelling. Companies like Freedom TeleWork have created solutions just this revolutionary.

With an online solutions there is far greater ease and speed of sign up – choose calling preferences B2C (Predictive Dialing) or B2B (Progressive Dialing), choose Teleworkers (or bring your own), upload a script and in minutes a highly advanced call center operation is deployed with drastically reduced costs.

Clearly, the immediate savings and return on investment for a company are quite substantial. Virtual Call centers are revamping the accessibility and return on investment for companies' customer relations across the globe.

Giovanni Castro works at Freedom TeleWork, a company that provides hosted call center solutions and services such as progressive dialing, inbound call center, chat, predictive dialing, CRM call center, and many more.

Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_140946_15.html