The Hosted Virtual Call Center: What’s Stopping You?

If you are an extremely small specialty company and only get a handful of calls per week, then a hosted virtual call center is probably not for you. However, for nearly every other company, regardless of size, the call center can save time, money and needless equipment purchases. Remember, the more equipment that you have, the more potentially expensive breakdowns and other issues there will be to deal with. Technology is moving so quickly that as soon as you work all of the kinks out of your newly installed system, it may be out of date. Using managed service solutions, ends many of these headaches and much more.

Companies from small and regional to large, national or international are moving to using managed service solutions, especially to handle their call volume. Not only does it save them the cost of the equipment, but it saves the time and salary expense of hiring and training new staff to staff the new equipment as well. For companies that are trying to handle their own call volume, there is the risk of being at the mercy of their own equipment. If there is a system failure, they will lose all of their productivity for that day, as well as the potential customers that may have tried to call while the phones were down. The more frequently this happens, the more customer service numbers will suffer.

If you are a company that is large enough to need a 100-seat call center, then you are paying for the phones and other equipment for each of those employees. If you staff around the clock, in three eight-hour shifts, you are hiring 300 employees at the least. (Some staff may prefer to work part-time only. While this may save money for the company in terms of insurance, there are other problems to consider as well). In many cases, the call center is located in another location outside the original building, meaning the maintenance and overhead costs of two buildings. With the hosted virtual call center, your expense begins and ends with your contracted fee with the managed services providing the exact services that are being contracted for.

There are other benefits to the virtual hosted call center option. Allowing staffing that can be home based, as well as those in the office can increase staff morale, improve staff’s quality of life and can allow calls to be accepted or generated from virtually anywhere. While it may not seem like much, this option can also have far reaching implications on the environment as employees do not need to commute to get to their jobs, reducing the amount of time spent on the already congested roads, and the amount of energy expended on travel.

Companies have to focus on making the best product that they can, at the best price they can. Taking customer service related calls and moving them to another location can allow the focus to be back where it needs to be: on the development and perfection of existing and potentially new products and goods.

Darren C. Prine
Director of Strategic Partnerships
Northwinds Contact Solutions
www.northwindscontactsolutions.com
dprine@thenorthwinds.com
602-515-0395

~ by Darren Prine on October 8, 2009.