Category Archives: Call Center Solution

One of the necessary parts of any business is communication. In African countries, as businesses are growing at the fastest rate and the economy is also moving upside down, businesses have started investing in the top technology tools to support the growth of their business. At this time, it is essential for these businesses to focus on communication and collaboration to stay connected with investors, partners, vendors, suppliers, etc.

Traditional communication tools like telephones, cell phones, etc. have several limitations and businesses cannot restrict themselves to those conventional business phone systems. Thus, businesses in Africa have to take a leap to the best technology driven communication tools that are trending not only in African regions but worldwide. Unified communication platforms are trending across the globe with the increasing demand for unified communication among customers, prospective clients, investors, and more.

Unified communication is no more a magnificent option to have for businesses in Africa. It is indeed a must have element in a business to grow and meet business communication needs. In multiple ways, a unified communication solution can benefit businesses in African countries.

What is unified communication?

It is a modern day communication instrument, which allows business professionals to use combined access to all major communication tools from anywhere, at any time they need. Unified communication lets businesses store all interactions in a single point system to make all business communication and operation quite easy and straightforward.

Unified communication and collaboration often define the progressive and modern nature of a business in Africa. UC&C stands for Unified Communication and Collaboration. It is a modern way of communication, which has various advantages to offer.

What is a unified communication system?

A unified communication solution is a platform that integrates all major communication channels and business communication modes within a single system. This includes the following communication channels:

•         Voice calling
•         Instant messaging
•         Conference calling
•         Screen sharing
•         Video callings
•         Social media
•         WhatsApp
•         Integrated business apps
•         Texting
•         And more

The major goal of unified communication platforms is to provide an integrated solution to all business users that are accessible from anywhere, at any time. Moreover, if a business person initiates an interaction on one communication channel and after some hours or days, communicates via another mode of communication, the platform will give the same user experience.

Similar to several other countries, countries in Africa, Unified Communication & Collaboration tools have started growing in popularity. The reason behind this trend is the bouquet of benefits it has to offer.

Top ways unified communication software benefits businesses in Africa

1. Excellent call management

Voice and video calls are commonly used in African businesses. Businesses in Africa work with multiple vendors, suppliers, partners, and more in multiple countries. It makes it difficult to manage calls from these different business associates. The systems with unified communication channel integrations help in managing these calls. The best solutions for unified communication consist of several features for effective call management. Some of the most popular features of this platform are automatic call distribution, interactive voice response, call monitoring, call transfer, call forwarding, and more. This helps African countries to remove the burden of managing calls manually.

2. Improve the efficiency of business communication and collaboration

As business and the economy grow, the need and demand for reliable communication and collaboration also grow. Thanks to a unified communication system that incorporates calling, messaging, texting, and even conferencing within a single system. It makes it easier for Africa to keep track of all interactions among all associates. Moreover, the same system can be used for a sales conversation, customer care, and even to give a live demo of the product. This helps in keeping records that can be referred to whenever needed to personalize conversations and lead them in a favorable direction.

These tools are effective not only to bridge the communication gap but also to encourage uninterrupted collaboration. Business representatives and team members can collaborate to brainstorm, discuss, make decisions, conduct board meetings, and have all other types of business conversations. This makes the remote working model indeed lively and reliable in countries like South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Zambia, Uganda, and more.

3. Optimize business operations

The unified communication platforms are loaded with amazing features to help businesses in Africa. One of the major benefits of a system supporting unified communication is that it helps in providing automation features. Automation can help in streamlining operations related to prospecting, sales, customer care, customer relationship management, investor and partnership relationship building, and more. Unified communication also helps in defining, monitoring, and optimizing different operations to improve the overall impact.

4. Excellent customer and partner satisfaction

A unified communication system not only provides the integrated system with all communication channels, but it also provides integration of different business apps. In fact, an expert unified communication software provider company can integrate any third party app or software with a unified communication solution. This can provide a holistic view of all interactions carried out by a business with a customer or partner or even a vendor and supplier. The integrated system gives a complete context to business representatives while having conversations. They can lead context driven conversations.

These solutions have autonomous features for clients so they can self serve themselves. This can augment the customer experience and partner satisfaction because they don’t need to wait too long for African business representatives to respond. Moreover, they can also check their own records and take autonomous actions to speed up various operations. This saves time for clients and partners, as well as business resources.

5. Reduce expenses

Automation, unified communication, and other amazing features help in directly reducing expenses. Businesses in Africa don’t need to manage and maintain individual business systems such as CRM, IP PBX, payroll management, conferencing solutions, etc. A holistic system and its powerful features reduce the cost of ongoing maintenance, monitoring, and management. Moreover, automation and similar features further help in reducing expenses. A unified communication system can be hosted over cloud platforms. This can further reduce the expenses of physical space, servers, and more. Some cloud platforms provide a “pay as you go” model.

All these advantages of using a unified communication solution reduce expenses and help in saving funds. These funds can be reinvested in the business to make some more vital business advancements.

Concluding notes

UC&C platforms are built to meet the growing and rapidly changing business communication and collaboration needs of African businesses. Not only big enterprises, but even SMEs in Africa can take advantage of these platforms. It helps them build reliable external and internal communication strategies. It also helps in leveraging several other advantages like better business positioning, branding, boosted agent productivity, access to actionable insight, and more.

We have been benefiting African countries with our excellent unified communication platforms. One of our most popular platforms in this sphere is our DialShree: call center solution. It supports all modern communication channels and can integrate other business communication application integration, too. We have been meeting the business needs of businesses of all sizes in Africa. This has given us the required skills and experience to meet business needs. Moreover, we also provide recommendations based on our experience with businesses in Africa.

To know more about our UC&C offerings and services, book a demo now!

ChatGPT has captured all headlines because of the amazing use cases of this chatbot, which is developed by OpenAI. It is one of those amazing chatbots that excel in self learning. In fact, it is the most effective in generating human-like content and self learn to provide better output every time. All different industry verticals are exploring ways to bring it on board to multiply advantages and the contact center industry definitely cannot be set behind.

The potential of using the stated chatbot in all industry verticals is huge and in the contact centers, it is making an immense impact. From improving customer satisfaction to enhancing different operations, reducing agent attrition rate, and much more it can do to improve overall performance and ROI of contact centers.

The impact of using ChatGPT in the contact center industry is so huge that industry leaders are considering that it will bring on a whole new revolution.

What is ChatGPT?

Back in November 2022, OpenAI launched a chatbot, which gained immense popularity because of its efficiency. It uses the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) model. It provides quick access to information, automates several operations, and can even handle conversations with consumers.

This is how it paves its way as an effective chatbot in multiple industries, including, but not limited to, contact centers.

Provide enhanced support to improve customer service

One of the major areas in which chatbots are used in the contact center industry is enhancing customer satisfaction. In multiple ways, ChatGPT can improve customer service.

Customers are fine to deal with chatbots if they can handle their queries effectively. The major roadblocks that customers face while using a chatbot for customer support are listed below:

• Chatbot cannot provide the required assistance. The answers that a chatbot provides are often fairly limited.
• Many times, chatbots fail to understand user queries and put the customer into an endless loop.
• It provides quite mechanical responses.

All these are major turn offs for the customers and it reduces customer satisfaction.

However, the chatbot launched by OpenAI has brought a revolution in the contact center industry. It overcomes all major challenges faced by other chatbots and literally adds value to the objective to improve customer service.

The stated chatbot can provide human-like responses and process information really fast compared to other options available in the market. It can also provide the best assistance to customers to ensure they receive the required resolution. It also reduces call queues and long call hold times. This chatbot is faster than humans in processing customer concerns.

One of the major advantages of using it is that it can self learn from different instances, which makes it better and better in the job of improving customer satisfaction.

1. Improve agent productivity

The first way of boosting the productivity of agents in contact centers is by automating answering repetitive questions. As per the survey result, 40% of customer concerns are repetitive (Source). That means by implementing ChatGPT, more than 40% of customer queries can be resolved without the need for any agent. This directly results in performance improvement of agents.

Along with eliminating the need of answering frequently asked questions, it can also help in different other areas to improve agent productivity. For example, after call work (ACW) is one of the core jobs of agents. According to this process, once a call is completed, agents need to summarize the call and write a disposition message as one of the jobs required in ACW. This helps another agent if a customer calls again by giving the required information from the last call. This helps in enhancing customer satisfaction as well because agents can provide more personalized responses instead of asking customers to reiterate the same issue again. As this process is important, agents in all contact centers have to follow this practice of adding disposition messages.

The traditional approach of adding disposition messages actually is a time consuming process and demands almost a minute of each agent, which is huge when considered collectively. This further negatively affects other KPIs like the average time to handle calls, the average time to first response, etc. Due to the pressure of keeping KPI values positive, agents often try to work hurriedly and leave vague or incomplete disposition messages. This negatively affects the whole essence of leaving this summarized message for other agents to effectively handle the call.

The chatbot of OpenAI resolves this issue because it is quite fast in processing information and summarizing human interaction. It can provide a precise and concise summary of each call without human intervention. This is possible with an automated AI transcription process and then processing information into a summary. This makes the whole process effective without wasting the time of agents. This helps in improving agent productivity because now agents can work on handling more calls and also more effectively.

2. Empower decision makers by helping them in process of better decision making

ChatGPT is not only accurate in handling customer queries, but it can also affect several other aspects of the contact center industry. One of them is providing insight into various KPIs by using AI transcription of calls and extracting valuable insight from these conversations. This chatbot can blend speech analytics and call coverage to reduce the traditional time of diagnosing an issue by up to 400% (Source).

This chatbot presents information in a simplified manner to make it easier for decision makers to identify major areas of improvement to work on. It also provides information that helps in identifying revenue generation opportunities or areas that can help to improve customer service to enhance returns.

3. Better relationship building with customers and investors

Several contact centers rely on investors and it is necessary for them to keep relationships in a positive direction with them. Along with investors, for a contact center, handling position relationships with clients is also crucial. Here comes the OpenAI chatbot at the rescue of the business.

It can help in reducing the time to answer common questions of customers and investors in the minimum time possible. Moreover, it helps in reducing the time it takes to answer the questions whether it is answered by an agent or chatbot. It also provides the options to improve the whole process by presenting insightful data in a simplified manner.
All this can be used to define the best ways to build a strong and delightful relationship with customers and investors.

Conclusion

Technology has been empowering the contact center industry for many years by bringing revolutionary transformations in processes. ChatGPT is one of the most amazing technology revolutions that have shaken the world of this industry in a positive manner. It will not only improve processes with automation by replacing humane intervention, but it also helps human agents to perform better and decision makers to make better and consolidated decisions. That means it has several advantages to offer to consolidate this whole industry.

We can help contact centers by leveraging the real power of this powerful chatbot and employing several other technology advancements. We have several ready to use products that have been gaining popularity among global customers such as DialShree: omnichannel contact center solution. It is an ideal software for this industry. Moreover, it is compatible with emerging AI solutions that are bringing revolutions for businesses. To know more and discuss your requirements, get in touch with us.

The contact center industry in Africa has been serving the global industry with its customer care, support, and other services to retain clients. When an industry grows, the opportunities grow and so do the threats! This is necessary to be aware of major threats and take precautionary steps to safeguard the business. Likewise, businesses also experience advancements in technologies that can help businesses improve overall performance and returns. Moreover, the African contact center industry is one of the highly technology influenced industry verticals. 

There are different technologies and threats that are affecting how the African industry of call centers is evolving and growing. Two major technology advancements are becoming imperative for this industry, which are artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. The importance of cybersecurity and AI in Africa’s contact center industry is irreplaceable. Thus, it is necessary to understand their roles and how AI and Cybersecurity in the contact center industry of Africa can make a difference.

Importance of cybersecurity in Africa

The contact center industry in Africa or any country runs over technology solutions like a call center software solution. This solution supports omnichannel communication over VoIP/ SIP lines. Anything that transmits over internet lines has a threat of getting intercepted and voice, video, and other forms of data that are getting exchanged over internet lines are definitely not exceptions. All common threats related to the cybersecurity of any VoIP or internet based solutions are applicable to the contact center industry in Africa as well. 

Here is the stat result shared by Norton to prove the importance of cybersecurity in Africa, “3.86 million dollars is the global cost of recovering a typical data breach”. One more supported stat shared by Norton is, “A typical data breach takes 196 days on average to recover for an enterprise”. 

Consequences of a cybersecurity attack and data breaches in the call center industry

Data loss

If you do not understand the importance of cybersecurity in Africa in the contact center industry and do not take the precautionary steps, you are likely to lose a lot of things and one of them is data. Data is an asset for any business. In industries like the African contact center industry, data is not just an asset, but also a critical resource that cannot be shared or leaked. The cyber attackers steal your data and can use it for their malign intents such as running fraud calls, selling data to third parties, and more. Hackers can even temper data to affect your customer care services and integrity. 

Legal trouble

Preserving and protecting user data and sensitive information is a key responsibility of businesses. In many countries, it is abided by legislation and telecom regulations to keep customer data secure. In industries like contact centers, in which sensitive information such as customer bank or payment details are stored, it is even more crucial to keep this information protected. Thus, the law forbids businesses to protect customer interests by protecting their data. The African contact center industry needs to be cautious about legislation to ensure that clients receive the best services and their data is also protected if they want to do business in these countries.

Reputation damage 

It is extremely difficult to return to a positive brand reputation once you lose it. Businesses in the contact center industry in Africa have no way back to work on their brand reputation if they cannot survive cybersecurity attacks. For obvious reasons customers don’t trust brands like this and they are likely to move away from their competitors. This is not just a temporary effect. Even in the long run, call centers that faced reputation damage due to cyber attacks need to face consequences. 

Monetary loss

Recovering from cyber attacks for any business operating in the African contact center industry is a long, tedious, and expensive process. Businesses lose money in the process of recovering the system, data, infrastructure, etc. Businesses also need to face monetary loss by losing some data, business, and clients. If they get trapped in legal trouble, then there is a long process of getting into the judiciary and getting out with the penalty or other punishments. Thus, it is necessary to handle the monetary loss. 

All these major consequences caused by attackers make it quite obvious that the importance of cybersecurity in Africa is quite evident.

AI and Cybersecurity in the contact center industry of Africa

To prevent these types of attacks, it is necessary for businesses to take precautionary steps, which include using technology tools and advancements. This introduces one of the most vital technologies that is making its mark in all industries. Yes, we are talking about artificial intelligence (AI). The role of AI in the African contact center industry is huge. It can do wonders. From improving customer experience to agent performance, reducing expenses, and there is so much more artificial intelligence can do for improving returns and the reputation of the contact center industry in Africa.

Artificial intelligence can also work along with cybersecurity mechanisms to solidify the security offered by cybersecurity products to customers. 

Importance of cybersecurity and AI in Africa’s contact center industry

In multiple ways, cybersecurity software and tools can be enhanced to improve the security of the infrastructure of the African call center industry. This increases the importance of cybersecurity and AI in Africa’s contact center industry.

AI algorithms can be integrated into cybersecurity products. This automates various operations to solidify the security steps from cyber attacks and protect the contact center industry in Africa.

• Monitoring:

  AI tools will automate the monitoring of cyber attacks and other threats 24×7. It will not need manual resources, which will save money and manual effort. It will also make the whole process more efficient.

• Prevention:

  The importance of cybersecurity and AI is high because it not only monitors threats but also prevents them. It can immediately suspend suspicious users. 

• Recovery:

  In case the attackers succeed in breaking security mechanisms for any reason, then also AI and cybersecurity tools will immediately start the recovery process. Usually, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity tools keep taking regular backups, which can be used for recovering from any attack within a minimum time.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the role of AI and Cybersecurity in the contact center industry of Africa is quite essential and crucial. It can make a huge difference in protecting businesses from major cyber attacks. It can even help in taking immediate steps to prevent any risks to data, users, or customers of Africa’s call center industry. Moreover, it can take immediate steps to prevent attacks by suspending attackers. It can also recover the data if any sort of attack has already happened. All this helps in speeding up the process of prevention and recovery along with security. This makes it quite vital to accept the worth of AI and Cybersecurity in the contact center industry of Africa.

We provide a contact center solution for African countries and their contact center industry. We can implement the best practices of AI and Cybersecurity in the contact center industry of Africa. If you have already accepted the importance of cybersecurity and AI in Africa’s contact center industry, time for you to implement these technologies in favor of your business. To know more about our software and the implementation of AI and cybersecurity in it, Get In Touch With Us Now.

Communication has been an imperative part of any business. Even if a business faces some ups and downs, the demand for reliable and steady communication remains constant. From internal teams to external customers, vendors, and other associates require a reliable means of communication. To meet different types of business communication needs, innovators invent different modes and channels of communication. Digitization and automation have further influenced the communication channels used in businesses.

Call centers being one of the businesses that rely heavily on communication and communication tools need to be updated with technology to keep serving clients with the right experience. An omnichannel contact center is the latest trend in this industry.

In this blog post, we have covered the following points:

1.       Some important statistics that you must know if you are in this industry
2.       What is an omnichannel contact center?
3.       What is an omnichannel contact center solution?
4.       What are the major benefits of omnichannel contact centers?
5.       What are the best practices to run a successful omnichannel contact center?
6.       Which are the top omnichannel call center providers?
7.       Major FAQs related to omnichannel call centers
8.       Conclusion

The omnichannel contact center has become a buzzword and it becomes necessary for all businesses associated with the communication industry or using call center software to have insightful knowledge about it. To give all the required insight on this subject matter, we have compiled all the details: from omnichannel contact center definition to FAQs. Let’s take an insider look at this captivating topic.

1. Some important statistics that you must know if you are in this industry

• According to Google Research statistics, 98% of American users use multiple devices within a single day and one of the uses of these devices is to communicate with friends, brands, family, etc. 
• According to Omnisend data, marketers registered a 287% high purchase rate by using more than three communication channels in
• According to the statistical result shared by Omnisend, companies achieved up to 90% of customer retention rate by using omnichannel communication tools over a single channel.

There are so many statistics results available in the market, which define the benefits of omnichannel contact centers.

2. What is an omnichannel contact center?

When we talk about the omnichannel contact center definition, there are different versions available. Each version defines one common definition, which is as below:

When a contact center adopts the power of all popular communication channels and provides customer support or runs sales campaigns through all popular communication channels, it is called an omnichannel contact center. The omnichannel contact center definition also covers the top communication channels that have to be part of an omnichannel call center. These communication channels are listed below:

• Voice calls
• Video calls
• SMS
• Email
• Chat
• Facebook/  Twitter/ Other social media platforms
• Instant messaging
• WhatsApp

3. What is an omnichannel contact center solution?

A contact center solution, which can be either an on-premise or cloud call center software that provides all unified communication channels within a single platform is an omnichannel contact center solution. It eliminates the need of managing independent communication channels across multiple platforms. Instead of that, a single solution is used to manage communication across channels.

All conversations will be logged regardless of the communication channel used, which makes it the best tool for call centers and customer care centers. It will also make it easier to switch to another communication channel or use more than one communication channel in parallel. The omnichannel solution supports all communication channels that are preferred by your customers to keep them delighted in terms of the selection of the communication mode. As it contributes heavily to handling customer support, it is also referred to as an omnichannel customer support solution.

4. What are the major benefits of omnichannel contact centers?

There are several advantages of using an omnichannel customer support solution. Let’s explore the top three of them.

A) Improve customer experience

One of the major advantages covered even in the omnichannel contact center definition is improved customer experience by using this software. Everyone likes to make a choice instead of falling short of choices. The selection of a communication channel is often considered a small thing, but it can be comforting to your customers. Some customers willingly use Twitter for communication and some love having a telephone conversation. It is necessary to give this freedom to your clients to choose which mode of communication they are more comfortable using.

Even if you don’t accommodate all communication channels within your software, your customers are still likely to use these channels to reach out to your customer care team. No response and the delayed response would cause major concerns and brand damaging impact, which would get difficult to cover. By incorporating omnichannel communication into your strategy, you will be able to deliver an excellent customer experience. Your agents will get notified for all messages, not considering the use of communication channels, so they can respond quickly. They will also have context as all conversations across channels would be logged into the system. This helps them serve your clients better and improve customer service standards.

Prompt responses and personalized responses will keep your customers happy and excited about your customer service. This way you can improve customer experience with omnichannel call center adoption.

B) Improve agent productivity

The productivity of agents is as important as the happiness of customers. A productive agent can deliver better and faster services and help improve the values of many more KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to increase the ultimate goal conversation. As mentioned earlier, despite the fact that you use an omnichannel solution or not, your clients will use their favorite mode of communication to reach out to your support team. Thus, at a certain point, your agents or other team members will need to check individual platforms such as Facebook messenger or Facebook page wall and respond to these clients. This will be an exhaustive and error prone job. Likewise, there are so many communication channels to manage, and handling each of them independently can cause several challenges and affect the productivity of agents negatively.

Unlike that, using an omnichannel system will give a notification for each message. The software can also put clients into queues like chat queues, WhatsApp queues, etc. to make it easy to manage the process. When you avoid the need for switching across communication channels, your agents can save time and energy to synergize them on improving customer experience. Moreover, some communication channels let agents handle more than one customer at a time with templates and other features available in the software. This further contributes to boosted productivity. As we all know, improved productivity reflects improved performance because the same headcount can deliver much better output.

C) Improve ROI (Returns over Investment)

Managing different communication channels within a single platform is cheaper than handling different communication platforms. Saving time for agents also saves a lot of resources, including expenses. A majority of providers help in saving time by adding added features such as a message scheduler, message templates, auto replies, chatbots, and more. That means using an omnichannel system, a call center can reduce expenses and otherwise get invested in infrastructure, manpower, communication platforms, and more.

The high productivity of agents directly contributes to better performance of all campaigns and call centers. Call centers can elevate their revenue generation with the same manpower. Even if they hire more agents, they can then spike up revenue by taking more work and handling more campaigns. Customer retention, on the other hand, contributes to the stable stream of generating revenue. Reference business and referral leads are a few more contributors to increase revenue.

In a nutshell, the benefits of omnichannel contact centers include improving revenue and cutting costs, so call centers can enjoy a high ROI generation rate.

5. What are the best practices to run a successful omnichannel contact center?

When you decide to leverage the advantage of technology and trend, you need to have a proper strategy in place. You cannot just win the game by getting the best omnichannel customer support solution. You also need to have a strategy in place and you must follow the best practices. You can learn with experiments, but using an omnichannel customer support strategy is quite mature. You can learn from the experiences of others. To help you lead the game and maximize the benefits of omnichannel contact centers, we have shared the top best practices for you. You must rigorously follow these best practices to run your support center like a champion:

• Don’t ignore self serving options

All communication solutions, including an omnichannel customer care system offer self serving options to call center users. It is necessary to use all communication channels and let your agents handle customer calls, messages, and other forms of interactions. However, it is equally important to invest in self serving options and encourage their use among customers. Using self serving options can help customers to get responses to their concerns on an immediate basis as they don’t need to wait for agents to join the conversation. On the other hand, it keeps your staff available to handle more complicated cases of customers to deliver excellent support.

Technology tools like chatbots, AI voice analysis, smart WhatsApp web tools, self serving IVR, voice broadcasting, SMS broadcasting, and more can be used to increase effective self serving options.

• Live agent has to be available for customers

Even if you have plenty of self serving options, you need to be sure that you have enough live agents to handle clients and their concerns. You also need to give the option to connect with a live agent at any point. Some customers prefer to have a conversation or interaction with humans even if it is an easy task like retrieving the total due balance. This type of client also needs to get complete attention and respect from your customers to retain a good brand image.

• Identify top performing and in-demand communication channels

Even if an omnichannel customer support solution is used to blend the power of all communication channels in serving your clients, it is worth investing resources to identify popular communication channels. Different customer bases may like different communication channels. In some countries, WhatsApp is the most preferred mode of communication. In some countries, SMS is still one of the top used communication channels. These facts also vary from industry to industry. Even in the same industry, two different customer care centers may have different charts of communication channel usage.

With careful analysis, you can identify the top performing communication channels for your business. Knowing this information can help you define further strategies to serve these clients. You can also put adequate resources based on the preferred modes of communication for your clients. You don’t need to put an equal number of agents for each communication channel. Rather optimize resource allocation based on the volume of queries received for that specific mode of communication.

• Focus on unified customer experience across communication channels

One of the major advantages of using an omnichannel contact center is that it provides a holistic view of all customer interactions across channels. That means agents can view all conversations between a customer and an agent that could have taken place via one or more communication channels. Having this information is very useful as agents will be aware of ongoing updates, common issues faced by customers, preferred solutions or assistance by that particular client, and other aspects. All the information can be used to provide a universal experience to clients across all communication channels. The customers can be served with the same professionalism and experience through any mode of communication he or she chooses. This not only impresses your clients, but it also helps in building an unforgettable experience for clients as a brand.

• Collect feedback and suggestions from customers and agents

Guessing games can be good, but only in gambling. In fact, even there, people use experience and logic. In businesses like customer care or contact center, using metrics, data, suggestions, recommendations, etc. can be really beneficial. One of the vital sources of data is humans correlated to the system. Your customers and agents use your services, software, etc. on a day to day basis. Therefore, there is nobody better than them to give feedback on how your omnichannel customer strategy is performing. Direct interaction can give direct answers.

You can ask your agents in weekly or monthly meetings or you can use a self serving IVR to collect their feedback. You can take their opinion to scrutinize your resource allocation, strategy, and more for improvement.

Your customers are receiving customer service from your team and they can give you brutally honest opinions. You can ask them how they feel about the service they received right after the call or any other form of interaction. This data can show you the mirror and give you much needed and reliable data.  

• Empower your agents

The next important best practice is team empowerment. You need to empower your team of agents that interact with clients. You can give them the required training to be more professional and effective across multiple communication channels. Alternatively, you can hire experts for each communication channel. Depending on your strategy, you can define how you want to train and furnish your team with the right resources.

To empower your agents, along with training, you also need to give them adequate technical support. You must use the integration of third party tools like CRM, communication channels, AI voice analysis, chatbots, etc. All this helps them work more productively. They can also be encouraged to self learning by giving them access to some of the reports or their own call recording files.

Having a rich knowledge base is another important best practice to become a champion of customer care strategy that blends omnichannel communication in it. Agents can use this knowledge base to keep themselves updated with different best practices, procedures, tools, etc.

• Invest time in report analysis and live monitoring

The call center solutions provide an extensive range of reports. You must review these reports on a regular basis. These reports will give more insight into the performance and effectiveness of different communication channels. It will also contribute to identifying strengths and weaknesses. You can also use live monitoring tools to take real time actions for improvement.

• Keep improving

No strategy or trend is permanent. Thus, you must constantly evolve and improve. Keep fine tuning the best practices and omnichannel strategy to stay competitive and impressive for your clients.

6. Which are the top omnichannel call center providers?

There are multiple providers of this type of software. We have listed out the top 3 of them.

     1) Elision Technologies Pvt. Ltd

It is one of the most affordable providers that offer omnichannel communication and has more than 15 years of industry experience. It offers omnichannel communication, speech analytics, and multiple other features at very affordable rates. You can get a licensed solution or opt for the hosted model.

     2) Nice InContact

It quotes 100 USD/agent per month and has a hosted model to use its omnichannel solution. It supports omnichannel communication, but it does not have a video channel. You will need to integrate a third party video calling app and that integration would cost additional for customization.

     3) 8×8

It charges 115 to 175 USD/agent per month with unlimited call support in the USA and Canada. For other regions, you need to check for the cost of calls. It does not have a multilevel IVR as an inbuilt feature. You need to use it as an add-on. It supports omnichannel communication and a hosted model.

7. Major FAQs related to omnichannel call centers

Should I use an omnichannel call center?

It can be used by anyone that wants to implement an omnichannel customer strategy. Still, businesses with bigger clientele or diversified customer bases gain more advantages by using it compared to small scaled call centers.

Can I add omnichannel communication to my existing software?

That depends on the software. If you have access to the code and if the software is compatible with third party integration then you can add more communication channels to the software. However, compatibility still needs to be checked. It is better to get an omnichannel solution than add communication channels into it to avoid compatibility related issues or increasing cost of ownership.

How much does an omnichannel solution cost?

That depends on the provider. There is no standard cost for the software. Thus, you need to contact the provider and get a quotation for the software.

What will be the hardware requirement to use an omnichannel call center?

Usually, the software and hardware work in coordination with multiple other driving factors. You need to define what software you will use for omnichannel operations and based on that, you will learn about the required hardware. Usually, your software provider will guide you about the hardware that you will need to run your call center with an omnichannel communication mechanism.

8. Conclusion

Superior customer experience gives momentum to call centers to reach beyond the competition and stay ahead of them. An omnichannel contact center contributes to achieving exactly this. It lets customers choose their favorite communication channel to reach out to the customer care team and receive the required assistance, whether it is a self-serving option or any other mode of communication like voice, video, WhatsApp, social media, etc. Agents get empowered with a holistic view of all interactions between customers and call centers to deliver a more contextual and personalized customer experience.

The right tools, best practices, trained and skilled team, and strategic approach can help you take maximum advantage of this trend of using omni channel communication. We have been witnessing call centers growing in leaps and bounds with our DialShree: omnichannel contact center solution. This software helps them achieve a better balance between technology and human interaction and ace the game of customer care like a champion. Get in touch with us for a free demo.

The easy availability of loans on different items has attracted more people to purchase more things based on the EMI structure. This indeed creates a win win situation for both debtor and lender because the debtor can avail anything and everything they want such as a car, electric appliances, luxury items, and even an abroad trip. On the other hand, lenders can use their money to contribute to the economy and also run the cycle of finance and supply chain.

Along with creating a healthy financial cycle for debtors and lenders, it also creates some challenges for both parties. The lenders, whether it is a bank or an NBFC (Non Banking Financial Company), need to work on the recovery part. That means they need to put a whole force of manpower to give reminders to pay EMIs, send collection agents to collect EMI money, and even predict defaulters to take the required actions. As this is a hectic job, banks and non banking financial companies often outsource this job to collection agencies.

The collection agencies usually have a skillful team that is trained for the job of EMI collection from debtors. They also have the required infrastructure such as call center software, NBFC software, CRM system, etc. to increase collection and help banks and NBFCs stay profitable. While running this business, it is often witnessed that along with people paying their EMIs on time, there are also people that do not pay EMIs. Moreover, there can be multiple assets and products on which banks and NBFCs give EMI based loans and lending facilities. Some of the products may work better and some don’t. Thus, collection agencies have the job of identifying and reducing these nonperforming assets (NPAs) along with the increasing collection.

The analytical skills along with financial forecasting adroitness definitely help businesses here to identify Non-performing assets. Moreover, collection agencies can also use a call center solution with a payment utility for collection or an NBFC software solution.

Before we dig deeper to learn how these solutions help in increasing collection and profit ratio by reducing NPAs, let’s first explore what this software does.

What is a call center solution for collection agencies?

You all must know about a standard call center software solution that is used by different industry verticals to run inbound, outbound, and/ or blended campaigns. The software for collection agencies would also have all the features of the standard system. In addition to that to run collection campaigns more effectively, it would also have additional features or modules specifically designed by the provider company. These modules and add-ons can be exclusively available only from that company and not elsewhere or they can work differently if provided by different companies. Some of the popular modules integrated specifically for collection agencies are IVR for collection, payment utility for collection, disposition bucket for collection, Soundboard Avatars for collection, and more. A provider may provide all these or some of these modules to help collection agencies increase collection and reduce NPA.

What is an NBFC software solution?

It is a complete and universal system that is designed not only to run collection campaigns but to manage each stage of the loan management cycle. It will have several intricate algorithm based features and modules that enable a collection agency to handle all aspects of managing loans and lending cycles. Usually, NBFC software is not used by collection agencies. It is used by banks and non banking financial companies. Only features of call center software with collection modules are used by collection agencies.

How does a call center solution for collection agencies reduce NPA?

Now that you understand the different types of software solutions used by collection agencies, let’s explore in detail how these solutions help collection agencies in reducing NPAs and increasing collection.

Efficient recovery

The first and foremost way to reduce NPA and increase collection is to focus on more efficient recovery. The exclusively designed call center solution for collection agencies is a great tool for supporting collection campaigns. It helps in automating several tasks, defining the complete collection cycle, bifurcating on-time payers and defaulters, classifying borrowers based on different groups in buckets, and more. All these features help in running collection campaigns more efficiently. Let’s understand how.

The IVR for collection can run a self serving campaign to give all the required details to the caller related to their next EMI, number of due EMIs, interest rate, notice period, and other details. The NBFC software can also integrate outbound IVR for collection, which will send an outbound voice message to the borrowers and play reminders multiple times. These IVR messages can be interactive and they can play multiple options as well to let customers give their comments on whether they will pay EMI on time or not. If yes, then on which date it will be paid? Whether the customer needs collection service at the doorstep or not and other details can be fetched by this feature. This helps to increase collection so the overall nonperforming assets can be controlled and reduced.

Along with an IVR for collection, this software will also have a payment utility for collection. This is an exclusive feature available to users of Elision’s call center software, DialShree. The first feature of this utility is filtering and removing the number of customers that have already paid EMIs from the calling list. This helps in saving time for agents so it can be used to focus on customers that have not yet paid for assets and can contribute to increasing NPAs. This feature can filter numbers based on different criteria to make collection campaigns more efficient. There are several other features that help in increasing collection and ultimately contribute to reducing NPAs.

This software can also be integrated with an NBFC software solution.

Show tangible data to classify NPAs

An exclusively designed call center solution for collection agencies further provides insightful data information for reports. These reports and data segmented under different criteria in all reports give insightful and actionable information to collection agencies to identify major nonperforming assets and assets that can soon fall under the category of NPAs. Along with this information, it also provides multiple other forms of data and values of KPIs, which collection agencies can use to classify assets, customers, borrowers, and more.

Using this tangible data, collection agencies can project their views and data to the banks and NBFCs for which they operate to let them take legal or other strategic steps to increase collection. Moreover, they can design more effective campaigns to reduce NPAs by increasing collection.

Concluding notes

In a nutshell, the NBFC software, or a system for collection agencies with payment utility for collection, directly and indirectly, contributes to the increasing collection and reduce nonperforming assets. There are several other advantages of these tools for any collection agencies, which is why they have become a must have for banks, NBFCs, and collection agencies.

We offer different solutions to benefit the diversified jobs and campaigns in this industry. We have exclusively developed an omnichannel contact center solution with different features mentioned in this article and more. This tool can help in boosting collection, simplify collection jobs, and reduce the total number of NPAs. If you are interested in knowing more about it, get in touch with us NOW!

The call center industry is one of the most alluring industry verticals due to the growing trend of outsourcing customer support projects to call centers. The increasing need of retaining clients and delighting them with outstanding customer service has increased the market value of the best call centers that can manage each call center process. The emphasis on on-site call centers is reduced by the business owners because now businesses want to focus all their energy on expanding their own business wings. This gives an open playground to business owners that are interested to start a call center.

When you decide to invest your resources in call center setup, it is recommended to first understand the process, legislation, required tools, and best practices to succeed. Even if this industry is lucrative and there are a plethora of opportunities, the competition is vicious. Setting a call center is not enough, you need to know how to start a call center that can give you a great start and help you keep going on to achieve your business goals.

In this blog post, we will cover all the essential details that can answer all your questions related to how to start a call center and thrive successfully in this highly competitive industry. If you follow the right approach and best practices, you will be able to succeed for sure.

In this blog post, we have covered the following points:

1. Getting started
   1.1 Define the budget and source of funds 
   1.2 Choose the service type
   1.3 Define call center setup requirements 
   1.4 Define the customer Avatar
   1.5 Understand legislation
   1.6 Complete the groundwork
2. Build your team
   2.1 Define work model
   2.2 Define HR policies
   2.3 Define recruitment process
   2.4 Devise onboarding and training program 
3. Acquire the call center infrastructure
   3.1 Internal communication tools
   3.2 Customer communication tools
   3.3 HR management tools
   3.4 Reporting and monitoring tools 
4. Conclusion

Yes, there is so much to understand when you are looking for the right answer for how to start a call center. So without any further adieu, let’s begin this topic, which will help you start your own call center in 2023 and establish a victorious business.

1. Getting started (how to start a call center in 2023)

The thought of setting call center and getting started immediately might be really rousing and you must want to start now. However, you have to hold yourself, complete the groundwork, and then only go ahead with launching a call center. For this, it is worth knowing the requirements to start a call center. This section covers the major things that you need to discover if you don’t know already and prepare yourself for call center setup.  

1.1 Define the budget and source of funds

Setting a call center needs you to bear expenses related to legal costs, infrastructure, manpower, and more. To make sure you make a strategy to start a call center within your budget, you need to first define how much you have in hand to invest in setting up your call center in 2023. You must get the cost estimation for different aspects if you don’t have one already. one Remember, the cost of different software, human resources, etc. change annually and as we have already hit December, you must get an estimation for 2023 to avoid shocks later on.

If you don’t have enough funds, you may also need to look for and decide the source of funds, which can be angel investors, stockholders, investors, partners, etc. You must decide whom you would take on board to meet the needs of funds for setting up a call center.

1.2 Choose the service type

The call center is a basket term. There are multiple branches burgeoning in this industry. Thus, it is necessary to decide which areas you will cover with your call center services. Even if you have the urge to serve all service areas, remember, you have to start slow to keep investment and finances under control. Following are some areas to consider.

1.2.1. Inbound call center 

Some call center service areas need you to set up an inbound call center. For example, customer care and technical customer support. For this, agents usually handle incoming calls from customers related to their issues and concerns. The inbound call center handles these calls and aims to focus on delivering exceptional customer experience. To handle inbound leads as well an inbound call center needs to be set up.

1.2.2. Outbound call center 

If you are thinking about a service area that would make more outbound calls, then you need to start an outbound call center in 2023. The classic examples of this type of call center are centers that run telemarketing and tele sales campaigns. The outbound call center also focuses on generating leads, collecting feedback, and running similar campaigns. 

1.2.3. Blended call center

 If your call center is going to handle the full cycle of the customer journey by handling both inbound and outbound calls, then you will need to set up a blended call center. This will help you handle bidirectional calls/ 

1.2.4. Omnichannel/ Multichannel/ Single Channel call center 

 Along with blended, inbound, and outbound call center setup criteria, you also need to define through which communication channels you will cater to clients. A single channel will cover only voice calls. A multichannel will cover more than one communication channel. An omnichannel will serve clients through unified communication channels, including, voice, video, chat, SMS, email, social media, and WhatsApp. 

1.3 Define call center setup requirements

Once you are clear with the service area, the next aspect to consider is where you will perform call center setup. There are two popular options available.

1.3.1 On-site call centers

To set up an on-site call center, one needs dedicated servers set up and configured on their premises. This will need physical servers, plus, physical space to complete the whole call center setup. This setup is considered to be more secure, but expensive as well.

1.3.2 Virtual call centers

This is one of the trending setup types of call centers. There are plenty of articles that would recommend you set up a virtual call center. This call center setup type uses cloud space to host and set up the call center. Virtual call centers can be set up on either dedicated or shared servers depending on your own business needs. A virtual call center is cheap as it offers a pay as you go model. Moreover, it supports amazing flexibility and really impressive uptime SLA (Service Level Agreement). This is the reason virtual call centers are gaining a lot of popularity among new and existing call centers.

1.4 Define the customer Avatar

This is another important aspect to consider. The customer Avatar depicts your ideal customer. The type of business your customer will have, the type of service he would be offering, his demographics and geography, call handling requirements, industry verticals, and more. This will help you in your marketing campaigns once you complete setting a call center.

1.5 Understand legislation

This is another vital aspect to consider while setting up your call center along with managing other call center setup requirements while setting up the call center. This will also define how you will define each call center process for smooth operations of the business. In different countries, the legislation related to customer care centers, BPOs, call centers, etc. is different. Thus, it is worth hiring an experienced lawyer or professional that can guide you through the legal call center process to set up your business. The legislation may also differ based on the fact that whether you will have an on-site call center or a virtual call center. Thus, discuss all aspects with your lawyer or professional to comply with the compliances. 

1.6 Complete the groundwork

Once you define all the necessary information, you need to start getting your hands dirty by taking practical steps. You must have finished the documentation process to showcase all factors along with a business plan to set up a call center business. The earlier steps will help you make quick choices and go through different processes for setting up your call center. So let’s get started.

1.6.1. Get physical space

This is a must if you want to set up an on-site call center. In that case, the physical space needs to be big to accommodate servers, staff, etc. Even if you will have a virtual call center setup, you may want to have an office to operate from. In some countries, for registration, having a physical office address is necessary. There also you will need this space. So depending on your requirement, get a physical space for your call center.

1.6.2. Complete the paperwork

To register your business, take a legal license, and other aspects, you may need some documents. You can get those ready before you start the process. Take the help of your lawyer to know what documents will be needed to register your business and get the license. 

1.6.3. Register your business

This is the first real step towards call center setup. You will take legal action to register your business and get the license. Depending on various driving factors, this process may take little time or longer. Make sure your paperwork is crystal clear, so you don’t face any major hindrances in this process.

2. Build your team

The next step to start your own call center in 2023 is building the right team. To run your business and build your team, you will need to consider hiring the following resources:

• HR manager
• Accounting expert
• Call center supervisor
• Call center agents

These are the main resources that you will need to start your call center. Depending on the size of your call center and other driving factors, you may need more or fewer resources. Always remember, your team defines the success of your business. Thus, it is necessary to build the right team with the right, experienced, and skilled team members.

2.1 Define work model

The first thing you need to define is whether you want to set up one of the virtual or on-site call centers. This will help you define whether you want to hire a local team or an international team. For virtual call centers, the hiring options are wide open as the international pool of talent is available for hire. Moreover, agents work in any condition, which is why it is a preferred model by several call centers.

2.2 Define HR policies

Often, call centers don’t bother to define human resource management policies prior and this can cause disruption in business later on. It is necessary to define and document detailed human resource related policies.

2.3 Define recruitment process

Once you are ready with the HR policies and operational model, you need to start the recruitment process. The best option is to outsource the recruitment process as it will reduce the workload and manage stress. However, you can also keep this process in-house by hiring an in-house recruiter or HR specialist for recruitment and running this process.

2.4 Devise onboarding and training program

While your recruiter is looking for the best talent for your call center, you can have the required discussions and meetings with your HR head to define the onboarding process. The onboarding process is necessary to start a call center successfully because when your team joins the call center, they need guidance on how the call center process will take place. From the first day vision explanation to giving a welcome kit and all other processes need to be documented to make the onboarding process smooth and quick.

Your hired manpower may also need training programs. Even if agents are experienced and know how to use infrastructure, how to have conversations, etc., you need to give them the training to share about your targeted KPIs, vision, competitive advantage, etc. For defining training programs, you may need to take the help of supervisors or the managing head to define the training program. 

3. Acquire the call center infrastructure

While you are preparing for setting up your call center, on the other hand, you must acquire the required infrastructure. Whether you have a cloud or on-site call center, you will need to get the infrastructure to run your business.

3.1 Internal communication tools

When you are seeking answers for how to start a call center, you need to find the best internal communication tools. Usually, businesses focus on customer communication tools and give no emphasis on internal solutions. However, it is necessary to keep the internal communication system empowered so the team can answer customers better.

•  IP PBX

It is one of the best business phone systems, which can be used for internal and external communication. Many call centers use it to strengthen collaboration with one to one or extension calling and other features it has to support ongoing internal communication.

• IP Phones or SIP Softphones

To make and receive calls, call centers need a telephony solution even if they use a VoIP based communication system. The IP phone and SIP Softphone solutions are two options available to use. Usually, call centers use SIP Softphone to simplify infrastructure management and reduce maintenance expenses, but depending on your infrastructure setup plan, you can use both of these or any of these options to set up an internal communication system. These tools will also be used to communicate with clients.

3.2 Customer communication tools

To run different campaigns and cater to clients, a call center needs different communication tools. There are several options available, but we have listed the top and must have tools here.

• CRM software

To manage the complete customer journey, it is necessary to have a CRM solution in place. It must have a complete array of features and modules that let you store all details about the clients from the very first interaction to till date. Moreover, this software must allow you to introduce automation to make some operations mechanized to save resources.

• Call center solution

The most important tool for launching an running a call center business in 2023 is definitely this software. A software solution like a DialShree: omnichannel contact center solution is a must for your business. It will have different features and modules to automate several processes in a call center and run different campaigns seamlessly. Its omnichannel nature will let you use different communication channels to delight clients and increase the productivity of the team. Thus, for customer care and communication, it is a must have tool.

If you are interested in exploring more about DialShree, don’t wait any further. Book a demo now! 

3.3 HR management tools

To manage your team, you will need human resource management tools like a system to keep attendance, a system for payroll processing, and more. Some CRM solutions have these modules as internal features and in that case, you may not need to have these tools. However, if your CRM system doesn’t support an HR module, then you must get a reliable and feature rich HR management tool. The reason is call centers usually have multiple people on their team and they need to be managed with the right approach.

3.4 Reporting and monitoring tools

One more vital tool to keep call center operations smooth and productive to achieve the defined goal is a monitoring and reporting tool. Live call monitoring has become a trend in the call center industry. Thus, you will need this tool to keep your operations running. You will also need to generate reports to review the overall performance of different KPIs, agents, and more. You may find these features within the software for call centers. However, if it is not available in your software or if the software provides very basic features of reporting and monitoring, then you better choose the option of an external tool to keep reporting and monitoring more effective. 

4. Conclusion

Starting a call center needs a methodical call center setup with different aspects kept in place to ensure the base is clear. If your preparation is correct, then you will not need to worry much about the ongoing processes. Things will go smoothly and as per the plan. You may wonder that the tools might be needed once staff is available or you may think that once the staff is ready, they must have tools in their access to commence work immediately. But, all these go hand in hand. It means you need to keep things ready before you actually commence and launch your call center.

The first step is to complete the groundwork with the required research, key personnel selection, and completing legal aspects. The second step is to hire the right team. At least, team leaders, business managers, and heads need to be hired. In parallel, get the right infrastructure depending on the fact, whether you will have an on-site or virtual business. Setting up your call center and onboarding the team can be done in parallel to save time. When everything is ready, then only launch your call center.

Invest the required time to invest in making the required preparation as mentioned in this article. We have decades of industry experience in assisting call center owners to set up their own call centers. By taking advantage of our years of experience, we have tried to cover all the answers to the vital question of how to start a call center. You must keep in mind all the aspects explained in this blog post to start your call center successfully and thrive. 

You can also take help from one of the top technology experts for successful call center setup if you don’t want to manage everything on your own from preparation to set up. We have been helping businesses by offering the best technology solutions and infrastructure. Moreover, we help them by providing consultation services based on our more than 15 years of experience as technology experts and partners in several call centers. We can help you as well to set up your own call center. To know more and discuss your ideas or call center setup requirements, get in touch with us.