Hundreds of our employees are having a common recurring dream these days. All of them are dreaming about their moment of reckoning as these words echo in their dreams – “BlueChip’s annual trophy for the best employee of the Year goes to…” Well the suspense will be over soon. The results will be announced on 28th December, the last Friday of this year 2012. The criteria which will be used to evaluate the performance of employees have already been told to them.
Category Archives: Call Center Outsourcing
Call Center Outsourcing Vendors Can Be Evil
Beware of Call Centers! They can be a scary place. Most of the call centers outsourcing vendors are in offshore locations which clients seldom visit. So they never get to know that the congenial agent offering customer care services is a bloodsucking vampire, or the one providing them back office support is actually a zombie.
At Bluechip Callcenter, we have an army of aliens, mummies, witches, devils and also superheroes to ensure that we deliver you the best services in the industry. And if you don’t believe us, then come to our Halloween Party and you would see all of our employees in their true colors and this will reveal to you the secret of our excellent services as well.
Our quality is always the highest and the best as our Quality Manager is a Wonder Woman inside. This is why she does quality audits and client calibrations regularly at Bluechip with the zeal of an Amazon warrior princess. She wields her Lasso of Truth and ensures that everybody in the office is complying with the highest quality standards.
Our inbound customer service call centers are able to always satisfy the customers as we have the Kailash Chandra as our Manager. He uses his Lightsaber to enlighten the customers and help them.
And then there is also our Mummy who is in-charge of all the email and chat support services. He ensures that all the conversations have warmth and our business relationships, like the Mummies, are preserved forever.
If you are tempted to visit Bluechip Callcenter to meet our team, please do so only at your own risk. You may get spooked with the dimly lit Jack-o-Lanterns and by creepy cobwebs on our windows. But if you muster the courage, then we have royal Treat just for you, and strictly no Tricking!
The silent ‘Social’ revolution in Call Centers
Customer behavior is forever changing. And accordingly the methods of customer service as well. Earlier in the days of yore, customer service essentially meant home-visit by a company representative.
Today it is typically done over the phone, by just calling to the customer service call center. But the emerging trend is to deliver customer service online through the website, chat support and social media.
Social Media was earlier considered important from the angle of marketing to customers and capturing young and savvy target audience. So the customer engagement through social media was strategically increased. The businesses started talking to customers through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ etc. And as a result – the customers started talking back to the business.
Customers also started posting back their views, opinions and also their complaints. They started venting their anger and sharing their dissatisfaction and bad experiences related to the product.
Deleting these negative comments could be the solution to management of your FB or Twitter profile. But it is not the solution to management of your brand image or your customer base. Instead of deleting, you will have to deal with the customers and resolve their problem.
This is where Bluechip Callcenter call centers come into picture.
Calming the angry customers on social media requires similar skills as calming the angry customers who ring in the call center. That is why our call center agents working as customer service executives are making a smooth transition to being the social media customer service executive for your business.
Therefore we have we have instituted social media customer service team at BlueChip. More than 45% of our clients have asked us to include Social Media also as one of their customer service platforms. Just like the Call Center 24×7 support, the social media based customer service is also a round-the-clock work. And the use of social media to ensure customer satisfaction is a revolutionary development that is changing the call center’s functioning. It is possible that lesser calling would be required as integrated online customer service solutions will become popular.
To stay ahead of the curve, do ask your vendor before call centers outsourcing if they have online and social customer service facilities and skills? If not, you know that BlueChip Callcenter does!
Inbound Call Center Services That Fit Your Budget
Attending phone calls is no mean task. You have to be calm and polite throughout as you answer largely similar queries again and again. Phone answering is a full time job if your business generates a good call volume. And the larger your call volume, the more number of people you need in your call center.
But not every business is able to afford an inbound call center. Even outsourced offshore call centers, which are cheaper than the homeshore or nearshore call centers, can be out of your budget.
What to do in such a scenario?
You could divert the incoming calls to all of your staff and make everybody double as a Call Center Agent.
Or you could get professional, polite Call Center Agents from BlueChip, on a sharing basis. Yes you heard it right. Call Center Agents can be SHARED!
By definition, shared Agents are those who work for more than two clients. As opposed to Dedicated Agents who work only for one client.
Shared Agents cost lesser to the business because the costs of maintaining the Agent are shared between various clients. You get billed only for the number of minutes the Agent answers on the behalf of your business.
Cost is however not the only reason that clients opt for Shared Agents. Some of the other reasons for preferring to hire Shared Agents instead of Dedicated Agents are:
- Such low call volume that you can’t justify hiring a dedicated resource for it.
- Call Volumes peaking only in a specific time slot and not always, therefore call centers 24×7 isn’t required. It’s prudent to have shared agent for the lean off-peak hours.
- Flexible billings as you are charged by the minute, only for the time when the Agent was answering your calls.
- Shared Agents are also used as a Trial method before finally placing a requirement of Dedicated Agents.
So when you are looking for call centers outsourcing in your budget, choose the Shared Agent plan from BlueChip!
Make Your Business Work 24×7, Not Your Employees
None of us likes to work on holidays, yet everybody expects their customer care center to be working on a Sunday, even during midnight! As consumers we are assertive in our demand for a 24×7 call center. After all who knows when a product might require trouble-shooting or there may be a breakdown or an emergency.
The businesses can’t afford to ignore customer’s requirements. So they passed on the demand of 24×7 inbound call center services to the call center vendors. But providing services 24×7 is easier said than done.
If you rewind in time, then just about twenty years ago it was unthinkable that there would be offices working during midnight with properly scheduled night shifts. People would laugh off the idea of 24×7 as unworkable and impractical. However the transition from eight hour and 5-6 days of work to 24×7 working was so smooth that it silenced all those who were apprehensive.
Now it is very common to see young workforce coming in cabs to these outsource call centers at a time when typically other people are returning home after a day’s work. At BlueChip too, the exit of our day-shift of employees coincides with the entry of our night-shift employees.
While we are proud to say that we tender services round the clock and are a 24×7 call center, but we are more proud to say that we don’t make our employees work 24×7 or anywhere close to it. At Bluechip, in order to ensure a gratifying work experience for our employees and for the upkeep of their health, we ensure that:
- No employee works for more than 9 hours in a day. And these 9 hours include a one hour break for lunch and tea.
- All our employees work for 51/2 days only. The sixth day is just a 5 hour shift, and is counted as a half day. One day of the week is a mandatory holiday.
- Staying after your working hours is discouraged by our Human Resource department. Time Management and Productivity enhancement workshops are conducted so that people can finish work in given 9 hours and don’t have to stretch.
The result of this is that all our employees get time for their family, friends and also adequate rest. None of them is exerted as we perform seamless 24×7 call center outsourcing.
Our employees are an asset for BlueChip. We take care of their health, happiness and job satisfaction. That is why they are able to provide complete customer satisfaction, even during midnight!