By outsourcing Call center services, you get the best quality of processes, reduced handling time as well as a quick resolution to customer queries. 

Every business function revolves around its customers. Everything from the very first contact with them to keeping them engaged with the brand needs to be carefully managed to provide them the best experience needed. There is an entire funnel that of customers and the different stages at which a company has to engage with them that is referred to customer lifecycle management. In this post, we will discuss how businesses can utilize call center services to help improve their customer lifecycle management.

Before we can go into the ways that call center services can, we must understand what exactly is customer lifecycle management and the various stages that are involved in it.

Stages of Customer Lifecycle Management

There are mainly four stages of CLM (Customer Lifecycle Management). These stages can differ based on each organization and its business goals. In this post, we will discuss the four stages that will be recognized by most of the companies out there.

Stage 1 – Customer Acquisition

As it is clear from the name, this activity refers to acquiring new customers for the business. This is the primary stage where your business establishes contact with a new customer for the first time with the hopes of converting them from a prospect to a paying customer or client.  This activity is necessary for the growth of any business. You need to grow your customer base in order to maintain a constant growth of the organization.

Stage 2- Customer Engagement

The second stage of CLM is customer engagement. When you acquire a customer and they have been with the brand for a while but now their usage of your product or service has declined, you need to increase their engagement with your brand. It could be in the form of using your app more or visiting your website more often. Customer engagement ensures a customer’s loyalty to the brand and puts the business at ease about whether customers will stay with the brand or not.

Stage 3 – Customer Retention

Retaining your existing customers is an extremely import part of customer lifecycle management. If you lose your customers, it will have a negative impact on your business’s bottom line. It will also lead to the increase in marketing costs and customer acquisition costs. A good customer retention strategy can not only save costs but lead to stronger brand profile overall.

Stage 4 – Customer Feedback

This stage lets a business understand how loyal a customer is to their brand. You get to know what they feel about your product or services, what they like, what they dislike and most importantly, the changes they would like to see. It helps a business become better by implementing the changes that customers want and it makes the customers feel appreciated when they see their opinions have been valued.

Call Center Services and Customer Lifecycle Management

All the above four stages or the entire CLM process requires a company to have dedicated teams of professionals that have experience dealing with each and every such stage. Outsourcing call center services help a business handle these complex stages using experienced staff and techniques.

A right outsourcing company can provide a business with customer acquisition services using outbound and inbound telemarketing and lead generation services that help a business increase its customer base thus increasing overall revenues. Similarly, that same company can handle customer engagement by reaching out to customers and informing them of new features as well as offers related to a business’s services.

Customer retention processes are also carried out by call center service providers. Customers that wish to leave your services will be contacted by the call center team to understand the root cause of them leaving and provide those customers with the required incentives to stick by the brand. The fourth stage of CLM, getting feedback from the customers is also handled by call centers through their customer survey process where customers are contacted to conduct a quick survey to know the overall level of satisfaction they have with the services.

Conclusion:

In the end, what really matters is finding the right call center partner that can deploy a team that can get your customers through all entire customer lifecycle management process efficiently thus helping businesses reduce their costs and boost profits.

The BPO sector has seen many changes over the past decade. There are several call center services that have been added to an ever-growing list of offerings that contact centers are now offering businesses across the globe. There was a time when a call center was only synonymous with answering calls of troubled customers. While that is still a big part of the inbound call center services that are offered, many new additions have been made to the services.

Contact centers have adapted to the changing times and the changing needs of businesses. Outsourcing has been an important cost-cutting measure for companies for over two decades. The list of tasks to outsource to India has grown significantly. Inbound services have always been significant as they help businesses provide customer service in a cost-effective manner, all the while being able to focus on their core objectives.  We shall now understand what other inbound call center services businesses today need.

Technical Support Services

Technical support or as it’s also known as – help desk services, are inbound services that are outsourced by companies that usually sell some sort of hardware. An OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) usually outsources this service to provide support to those customers that face challenges using their products after making the purchase. These organizations can include – desktop manufacturers, laptop manufacturers, mobile, and tablet manufacturers to name a few.

Even though outsourcing help desk services is more common for hardware companies, there are certain software companies who do it as well. Whether they have utility software or a web-based application, whenever customers face any challenges with it, they need technical support. With the growing number of applications that are released every year, I believe 2017 can be the year that software companies will overtake device manufacturers in availing inbound call center services.

Inbound Sales

Inbound sales can be considered an extension of telemarketing services. The whole concept is to try and convert a potential customer who calls in with a business inquiry into a paying customer. This inbound sales service enhances the revenue of the company and is a business model that many service providers offer. These inbound sales can be generally of three types –

• Up-selling – Up-selling refers to when an existing customer calls in for information about any aspect of their service and you try to sell them on a higher plan or a costlier plan than the one they are already subscribed to.
• Cross-selling – This is a similar concept to up-selling but here you do not try to sell a more expensive plan, you try to sell a service or product that is related to the one a customer already uses.
• Customer Acquisition – Unlike up-selling and cross-selling, here the individual that calls you is not an existing customer. They are just someone that saw your company’s number on its website or social media page and called in for information. The goal here is to educate the caller on the products and services of the company and their various benefits in order to convert them into customers by making a sale.

Booking Orders

As the name suggests, this inbound process involves booking orders from customers when they call in. There are so many websites that sell their products online these days. However, there are situations where your customers may not be able to order online for the products. That is where order booking processes come in. Inbound calls are received from customers who want to place their orders over the phone. Their details like product number, product description, shipping address, payment method etc are confirmed and their order is booked over the phone.  Just like inbound sales process, this process also helps enhance the revenue of the business.

Customer Service

Even though customer service has been mentioned above in the beginning of this post, it deserves a mention in this list as well. Customer service remains the most important and widely outsourced service as far as inbound call center services are concerned. Providing customers with good customer service ensures their loyalty with the brand and keeps them retained. That is why this aspect is never over-looked and companies outsource their customer support to reliable inbound call center services providers.