Is Your Small Business Plugged in to a Call Center?

The voice on the phone - or lack thereof - that a customer reaches when calling your business solidifies their first impression of your enterprise and sets the tone for the entire customer service experience.

As your small business grows, your phone reception system must grow with it, and eventually a landline or mobile phone isn't going to suffice.

The good news is, plugging into a reliable, professional call center doesn't have to be the massive, expensive undertaking that it once was.

Cloud Call Centers

As a small business with a limited budget, you're probably wondering as the following article shows “How to set up a call center system” in the first place.

The good news is, you don't actually have to set it up. Call centers were once reserved for large corporate juggernauts because they required expensive hardware and infrastructure, a physical location and staff.

With remotely hosted - or cloud - call centers, however, a third-party provider houses and maintains all the equipment, meaning all you need are computers, phones and headsets.

Save on Staffing

When your call center is remotely hosted through a cloud provider, you get updates via software, you can customize your options and features, and scale your call center up and down as your business grows or needs to cut back. But perhaps the biggest benefit is through flexibility in staffing.

Operators working on cloud-based call centers can log in from anywhere. This means you can offer your representatives the ability to telecommute.

This is an attractive incentive for prospective employees and it can save your business significantly in staffing costs.

What Every Call Center Needs

The beauty of cloud-based call centers are that they provide unrivaled flexibility, scaling and customizability.

You can opt for the features you need and omit the options you don't need. There are, however, some universal features that every call center should have.

Automatic routing sends the calls to the right receptionist on the right line.

Auto-attendant systems give customers the impression of a large, established business and also help filter calls to make sure the customer gets to the right line more quickly. Call recording is imperative for training and for compliance purposes.

Finally, collaboration technology allows calls to be shared and multiple employees to pool resources, knowledge and technology to solve problems.

Every small business needs to be able to field incoming calls, and technology has evolved to the point that even the smallest businesses can afford reliable, professional services.

Use remote hosting to take hardware and infrastructure requirements off of your business, let your staff work from home and make sure your call center has the key elements required of every good telephone network.