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Call Centre Service Providers
You can find a call centre service provider in nearly any province across Canada. Often referred to as business process outsourcing, a call centre service can help take the burden of many business processes off your team, so they can focus on more strategic initiatives. More time working on the business, not in it.
A good call centre service provider acts as an extension of your business. Read below to learn about the evaluation criteria you want to consider while selecting a partner that will help enhance your business.
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What to expect from your call centre service provider
There are a number of services beyond simple phone answering and message taking that businesses can take advantage of.Appointment booking: Ask your call centre service provider if they can book appointments for your team and enter them into your CRM software on your behalf.
Triage & dispatch: Instead of relaying a message, your call centre provider can actually triage calls based on urgency and dispatch appropriate personnel for you. This is most popular in the property management industry where a tenant can call into your dedicated line and describe the nature of their issue. If it is urgent (like a flood that can't be contained with a bucket) the call centre agent can dispatch a plumber right away, thus minimizing any potential damages. If this type of deductive triaging interests you, read more here about our property management specialty division.
Overflow answering for evenings and weekends: Have an awesome receptionist that works 9-5? Instead of hiring an additional 2 people to cover evenings and weekends, you can provide the same great service to your customers no matter the time of day or night for a fraction of the price. That means no more missed calls, fewer customers fleeing for competitors, and better customer service response times.
Order taking: For companies with a less tech-savvy customer base, online ordering can be intimidating. Offer a trusted and secure order line to assist users with making their purchases.
Hotline services: For sick lines, reporting abuse, whistleblower lines, or even "hows my driving" lines.
NPS surveys: Net Promotor Score is the gold standard in customer experience programs. NPS measures the loyalty of customers and helps you make informed business decisions based on real customer feedback. Utilize a call centre service provider to help you execute the survey and call your customers to walk them through a short survey.
Message taking: Providing a live person to take customer messages can improve the customer experience and is cost-effective for your business. Receive urgent messages right away, the rest can wait until tomorrow.
Total call control: Over the past year we've seen more and more businesses struggle with hiring. As a result of the labour shortage, many organizations are opting to outsource 100% of their call management to call centre service providers.Service levels
Service levels are an indication of how quickly calls are answered when a customer calls. We measure service level with average time to answer or ATTA. Across the call centre industry, most providers strive for a 70/30 response time, that is, 70% of calls are answered within 30 seconds. These metrics are calculated monthly and averaged out over the course of the month, on any given day service levels may spike or flatten based on unexpected call volume. Be sure to ask your call centre about what kind of service level they can promise.Shared or dedicated model
There are two common types of call centre distributions. A shared service is a division where customer service representatives are trained on multiple client accounts. The customer service representatives in this division are like a Swiss army knife, they are agile, able to change gears quickly, and can adapt on the fly. A dedicated service division employs specialized customer service representatives who are trained to work on one single account. They are specialists and usually work on client accounts that are more technical and require an advanced level of knowledge in order to service them properly. Read more to find out which model is best suited for your company. -
Industries best suited to work with a call centre service provider
We've seen every type of company in nearly every industry come to Telelink for call centre services. However, there are certain industries that we see more than others. For example, law firms and insurance brokers typically work Monday-Friday 9-5 regular office hours, but they both have customer bases that encounter issues and problems at all hours of the day, night, and weekend. These types of companies are popular users of the after-hours support lines. Many trades also fall into this category, as well as municipalities and utility companies.
Property management companies are one of the most popular customers for call centres, and they have unique needs, like the triage and dispatch mentioned above. Be sure to partner with a trusted call centre for property management services. Property management accounts require specialized and robust scripting, so you'll want to partner with a provider who's seen it all.
Doctor's offices and medical clinics have long been familiar with call centre service providers, but since the pandemic, they've become more and more reliant on these types of partnerships. The combination of an ongoing labour shortage plus a rise in demand for virtual medical clinics has changed the healthcare landscape; especially the waiting room. Clinics and doctor's offices alike use call centre services for after-hours support, appointment booking, appointment reminder calls, and more.
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How to choose a call centre service provider
At the top of this page, we called a call centre service provider an extension of your brand. We recommend choosing your call centre with the same criteria you would use to hire a critical new player on your team. Make sure their values align with yours, check a reference or two, make sure they have experience in your industry and put them to the test before hiring (listen to a test call).If you're a Canadian company, we highly recommend choosing a Canadian call centre to partner with. Full transparency, there are cheaper options in the United States and the Philippines, but when you are making decisions that directly impact your customers you should strive to deliver a level of customer service that you can be proud of. If data privacy is a concern, then a Canadian call centre will be more secure as data is not being moved internationally and is housed domestically with your company in Canada.
Call Centre Service Providers |