Effective Customer Communication Includes More Than Telephone Calls

Contact Centers Can Process More Than Just Phone Calls for Their Clients

A call center handles telephone calls for its clients, whereas a contact center handles multiple forms of contact, which includes calls. However, this historical distinction is losing its meaning, with the line of demarcation between call center and contact center blurring. Indeed, most call centers have expanded their service offerings beyond telephone calls.

Here are the types of services you can expect when you hire an outsource call center or contact center to provide you with effective customer communication.

Telephone Calls

In the majority of situations, the most common channel of customer communication is the telephone. Call centers and contact centers can answer your incoming calls 24/7, according to your schedule to handle after-hours calls, or as needed on-demand. The telephone has been and will continue to be the medium of choice when it comes to effective customer communication for most of your customers, most of the time.

Email Messages

Even more commonplace than a phone call is email, with hundreds of billions of email messages sent every day. Companies overwhelmed by the number of email messages they receive, often outsource email processing to a contact center.

These service providers can answer, screen, and forward email messages as appropriate. They delete the spam, reply to most common inquiries, and forward the few remaining emails that require special attention to the appropriate person or department for in-depth follow-up. For non-urgent communication, many people prefer the convenience and electronic record that email provides. Email is the second element in the arsenal of effective customer communication.

Web Chat

A third consideration is web chat. Increasingly visitors to your website expect a web chat option if they want to get quick answers when they can’t find the information on your site or are confused with navigating it. If they seek web chat and can’t find it, they’re quick to leave. Lower your bounce rate and increase engagement when you offer web chat. But you don’t have to do it in-house. Outsource this to a professional contact center that has this capability built into their system and their staff trained and ready to interact with your website visitors. Add web chat to your arsenal of effective customer communication tools.

Text Messaging

An increasingly popular option is text messaging. This is especially true with younger generations who view it as their go-to communication channel of choice. They preferred it over email and avoid making a phone call. Just as with web chat, your contact center has the staff and tools in place to receive and respond to text messages on your behalf. With text messaging service, you have a fourth channel for effective customer communication resources.

Social Media

The extensive list of social media platforms overwhelms most organizations. In fact, they find it hard to even master a few of the more popular ones. Instead of struggling to monitor and react to social media mentions, likes, shares, and so forth. Have your contact center do this for you, 24/7. You will delight your customers and amaze your visitors. This is the fifth of the major contact channels you should consider if you want to offer effective customer communication for your customers and prospects.

Conclusion

The telephone is no longer the sole means for business communication. Wise business leaders allow for contact by whatever means their stakeholders prefer. Though this could be the telephone, it could also be email, web chat, text messaging, or social media.

If they can’t reach you the way they want to, when they want to, they’ll probably give up and reach your competitor. Don’t encourage them to leave. Tap your call center or contact center and enlist their help in providing effective customer communication options.

Direct Call Centers provides call center and contact center services to clients across the United States and around the world. Specializing in business process outsourcing (BPO), Direct Call Centers is your single source for essential contact center work and critical BPO support services, with a focus on four primary horizontal market niches: customer service, tech support, lead processing, and chargeback support. Get a free quote today to explore if Direct Call Centers is the right match for your company’s BPO needs. Peter Lyle DeHaan is a freelance writer for the call center industry.