Once in a Blue Moon

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Don’t get confused by the title of this blog post. ‘Once in a blue moon’ was the name of a story writing competition held at BlueChip Callcenter. Competitions like these are not rare but rather frequent, here at Bluechip.
Our Human Resource department organizes some or the other kind of contest every fortnight for the employees. After a whole week of hectic activity at our offshore call centers, everybody is all set for fun and frolic on Fridays. The training room on a Friday is so decorated with balloons that you wouldn’t believe you are inside the premises of the most sought after call center outsourcing vendors.

story writing competitionsThe activity of this Friday deserves a mention in our blog simply because the stories which emerged out of this competition were so incredibly amazing.

The topic of the contest was, as you guessed it – “Once in a blue moon.” The contestants were given this as the first sentence of their story.
They had to write only 5 more lines and outline a story. Obviously no story can be complete in 5 lines. But we just wanted to assess the line of thinking and the imagination of the writer.
The winning story is reproduced here, so that our clients may also know about the exceptional talent of our call center agents.

 Story, By Anesh:
Once in a blue moon, I would see her. She would come with her surfing board to the beach. I must confess, she was more brave than most of the men. No macho could face the mighty sea with the ease and grace like hers. I definitely couldn’t, with my phobia for water holding me back each time.
I cannot forget the day when the sea was really turbulent and she was battling with the crest of waves. Everybody was worried and praying for her safe return. Coast guards were keeping an eye on her, and were ready on their sea scooter.
But she returned, with her usual confident smile. The tempest hadn’t scared her. I finally mustered the courage to ask this fearless damsel, “How could you confront these waves?”
She replied with her disarming smile, “I didn’t confront the waves. I bowed down to them”

Didn’t reading the story leave you speechless? We truly were. Anesh, waiting for your next story!

Call Center Outsourcing Agents

Call Center Outsourcing Vendors Can Be Evil

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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!

Call Center Agents

Importance of Innate Call-Handling Talent in Customer Services

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Humanity hasn’t been able to measure everything. There is no machine which can calculate the honesty of a person. There is no unit which can measure the happiness levels of people. And most often, these are the most important qualities.

We all like to be with a person who exudes positivity. And we all loathe a person who indulges in malicious back-biting. When we are choosing a friend, we don’t take into account the marks a person got in high-school, or what is their income. All that we are concerned for is- is the person trustworthy?customer service executives

Similarly, when a customer is speaking to a call centers agent, it doesn’t matter whether the Agent is a graduate, or has 10 years of industry experience etc. All that matters is – is the Agent polite and helpful while talking to you?

These immeasurable skills are together called as ‘soft skills’. The qualities like politeness, tone, tenor, calmness, charm etc. are of utmost importance for a call center agent. But unfortunately, there is no way you can measure any of these.

There are ways to calculate things like – Wrap-up Time, Idle Time, Abandon Rate, Average Speed of Answering etc. But there isn’t any way that you can calculate whether you touched the heart of a customer, or how much satisfaction were you able to provide them.

We at Bluechip Callcenter realize the importance of the incalculable. And that is why we give priority to soft-skill trainings for all our call center agents, especially those working as customer service executives.

The whole emphasis of our trainings is to not just become good call center agents, but become good human beings and hone our soft skills along with hard-skills. It is most important for you to master these intangible soft-skills if you want to excel in your work performance.

If you are happier inside, it will show. And even though we can’t measure it, we will know!

The silent ‘Social’ revolution in Call Centers

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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.

social media customer serviceCustomers 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

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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.Inbound Call Center Outsourcing Services

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!