Outsourcing Archives - Sara Call Center

7 Effective Strategies for Enhancing Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction plays a significant role in driving a business’ success. Subpar customer satisfaction rates are indicative of low customer retention rates.

Every business strives to cultivate a sense of contentment among its customers, fostering their inclination to engage repeatedly. To achieve this, enterprises must dedicate efforts towards enhancing their customer satisfaction metrics.

Customer Satisfaction: Why It’s Important

Customer satisfaction serves as a crucial gauge of how well a business aligns its products or services with the expectations of its customers, showcasing their level of brand loyalty.

In the digital era, characterized by the pervasive influence of social media on consumer decision-making processes, it is paramount to prioritize the quality of customer service offered by your company.

Nurturing customer satisfaction plays a pivotal role in fostering enduring customer relationships, albeit requiring substantial dedication and effort. According to a 2020 survey conducted by PwC, 59% of customers are inclined to sever ties with a brand following multiple negative customer experiences, while even a single instance of poor customer experience may prompt 17% of customers to disengage from the brand altogether.

On a more positive note, a well-maintained customer relationship has the potential to yield substantial benefits. In fact, the survey revealed that 77% of satisfied customers are likely to become repeat customers and recommend your brand to their acquaintances.

7 Proven Strategies to Boost Customer Satisfaction

Ensuring customer satisfaction is of paramount importance as it contributes to long-term success and brand loyalty. Partnering with a reputable call center like Sara Call Center can provide clients with the necessary resources and expertise to effectively address customer needs and enhance overall satisfaction levels.

Focus on Customer Feedback: Customer feedback serves as a crucial performance metric for businesses, allowing them to assess their effectiveness in meeting customer expectations. By actively soliciting and analyzing feedback, businesses can identify areas for improvement, spot trends, and address recurring issues, all of which contribute to higher customer satisfaction ratings. This diligent approach not only helps businesses stay competitive but also empowers them to adapt and evolve in response to changing customer needs, ensuring continued success and growth in the long run.
Pay Close Attention to Consumer Reviews: In an increasingly internet-dependent world, accessing product reviews and recommendations has become effortless for consumers. When making purchasing decisions or seeking services, consumers often prioritize browsing through product reviews, making it crucial for businesses to stay updated and aware of public feedback concerning their offerings. To ensure continuous improvement, it is essential for businesses to actively monitor and engage with the online landscape, where customers share their experiences and opinions regarding the product, customer service, and order handling. These reviews offer valuable insights, uncovering potential areas for enhancement that may have otherwise gone unnoticed.
Track Internal Metrics: Metrics serve as a valuable scoreboard, providing precise measurements of performance and overall business operations. By diligently monitoring your team’s metrics, you gain valuable data that highlights areas for improvement and areas that require ongoing attention within your business. By prioritizing internal metrics, a call center can proactively identify and address performance gaps, ensuring efficient operations and improved service quality. This diligent focus on metrics enables the call center to optimize its processes, enhance agent performance, and ultimately contribute to higher customer satisfaction ratings for clients.
Personalization: In the midst of handling numerous customer interactions each day, it is crucial to prioritize making every customer feel valued and appreciated. Personalization emerges as the key to delivering genuine and enthusiastic customer support. A call center like Sara Call Center will inquire about and utilize the customer’s name, reference their individual experiences and transaction history with your business, and express gratitude for their continued patronage. This personalized approach fosters a sense of connection and demonstrates your sincere commitment to providing exceptional service.
Seamless Multichannel Assistance: Ensuring a seamless customer experience is a shared desire among all customers. As a business owner or manager, it is your responsibility to identify methods that streamline and simplify the buying process for each individual. A dedicated outsourced customer support team can offer omnichannel support to engage with your customers across various platforms, with the flexibility to transition between channels while maintaining continuity in conversations. Embracing this opportunity empowers you to elevate your services and provide customers with convenient and personalized support.
Focus on Employee Satisfaction: When you choose a call center partner like Sara Call Center which focuses on ensuring the satisfaction and happiness of its employees, it paves the way for improved performance and enhanced customer service delivery. We prioritize and appreciate our employees through various means, such as offering incentives, implementing employee recognition programs like “Employee of the Month,” and organizing team-building activities and social gatherings.
Demonstrating Product Matter Expertise: Product knowledge stands as a pivotal aspect within the realm of business, particularly for agents and employees engaging directly with customers. It is imperative for all individuals in customer-facing roles to possess comprehensive knowledge about the company’s products. Utilizing a call center where operators are highly-trained to know everything possible about the product not only instills confidence in them but also enables them to effectively address customer inquiries and concerns. Managers can showcase product knowledge by collaboratively working with agents, identifying any gaps in information, and providing the necessary support to bridge those gaps.

In 2023, Customer Satisfaction Continues to Be Important

Irrespective of the era, customer satisfaction remains a top priority for all businesses.

Implementing our tips to enhance your customer service will not only satisfy your clients but also contribute to increased revenue and business growth. By providing exceptional service, you not only ensure that your customers receive the best experience, but you also attract more buyers and cultivate a community of advocates for your products and services, resulting in a mutually beneficial outcome.

By partnering with Sara Call Center, your firm can realize remarkable cost savings of up to 70% through our efficient labor practices. Entrusting us with the responsibilities of screening, hiring, and training guarantees enhanced staff retention, amplified profits, and sustained business expansion.

Take the initiative and reach out to us today to explore how Sara Call Center can deliver exceptional business process outsourcing solutions tailored specifically to your company’s needs.

The 3 Perks of Outsourcing After-Hours Answering Services

Small and large business owners alike consider maximizing business opportunities as a top priority to generate substantial revenue and keep customers satisfied. However, various factors could cause businesses to miss out on such opportunities, such as having a slow contact center that leads to frustrated customers.

To mitigate this, it’s important to consider having call support available not only during regular business hours but also after hours. Recognize that your full-time staff who work during normal business hours may need additional reinforcement not only during peak hours or seasons.

When it comes to sales-oriented businesses, missed calls during after-office hours or improperly handled calls during peak hours can be detrimental to customer satisfaction. Fortunately, call outsourcing services offer after-hours call answering services that ensure your clients can reach full-time staff even after your business has closed for the day.

The 3 Big Perks

Due to their expanding customer base and cost-effective approach, many companies are outsourcing to Albanian BPO companies. A call center in Tirana, for example, offering outsourcing services can be a highly cost-effective way to tack on extra talent to a firm’s workforce.

One frequently outsourced service is handling call overflows, which frees up time and resources for companies to focus on their core business operations.

By utilizing an after-office hours service, businesses can improve across all fronts, regardless of their size or industry. Outsourcing this call center operation can greatly enhance the customer service experience and provide the following top three advantages:

Increased Customer Satisfaction Ratings: By ensuring that all incoming customer calls are managed effectively, companies can project a professional and client-focused image, leading to higher customer satisfaction and increased returning customers.
Lower Operating Costs: Outsourcing after-hours support needs to a company in Albania can significantly reduce business expenses related to equipment, salaries, training, headhunting, and facility costs.
Higher Sales and Profits: With someone available to handle customer management 24/7, even on public holidays, companies can reach more potential and loyal customers, resulting in improved profitability and revenue growth. Sara Call Center offers an after-hours support solution that businesses can utilize to take advantage of this service.

The Sara Call Difference

Sara Call Center, a prominent call center outsourcing company based in Tirana, Albania, has the expertise to provide after-hours call center support to companies of all sizes and shapes. With almost a decade of experience in this field, we enable proactive businesses to ensure that all customer calls are handled diligently. Outsourcing this service can enhance your brand reputation across all aspects of your business.

When you enroll for after-hours answering services with Sara Call Center, we will ensure that you receive a customizable template that our live operators can use to respond to your customers, the type of information you want your outsourced call center agent to gather and collect, and the preferred method of delivery.

You can also rely on us to determine whether the calls received after hours are routine or urgent messages that require immediate forwarding to your company for appropriate handling.

Sara Call Center’s customers have received top-of-the-line call center outsourcing services over the years. The location of your customers is not a concern since we have invested heavily in state-of-the-art call center operation platforms that can accommodate customers’ after-hours inbound and outbound call answering channels with your own customers or other stakeholders in the business.

Our clients leverage our call operations expertise and multi-channel platforms to manage after-hours customer handling and technical support any time of day. In terms of our staff expertise, Sara Call Center ensures that it employs the best talent available – competent, professional, and trained in customer service best practices.

Sara Call Center also ensures that its services are scalable to clients’ after-hours call support requirements. We understand that change is inevitable when your company is achieving its business objectives and sales targets. Sara Call Center, for its part, ensures that it invests in sophisticated technologies and equipment to support the requirements of your outsourced after-hours call support services.

Finally, the Sara Call Center after-hours call support services are reasonably priced and highly adaptable to our clients’ outsourcing needs for 24/7 hour services, from order taking and inbound and outbound customer and sales calls to other services.

Usually, clients from a diverse range of industries avail of our after-hours support services whenever they require assistance once they close their businesses daily. Our clients include lawyers, medical professionals, real estate and property management companies, trade service firms, retail companies, and many other business categories.

With after-hours call support from Sara Call Center, you can be sure that you will never miss an important call from your customers. Contact us today to see how you can grow with the help of a professional outsourced solution!

Customer Service Trends to Watch Out For in 2022

The black swan event of the 21st century has without a doubt been COVID-19, a pandemic that has reshaped the way society organizes itself. With widespread lockdowns and quarantines in place, consumers and corporations alike have had to reorient themselves to a new way of living that means more and more of our previously in-person interactions now take place online.

Almost every industry has been affected by the pandemic, especially direct-to-consumer brands and businesses that need to service large customer bases. Now that the new-normal is remote and digital, companies are integrating outsourced customer service offerings to reach, service and cross-sell consumers.

Customer Service Representative

The Post-Pandemic Picture

The rapid integration of internet services across the planet and consumers’ pandemic-induced push into them has meant that business has gotten even more competitive over the past few years. Consumers now have a wide variety of brands, products and services accessible with just the tap of a smartphone screen, equalizing the playing field and allowing for the penetration of upstart firms alongside with the entrenchment of bigger players as well.

This is why it’s more vital than ever before for companies to create strong customer support teams to boost customer retention and create strong value propositions to attract new clientele.

The data back this up: surveys indicate that half of customers expect special treatment and status from the brands they do regular business with and utilize customer service as their top proxy for whether or not to trust a brand and do repeat business with it. Some studies indicate that a full one in four consumers expect proactive service from brands with which they interact.

In order to keep up in today’s extremely interconnected world businesses have to up their customer service offerings and provide top-notch communication, follow-up and detailed offerings to consumers. Read on to learn about the biggest trends to watch out for in customer service this year and how outsourced customer service offerings can help your firm achieve these goals.

Omnichannel Messaging Apps

With more people staying indoors and avoiding crowded stores, malls and indoor spaces due to lockdowns and quarantine restrictions, customers are going fully digital. Over half of online shoppers have indicated that they bought from an online retailer they’d never heard of before the pandemic, and a full 80% expect to stay with them.

Brands have turned to Messenger, WhatsApp and other popular messaging apps to handle the deluge of new customer service questions and requests accordingly. These messaging apps are widespread and easy to use, making interacting with your customers easier than ever before.

Millennials and younger users in particular have flocked to these apps, leading to over half of companies deciding to roll out new messaging channels to support customer service offerings.

With live chat dominating as young consumers’ preferred method of communication, outsourced live chat offerings are becoming extremely attractive to firms looking to seamlessly deploy remote customer service representatives at scale and economical rates.

Chatbots and Automation

Oftentimes a consumer’s question has been asked before, and businesses are utilizing automation to generate automatic answers to the most common questions. This allows businesses to handle high-volumes of customer questions and provide accurate information to consumers.

This helps protect the company’s image and promotes customer loyalty by helping consumers troubleshoot quickly. Automation allows your team to handle all your customers’ questions while reducing wait times and the burden on the customer service team.

FAQs and automated responses have helped 71% of companies manage their influx of customer service requests over the course of the pandemic. With advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning enabling computers to answer more and more questions with each passing year, automation needs to be part of your business’ customer service strategy to help drive brand loyalty and improve your online image.

Remote Support Technology

With the full consequences of the pandemic still being played out, the prospects of returning to in-office work seem as hazy as ever. Now that workers have been pushed to working remotely for almost two full years, many firms and employees have grown accustomed to remote work setups.

Businesses working with BPO providers have utilized remote staff to help in-house employees handle large volumes of customer service requests for decades already. As more businesses go virtual with their customer service, it’s become easier than ever to work with an outsourcing vendor to implement offshore customer service teams that can handle almost all a business’ customer relations needs.

This allows a business to protect its employees’ health and save time, money and resources, allocating its energies to core competencies and diversifying its revenue streams.

To take full advantage of the remote support trend, however, businesses need to invest in remote support technologies that empower them to monitor, interact with and keep track of customer support representatives. These technologies allow employers to collect data on customer service representative performance on key metrics such as ticket resolution, wait times and customer satisfaction.

These technologies are paving the way for managers to stay on top of customer service and drive their business forward with ever-improving product offerings.

Customer Service Representative

The New Normal: Adaptation

With the lockstep march towards digital integration across all aspects of the consumer journey, businesses must now adapt towards offering perennially-available customer service. In order to stay on top of the competition and attract new customers, businesses must get used to constantly adapting to the new business environment and the challenges of new technologies disrupting the field.

Implementing dedicated customer service teams can be distracting and difficult for many businesses whose core expertise lies in other areas. This is why many businesses are turning to outsourcing providers such as Sara Call Center to help keep up with their customer service needs.

Discover Outsourced Customer Service Today!

By outsourcing your customer service needs to Sara Call Center your firm can enjoy savings of up to 70% with our cost-effective labor practices. We take care of screening, hiring and training for you to help your firm retain customers, boost its bottom line and keep growing at steady rates.

Get in touch today to learn how Sara Call can provide your firm with outsourced customer service offerings.

10 Tips for Finding the Right BPO Provider

When choosing to outsource, picking the right BPO partner is of utmost importance. Outsourcing non-core in-house functions can be a great strategy to help your firm reduce overhead costs, reduce time spent on training, offer more services and products and scale up quickly.

But choosing the wrong partner can make your venture into the outsourcing world more troublesome and time-consuming than keeping work in-house. That’s why it’s extremely important to make sure your partner is a trusted and experienced firm with a track record of success in the sector. In this blog post we outline how to pick the right BPO partner and enjoy the full advantages of outsourcing.

Business Planning

1. Familiarize Yourself with Management

In your journey into the outsourcing world you will need to interact regularly with the executive and management branches of your BPO firm. Make sure you are interacting with trustworthy executives and managers with a track record of accomplishment in the field. They will be the ones overseeing the projects and engagements you choose to outsource, so choosing excellent management is key.

2. Track Record and Experience

Next, ask for references to ascertain the firm’s track record and experience. Have they been in the outsourcing field for a significant amount of time? How many clients do they currently have, and are any of them similar to your firm? How do they ensure the success of each client? Ask performance-based questions that will help you ascertain their effectiveness in delivering what you need.

3. Ascertain Communication Effectiveness

Communication is key when it comes to outsourcing business projects. Communication and transparency help ensure that projects are set to be executed on time and that deliverables meet the quality your firm is demanding. Also consider language – if you need an English, Italian, German or French-speaking partner, consider a BPO vendor in Albania where these languages are commonly spoken by the majority of people.

4. Geography and Time Zone Differences

Only consider providers in economically sound and politically stable countries so that macroeconomic and political trends don’t interrupt your business dealings. Also take into account the time difference between your home office and the outsourcing partner – will you need to communicate with them in real-time? Or will they be providing 24/7 customer service in shifts? Since time zones can create difficulty in terms of scheduling and communication, make sure that the geographical differences make sense for your business.

Call Center Agent

5. Availability of Talent & Resources

Seek talent where it can be found – different countries boast different levels of general technical and soft-skill infrastructure. Your provider will need access to a wide pool of talent that can help your project scale up easily, so make sure they are located in a city and country with excellent educational infrastructure. Also make sure to ask about staff retention rates, as low rates will make your engagement costlier and less productive.

6. Costs, Fees and Rates

There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch! In the BPO world, the lower the hourly rate quoted the more likely your work is to be lower-quality. Just because a provider is offering affordable rates does not mean that they will meet your expectations and provide the quality of work you need. Make sure you ask a lot of questions about what’s included and mention every relevant detail in the SLA you sign.

7. Protection of Intellectual Property & Confidentiality

Make sure the systems and requirements you have in place protect your intellectual property and that the outsourcing provider likewise has protocols that ensure confidentiality and protection. Otherwise, a cost-saving engagement can turn into an expensive legal battle over your firm’s valuable IP and trade secrets.

8. Culture, Values and Norms

Make sure to choose an outsourcing partner who shares your values, goals and general philosophy. Compatible values and work norms will set your firm on the path to success as it works in tandem with your BPO provider. If your in-house and offshored teams do not mesh well due to cultural differences that can bear out in terms of communication, work quality and style, your entire organization will suffer.

9. Infrastructure & Technology

To get the most out of your outsourcing setup, make sure you have technology and infrastructure in place to facilitate sharing of documents, communication across teams and access to sundry databases. A top-notch outsourcer will provide you with a safe and effective transition of your in-house functions to their offshore team. They will work with you to make sure that systems are in place to manage all technical aspects of the collaboration including file sharing, data storage, operational optimization and cybersecurity.

Outsourcing

10. Physical Facilities

Some firms prefer to visit their partner’s physical facilities before signing on the dotted line. This can be a great way to familiarize yourself with your BPO partner and build rapport, giving you insight into their operations, work style and the quality of their talent.

The Benefits of Outsourcing

It can all seem intimidating at first, but outsourcing offers business myriad benefits:

Scaling up staffing without the stress and hassle of screening, interviewing and hiring
Enjoying the benefits of a multilingual, omnichannel team ready to service clients anywhere and anytime on the planet
Cutting on costs while accessing a large labor pool of talented and skilled staff
Flexibly scale and cut down on staffing as your needs wax and wane

Find out more – Sara Call Center is here to help!

Sara Call Center has been helping international firms since our founding in 2012 to set up outsourcing teams and access highly talented staff in Albania. From helping you find the right solutions, hire the right personnel and set up the optimal campaigns, we are available to help take your business to the next level – get in touch, today!

The 7 Secrets to Successful Outsourcing

The dizzying rate of growth many global companies experience is now the norm, with everyone from tech to healthcare to insurance and ecommerce companies looking for ways to rapidly grow their user base and sustain that growth with reliable customer service, back office, data entry and marketing services.

This makes it ever-more vital for your business to focus on what it does best rather than on administrative, secondary tasks that aren’t core to your area of expertise. This is why many companies turn to BPO vendors such as Sara Call Center. Working with an experienced outsourcing partner provides flexibility, agility and cost efficiencies to your firm so it can stay focused on big-picture projects.

Outsourcing has helped many companies achieve their positions of global domination – but the journey can seem daunting to those not familiar with the process. What are the keys to success when it comes to outsourcing? Below we list out the seven secrets that every successful company with experience in BPO already utilizes to get the most out of their outsourcing engagement.

1. Set Concrete Goals and Define KPIs

When setting up an outsourced team it’s vital to first know your goals. For example, many businesses outsourcing back office needs want to save money and reduce in-house burnout. Set up KPIs (key performance indicators) such as retention rate and hours saved per week to track how your set up with the outsourcing vendor is working out. Many executives find it helpful to consult with local staff on the most difficult pain points and where an outsourced team might be most helpful. Once you have answered the questions of what you need help with and what your hoped-for measurable results are, you are ready to get started with the next step.

2. Delineate the Roles and Responsibilities to Outsource

From marketing to back office to IT to accounting, there are plenty of roles that can be staffed remotely or outsourced. Administrative tasks that are repetitive are especially easy and productive roles to outsource. Once you have identified the roles and tasks you want help with (anything that is essential to the running of your business should probably be kept in-house) you are ready to find a BPO partner.

3. Find Your Trusted BPO Vendor

There are many BPO vendors out there specializing in different fields. The success of your outsourcing project will hinge upon selecting the one with the best staff to execute your tasks and deliver value to your firm. Check the basics, first – does the company have a track record of success, management in place to perform quality checks on deliverables, high retention rates and access to the latest technology? Then ensure that the vendor has the right cultural competency, skillset and capacity to meet your outsourcing needs. Go through multiple consultations and make sure you are picking the right vendor for your project needs.

4. Calculate Costs

While labor costs in different locales can mean up to 70% in savings for your firm, your firm stands to lose money if your outsourcing setup isn’t done correctly. Beyond simply sourcing talent from another locale, outsourcing helps you set up efficient, specialized overseas teams that can get the work done faster because of their distinctive knowledge in a specific service area. Pick a call center or outsourcing vendor with a history of success, active accounts and expertise in your areas of need – tapping into their product offering will give your firm the leg up on the competition and provide access to services otherwise not available to you.

5. Set Clear Expectations

Communication is key when working with an outsourcing vendor. Communicate and set clear expectations, deliverables and deadlines. Provide a business development plan and timelines and schedule regular touch-bases to make sure everything is running smoothly, especially in the beginning of your outsourcing engagement. This will help your BPO partners understand your goals and focus on what’s important to you. Rather than letting them read your mind, communicate your expectations and needs clearly to reduce execution errors and so your partner can provide the best service.

6. Face Challenges Head On

There will inevitably be challenges and roadblocks on your road to outsourcing. Evaluate possible risks in areas such as tech, legal, brand safety and business development and communicate them directly to your BPO provider. This will help you create opportunities for success and to avert the pitfalls that some firms fall into when outsourcing their work.

Call Center Staff

7. Maximize the Benefits of BPO

The ideal outsourcing partner will become an extension of your existing firm, supporting you at every turn. They will help you evolve your team, strategies and goals themselves to maximize sales, reduce costs and find new and service existing clients. You will need to continuously focus your efforts on your core business, and outsourcing will help take the strain of managing tertiary tasks off your shoulders. A smart outsourcing agreement sets your firm up for success and helps you focus on the core competencies which give your business its competitive edge.