The post POPUP 2 appeared first on Enser Communications Limited.

The post POPUP 1 appeared first on Enser Communications Limited.

Though over a period of time Work From Home( WFH) concept may turn out to be good, currently it is a myth since there is an increase in costs from WFH coming up for various reasons as well as the logistics of managing a widespread team.

Team Management

It is very challenging to manage a widespread and huge team remotely. Team management is the most difficult aspect of the WFH scenario.

Cyber Security Threats

This is going to be the single most important challenge for companies across the board, with information and databases floating all over, this is a real challenge, also to be able to put this to rest, the service providers are going to be incurring the additional cost of tools and software at desktop level to enterprise level plus consultants are being utilized to handle this real challenge. This is increasing costs too.

Increased IT Costs

The workload of IT professionals is increasing, especially BPO/Contact Center as they have to manage the process by managing the desktops of agents sitting remotely. Thus it increases the overall IT expenditure of the company.

Increased Incremental costs

Since the pandemic and WFH has picked up, over a period of time the expectation of employees, even though now working remotely, will demand an increment in salaries, as the requirement of employees with WFH scenario is increasing, and making it easier for employees to move over.

Doubling of Resources

Every employer has all infrastructures at the office and has now to organize the same for the employees to work from home too. This will add to the expenditure for the same including logistics of moving desktops, laptops, monitors, etc. to employee location. Needless to mention the additional costs of the equipment, transportations, loss of inventory if not returned, if an employee goes missing or leaves the company and doesn’t pay for or return the inventory.

Apart from this, most service providers who have implemented WFH, have been carrying additional inventories of PC’s, headsets, which if one liquidates is additional cost or loss in the capex of hardware, say for example if the PC (even if depreciated value) is around 15000/- post the pandemic’s one year time period is down to say a value of 6000 or so, so the Rs. 9000 per PC is the loss that the Service provider is incurring if he retains or even sells off the equipment, expecting it to be lying unutilised for still some period of time.

Lowered Service Quality Due to Bad Infrastructure

Generally, employees do not have quality infrastructure at their location. All employees may not have the most conducive environments at home to be able to serve the customers, this could add to lower sales volumes or bad quality of client interactions. Obviously, the infrastructure being used at the employee’s end will also bring about bad voice quality recordings, especially in case of contact center interactions, where it may be mandatory to store such customer interaction recordings for the requirements of the regulator. Imagine  someone that operates from a 1 room tenement, where in a family of 4 or 5 are staying together, how does one manage to be able to offer the environment of a top of the line, environment and infrastructure of an IT park with dedicated work area, conference, training facility etc. This will surely cause a dent in the customer experience.

Increased Telecom Costs

There will be an increase in the telecom costs to monitor the employees and talk to them multiple times a day. For example what could happen at a single location can split into maybe 20-50 interactions for each supervisor, instead of just a single one in a centralized location while assessing their results and activities for the day?

Also the service provider needs to provide additional cost of telecom and internet to the agents apart from handsets when they are operating from home, this is additional cost.

Also, we need to know that the arrangement that the service providers have signed with Telecom service providers are additional and in most cases are still operational apart from the telecom cost now paid to the employees WFH. In fact, an additional increase of telecom is also affected because of plan for a disaster management site either from own location elsewhere or through a cloud service provider.

Work Culture at the Employee End

The culture at the employee end may also be a challenge especially for employees that don’t have the vision to represent the culture of the organization since nobody is watching them, casual and laid-back approach of operating from home especially for the lower-end jobs could be a challenge.

Infrastructure Management:

Since there is no clarity on the lockdown timings and durations, it is becoming extremely challenging to manage the infra, as lease rentals are frozen and are slightly difficult to change, as it involves contracts plus the large sum of money as deposit, etc. So 1 month you could need infra for 300 employees, for which you have allocated an infra, with IT, Telecom, etc. and the next month, you may need to move to say 200 people to get them to WFH, this is easy said than done, as seen by the writer specifically in real environment cases. Now imagine the plight of service provider, where he ends up paying for more than 100 seat infra and the client is pushing for a reduction in costs for obvious reasons, while the service provider may be at times stuck with a larger infrastructure and not fully utilized and also paying the lease rentals for the same. Most service providers are working on the same with landlords, but this takes a while if there is a water-tight agreement in place.

However, looking at how the business scenario is changing, the service providers may have no other option but to move to such a scenario, or get ready for a hybrid model going forward. Both WFH and WFO have their inherent advantages, and a healthy blend should be maintained and customers should not get carried away in operating with just one scenario.

If there is a need with the current situation across the world, it now makes sense to plan for at least 50% of employees to operate from home, or to look at non-critical work to be WFH based soon, or even beyond the pandemic. There is a realization that corporate especially the MSME, need to plan for this going forward. The benefits for the same could be:

• Reduced cost of infra, and pass that to the customers, that are ever looking to reduce their costs in an ever-demanding environment from their Boards.

• Clarity to the service providers that they need to keep this quotient of WFH and WFO going forward.

• Increased tech tools to monitor as companies will have to look at designing tools for HRM, Monitoring, Workforce Management, Training, and Audio Video Conferencing, etc.

• Reduced admin costs like electricity, general admin, and office costs, etc. A reduced infra including generators and UPS could help meet the hybrid type of requirement.

Apart from this, the service providers will have to consistently work, to minimize the negative impacts of work from home and try and convert them into a USP going forward and maintain a healthy mix of WFH and WFO.

Rajnish Sarna

The writer is CMD of India’s leading BPO company Enser Communications Pvt. Ltd.

The post GOING FORWARD WORK FROM HOME appeared first on Enser Communications Limited.

A contact center typically includes services like inbound or outbound or a blended service but it may also include other forms of customer interaction like emails, web-chats, and social media interactions. A contact centers is often consolidated into the CRM (customer relationship management) strategy of an enterprise.

The contact center industry is growing at a revolutionary level as customers progressively expect businesses to be accessible on various channels, not simply over the phone. The multichannel approach permits contact centers to higher client experiences by refining client services, increasing potency, and raising their insights into their customers’ behaviors and desires.

Why is a contact center service so important?

A contact center service is very important as it is the only way to contact and connect with the customer. Customers may or may not purchase products from your online store, but as you’re not actually interacting with them, you may not know the reasons. They could visit your website, decide to buy, and even purchase some products without ever talking to a customer service representative.

They will have a good customer experience if the transaction is smooth and easy to complete but they may have a bad experience too. Are you even sure if you have really delivered exceptional customer service? In the process of making your business stand out, you need to interact with your customers to have their honest reviews and know their expectations. This will definitely help you in delivering the best customer services, otherwise, you may miss an opportunity to create a good customer base and manage customer retention.

Contact center customer service has become an important business tactic as it is the only way for you and your customer to get in touch with each other.

More on contact centre service, being the heart of a company’s business read articles  from Harihara Iyer, Director of a leading contact centre company, operating since 2008 out of 6 centers from Mumbai,Gurgaon,Bangalore,Jammu,Baroda and Sangli.

The post CONTACT CENTER- THE HEART OF THE CLIENTS BUSINESS. appeared first on Enser Communications Limited.

Outsourcing is when you give your project, activity to be managed by outside company to do the work instead of doing in-house. If you are still confused about how outsourcing can be a great tool for your business, then here are some of the benefits that outsourcing can provide.

Core Activities Focus When you outsource your project which can be handled by an outsourced team then you can focus on core capability of the company and make profit without sacrificing on the quality of service.

Access to on demand services Your outsourcing partner may help you with providing whatever services you need. Many companies provide multiple solutions like content writer, graphic designer, researcher, ads creator, software development, app development, contact centre or customer service as well as customer acquisition and many more. If anytime if you require services you can simply connect with your outsourced team that you need for your business requirements.

Saves your money The main thing when it comes to outsourcing is cost savings. Running a new business, you will need to invest a lot of money to get your operations running smoothly. Manpower can take up a large chunk of your funds. But if you outsourcing some of your operations, especially the non-essential tasks, you can save a lot of money, time and other resources. Sometime the expense of purchasing a new office or even renting cannot be an option, so it is most cost effective to outsource the project. If the growth of your business is based on new team setup so you can outsource the work, it is more efficient and less expensive than relocating.   Outsourcing can also lower the cost of hiring, on boarding, healthcare and benefits, payroll taxes etc.  

No employee-related issues to deal with when you are handling in-house project, you will constantly be involved in managing your team. Apart from this you have to look after the training and support of people accordingly. You not just support them professionally; you also look after them mentally and physically. You also need to schedule regular coaching session to check whether they are doing OK with their process. On the other side, if you decide to outsource some or a large part of your business process, you don’t have to worry about the people who will be handling the task. So the outsourcing company will handled all these for you. You will need to do is to specify what you need for your business and the outsourced company will handle the rest for you.

Lower Cost Businesses often think about outsourcing in terms of cost saving but outsourcing can do much more than lowering expenses. Outsourcing can promote your business and get new skills and can reposition your company in the market.

Flexible You can tailor the outsourcing solution to suit your business requirements, since it is outsourced , it makes it flexible for companies to modify the outsourcing needs and makes it easier to increase or decrease the nature of outsourcing the business, since currently the business environment is fluid due to COVID 19, companies find it more beneficial to outsource.

Rajnish Sarna

CMD, Enser Communications P Ltd.

The post HOW OUTSOURCING IS HELPING COMPANIES SCALE UP OPERATIONS appeared first on Enser Communications Limited.

Here is the list of what call center agents should and shouldn’t do during a customer interaction.

DO’S & DON’Ts OF CUSTOMER SERVICE

1.Having in-depth knowledge of product & services.

Agent should know all features and specification of the product; if the agent knows all the details about the product then it will be easy for the agent to pitch the right product to the customer or to help solve any query that the customer may have about the product or services. Product knowledge is key in attending to a customer.

2.Always listen to the customer

Customers will feel better about the experience if you show you understand the reason for their call and their query. You can provide more efficient assistance by first taking in all the information from the customer especially, so that you can avoid pitching in the wrong product or services and that you offer the right solution, if you have practice active listening you will seldom go wrong.

3.Follow a two way communication process

The agent’s main job is to communicate with customers; agent should allow customers to speak without any interruption. The agent should interact only after the customer finish up with their query. One must avoid the excitement of always wanting to speak over their customer.

4.Always Smile on the call

Smiling is one of the bestthing to go ahead in business. We actually don’t talk face to face on phone. While an agent can have as many interaction a day, but for the customers it’s the unique interaction. If you are happy on the call, the feeling will transcend into the interaction too. So keep smiling as often as possible.

5.Don’t keep call on hold for long time.

Keeping call on hold for long time always irritates the customers. It is suggested to keep talking to customer while searching for the information of their query. Priority of the agents is to get valuable feedback soon.

6.Take tips from a successful call center agent

Always take tips from senior or someone who is doing well. Sit aside with a senior on calls and listen to how they interact with their customers and handle the situation. By following their step you can add extra efficiency in your work. Benchmarking against the better agents will help improve your interaction and experience too.

7.Don’t rely on the script

A script is must for every call center agents. Every information should be jotted and highlighted on their script sheet. Don’t narrate everything from the script; it may sound robotic from user end. Only keeping sheet for reference is always advised. But, if in sales always be closing, even if you have not had the time to go through the entire script.

Later after the sale, you or your supervisor can complete dissemination of information, as may be needed.

8.Keep things transparent

Agent should update the exact status of their query, because customer always appreciates honesty. It is better to tell the customer that I will come back to you, if you are not sure of some features, benefits or details about the services etc. than trying to answer on your gut feel.

9.Never lose patience

While making inbound and outbound calls there are many people with different temperament and also customer take out frustration because of their own moods and complaints. So never upset a client because they might not need anything today but they might require it later in the future. If they have a bad experience with you, they will never make a purchase from you.

So always be courteous and sound friendly.

10.Don’t keep running to your supervisors for help

In some situation, customers want call to be transferred for supervisor’s assistance. Because they are not happy with our reply on their query, in this situation you and your supervisors answer should be exactly the same. Only go to the supervisor when you don’t have enough information and are sure that you are not able to provide complete solution to your caller or customer.

11.Use the customer interaction as your learning experience

 Client interaction is important part of your learning experience in a job, the more your interaction, the better you become in how to handle customers, so use this as your learning time. Each experience with client interaction will be unique.

The post DO’S AND DON’TS WHILE AT WORK IN A CALL CENTRE appeared first on Enser Communications Limited.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the best search engine giant that is of immeasurable value. Whatever information you want about your websites real time performance, like for example from where your audience is, their behavior etc you will get all such  information  from this tool.

Hootsuite

When it comes to social media posting and social media analytics hootsuite is the best option. Hootsuite is right there at top with million users. In hootsuite, you can schedule social media posts whenever needed.

Canva

For blog posting & social media posts you should have eye catching images to attract buyers. Canva gives you built in template to design all kind of graphic. It creates custom size and shape images easier, so many digital marketer use this tool.

MailChimp

Email campaigns is an essential part of digital marketing, and one best tool that can help you run them with ease is MailChimp. MailChimp, which has eight million daily users, has a straightforward platform structure that makes it so easy to use regardless of your experience in email marketing.

SEMRush

Tool that can help in SEOs for any website is tracking and improving search rankings in google.  With this built-in digital marketing tools Semrush, you can track not only your own site but your competitors site as well. You can have a good look into how their rankings fluctuate, the backlinks that they get from, and perform a full analysis of your competition using SEMR ush’s tools.

Wistia

The use of videos in digital marketing is getting more popular for social media posting and video ads. With this tool you can create more and more amazing videos every day. Even more awesome is the fact that there are many other platforms other than YouTube where you can publish your original videos. Wistia is one such platform.

The tool given above, some of them are free while some have advance versions with paid options. 

The post BASIC TOOLS FOR EVERY BUSINESS NEEDS appeared first on Enser Communications Limited.

How it will benefit your business?

Three out of four shop keepers find a business online, and seven out of 10 make an online purchase while classifying the business on GMB you will be visible over the globe. You will get many benefits for your business as listed below.

Interaction with customers

GMB give you many options for your customer to stay connected with you. Chat facility is available to connect with your customers. There is also a booking button on GMB that helps your customers place orders right away.  

Cost effective

As we already now, GMB is a free business listing on one of the biggest search engines on the internet, putting your business in front of many potential customers on google. GMB listing gives potential clients easy access to their  hours of operation, phone number, website and directions very easily.

Expand your market

Market expansion is a giant leap for small and medium scale business. Years ago, global reach of businesses was possible over a long period of time and lots of hard work. Today, with the help of search engine optimization, we can expand our business globally in just a few clicks. Optimizing Google My Business profile plays a major role. By managing your Google My Business along with other social media activities will help you reach a wider market.

Managing Information

GMB information will be very useful, anyone who would like to buy a product or service will read the reviews and move forward for purchase decision. GMB is a free tools which helps to manage information like working hours, website, google maps, searches. GMB provides a wonderful panel for your customers to leave positive reviews about your business.

The post IS GOOGLE MY BUSINESS IMPORTANT FOR YOUR BUSINESS appeared first on Enser Communications Limited.

Earlier, advertising methods like television, newspapers, outdoor advertising were being used. In todays times new technology, online platforms like website and social media have also become the most powerful mediums of advertising.   

Organic Marketing Process

Organic marketing is the process of pulling the customers without making paid marketing and tactical in nature. It is also called as Inbound Marketing, this advertising cost little to nothing to attract the customers towards your business. But it happens to be  time consuming process and where huge inputs need to be put in by the management team of companies.

Some of the best things organic marketing has to do are:

It’s free and natural way: You don’t have to pay for organic marketing. Organic marketing allows you to reach out to the customer right where they are through social media or if they are looking for any queries on a search engine.    

Build brand awareness: With organic marketing, we can get the word out about your business, the product and services your industry offers. Customer required many point of contact before making purchase decision so organic marketing helps make that possible.

Helps to drive more traffic: When you want more people to see your brand, a organic marketing approach can be helpful to drive traffic and generate cold leads.

Permanent traffic with organic marketing: The most relevant your content is for the users, the more likely they are to keep engaging in the content you produce and create a lasting relationship with your brand. Appropriate content will keep bringing your readers to your website.

Paid Marketing Process

As compare to organic advertising method, paid advertising give more website traffic & boost your brand awareness. With this method you can generate leads and sales for your brand. Once your audience is discovered you can retarget your audience who is likely to buy your products. You can customize your ads as per your requirement and target audience.

Let’s go through with some of the best things paid marketing has to do

Instant traffic with paid advertising: Paid advertising give you instant result, rather than build your audience over time. You will able to get detailed reports and targeting audience immediately.

Target your advertising more effectively: With paid advertising, you can get your ads directly in front of your target buyers: the individuals who are most likely to make a purchase of your product or services. On social media and other advertising platforms, lookalike audiences help you to target people that have the same interests and demographics as your current customer base.

A variety of ad options and ways to capture customers: Many types of targeting option is available in paid marketing.  With this option we can drive more click and ultimately get more sales. Also, most advertising platforms show only the most relevant ads to the customers and only charge you pay per click, so you’re only paying for ads that are actually successful. 

The post PAID OR ORGANIC WHICH MARKETING STRATEGY IS BETTER appeared first on Enser Communications Limited.

Some of the Examples of:-

1. Outbound voice recognition.
2. SMS/WA message’s to their customers on a transaction.
3. OTP for transaction confirmation.
4. Voice speech recognition tools.
5. Latest addition to this is a speech enabled dialer on a database for outbound or inbound calls.

The post ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & MACHINE LEARNING IN CONTACT CENTRES appeared first on Enser Communications Limited.