Some tips to consider when choosing an outbound service include:
The Appropriate Infrastructure. While the focus is usually on people and price, it is critical to examine the outsourcer’s technological capabilities to ensure they will mesh well with your own.
“Outbound call center services should have the necessary infrastructure and facilities to carry out the enterprise operations,” wrote Martins. “This involves excellent communication lines for telephones and internet connectivity, provision for data safe-keeping and backup, information mining facilities, and exclusive data stores from where data is usually restored in the event of system crashes.
The Ability To Monitor. If an outsourcer does not want you to watch the activity inside the outbound campaign in real-time, ask yourself what the company is hiding. You can monitor performance and metrics and listen in to calls, just like you would in a good in-house contact center.
How does a person pay? Different outsourced service providers charge in different ways. Is a person paying per agent hour? Per lead? Paying for performance standards that exceed baseline? It is important to ask these questions up front and compare your options.
Their own English skills. Many companies employ organizations abroad to keep costs down. While the provider will undoubtedly use the best English speaker inside the call center, for instance, it is important for a person to hear a cross-section of calls from all agents to ensure that he is not paying for service delivered by agents who will be incomprehensible to his customers.
Their outbound agent skills. Outbound often features a high turnover pace, but your enterprise will best benefit if the agents calling your customers have the requisite skills and experience under their belts. Before signing a deal, you should have to check the outsourcer’s turnover rates to make sure you will not have too many rookies reaching out to your customers. Also, ask your potential outsourcer about its training techniques.
Systems integration. An excellent outsourced service provider relationship may contain sharing information and processes for example workforce management or your CRM database. Be sure this can be accomplished easily, or you will be buying yourself new problems.
Good managers. This is the key to success. In the event you do not feel assured that the service provider has managers on staff who are skilled, knowledgeable, and willing to collaborate with you, look elsewhere.
While outsourced outbound call center services are a good option for many companies who want to put their outbound campaigns in the hands of specialists, it is critical to examine the details. There are vast chasms of quality between different outsourced service providers. Before you look, know what you are choosing.