In order to reduce operational expenses, scale businesses, and streamline processes, a company utilizes smart working strategies like BPO – Business Process Outsourcing. It is a strategy through which an organization hires another company to perform a specific task. This service is commonly used to outsource the two main areas of business processes namely back-office and front-office functions. Outsourcing regarding the front office can be used for different functions such as sales, customer relations, and marketing. The back-office outsourcing handles functions like HR, chat support, IT services, email handling, etc.
Voice and Non-Voice Services in BPO
Both voice and non-voice services are the mediums of customer engagement leveraged through contact centers that are omnichannel. Voice services entail interactions with potential as well as existing customers via phone calls. On the contrary, non-voice services include providing customer support through SMS, chat, or email. Besides sales, non-voice also encompasses hiring, appointment scheduling, HR, notifications, technical support, back-office processes, and other duties besides sales.
Let’s discuss each in detail.
Voice Processes
Voice processes are commonly referred to as the telephonic interactions between your agents and customers throughout the consumer’s journey. These interactions include after-sale services, first-customer interactions, or technical support and troubleshooting. For agents to deliver voice contact center services, proficiency in the clients’ language and effective communication are essential. Additionally, having agents that speak multiple languages is crucial because contact center services are typically outsourced to countries that are more cost-effective.
Moreover, in order to ensure that each customer is able to understand an agent accent neutralization must be incorporated into the language proficiency, and agents should be familiar with their culture. Voice BPO mainly consists of two categories:
Inbound Calls
Calls that are initiated by a customer to a business are referred to as inbound calls. These calls may either be from current consumers seeking customer support or from your marketing initiatives for transactional objectives. Both the service staff and sales representatives may work in an inbound call center. As customer satisfaction is crucial to long-term retention and client conversion, it is their responsibility to answer all customer queries in a way that leaves them satisfied.
As per quality assurance, a few performance metrics include ASA, CES, CSAT score, FCR, and NPS.
Outbound Calls
Outbound calls are those made to prospects or customers for the purposes of marketing, sales, or sales offer to current customers. They could even be notifications, follow-up calls, or surveys. An outbound contact center starts an outgoing calling campaign with single or numerous messages.
Outbound calls not expected by the prospects, or the customers are known as cold calls. Warming up cold calls with an SMS, email, or other messages can significantly increase the likelihood that the recipient will respond. This is so because callers already get a reference of why they get contacted and who they are.
Moreover, agents need soft skills oriented to sales and persuasiveness in addition to language proficiency to run successful outbound programs. Depending on the campaign’s objective, the metrics used to measure the performance may vary. Some common performance measures include connects, conversions, attempts, quality, and completed presentations.
Non-Voice Processes
Customer service and involvement through SMS, chat, and email is regarded as non-voice operations. Live chat is the favored method of communication among non-voice mediums and has great significance. According to recent surveys and stats, customers are more likely to choose live chat support rather than email and phone support.
Usually, for queries and billing issues, consumers find it more convenient to communicate via SMS with their service provider. The same classification applies to customer support offered by other social media platforms.
It takes strong writing abilities to provide these services. Moreover, problem-solving abilities and product knowledge may also be requirements for the agents, depending on what a business is selling. Additionally, specialist skill sets might be required for back-office support resources in lieu of verbal or written communication.
Non-voice BPO processes include the following:
Email Support
Another important non-voice method is ticket support or email support. Businesses use email and chat support services in tandem to cater to the desires of a larger consumer base. When call support or live chat is unavailable during off hours, ticket generation fills in the communication gaps, offers solutions, or launches troubleshooting. This enables them to serve their clients and provide service around-the-clock.
Chat Support
Chat support or live chat operates in a way similar to that of inbound calls. The emails that arrive may either be for brand-new purchases or as technical support for earlier purchases. As per omnichannel call center services, customers can send messages via social media or the live chat feature to ask their questions. They frequently favor this method of contact due to the quick responses. Additionally, for efficiency, contact centers frequently combine human agents with AI technologies such as chatbots.
Knowledgeable staff offering the most suitable solutions also significantly contribute to improving the customer experience. Because of this, inbound calls and chat support performance KPIs are almost identical. These include AWT, CSAT, CES, NPS, and FCR.
Back-Office Work
Business tasks that are outsourced fall under the wide area of back-office work. Managing finances and databases, human resources, data entry, and staffing are a few typical back-office duties.
Conclusion
Regardless of whether a business is B2B or B2C, voice and non-voice operations are essential and should be its primary areas of concentration. Therefore, it is better to use outsourcing options for all contact center services. That way businesses can focus better on their core functions since BPO services manage their burden for them.
Success and expansion depend on upholding quality and keeping track of performance indicators for all communication channels. More businesses are collaborating with contact center service providers since BPO call centers offer everything from infrastructure to manpower, maintaining service quality, and training.
