Why does your local business need an Inbound Call Centre today?

  

It is a fine Sunday morning, and you are spending your much-awaited weekend scrolling through your Instagram feed when you chance upon a macrame wall hanging with the exact shape, colour, and size requirements as you wanted. 

In excitement, you land on the original seller's page, which turns out to be a local business dealing with macrame-based offerings. At once, you call up the mentioned contact numbers to discuss the purchase with the seller.

This is an example of how inbound customer calling works for local businesses. Irrespective of the initial channel of intimation (whether through Instagram pages, Yellow Pages, or word of mouth), an inbound calling system serves as the primary line of communication between the seller and the customer. 

Reliable communication channels with the customers serve as the foundation of any successful business, and the phone remains the most popular one.

Inbound calling centre

When a customer, vendor or any other stakeholder who needs any information or assistance regarding your services or products, generates a call, it’s called an inbound call. Therefore, businesses establish an inbound call centre to manage, segment, and route such calls to available agents trained to handle these calls. There is a relatively clear distinction between inbound and outbound call centres, which often gets blurred due to the existence of hybrid call centres which incorporate the features and responsibilities of the two types of call centres. 

As discussed above, inbound call centres are responsible for receiving and managing incoming calls from customers or vendors. Businesses train their agents to provide customer support in terms of complaints, queries, or information. 

On the other hand, outbound call centres generate outgoing calls from the business to the customers. These calls may extend from follow-up calls on customer complaints to targeted marketing campaigns to cold calls for customer feedback. 

Inbound call centres have become a common trend across multiple industries, including hospitality, tourism, healthcare, and e-commerce. They fulfil a wide variety of purposes, some of which are the following:

• Customer support

  Businesses can establish an open line with their customer base to provide support in crisis or need through inbound call centres. Customers can call up the agents if they require information about the available services/products or need instructions on how to complete a specific process. Accordingly, agents can be trained on the specifications of the offerings so that they can effectively handle such support calls.
  

• Product marketing

  Customers can also be informed about new products and services by agents during short sales conversations. Such inbound calls can be coupled with targeted mass broadcasting of new offers or upcoming sales. Furthermore, access to the customer's shopping history can enable agents to push more products similar to the cart purchases.
  

• Complaint redressal

  The execution of service delivery is riddled with several logistical and operational issues. During such scenarios, the worried customer seeks out the inbound call centre agents for redressal of grievances. Agents can be enabled with a real-time view of operations to help customers with queries ranging from potential ETA, cancellation queries, and delayed deliveries.
  

• Scheduling purposes

  Industries such as healthcare and hospitality are incomplete without a complete reception, which can receive customers calling about future appointments. Such inbound call receptions become their first line of contact with their direct customer base. Businesses can also employ these calls for a host of purposes ranging from rescheduling to cancellations. 

Inbound call centres can either be set up on the premises, enabling them to sit in one place and work. This can be achieved by implementing the legacy PBX or premise-based phone system, which can collect and route inbound calls to the respective agents.

In the modern age, cloud solutions have enabled businesses to set up remote inbound call centres wherein the agents can work from their homes through an internet-enabled device. 

There are multiple tools and software that are indispensable to the effective functioning of an inbound call centre. These can be integrated either with analogue or digital cloud communication systems and are used to handle incoming calls and callers. Some of these are:

1. Local and toll-free phone numbers are unique numbers generated for a business whose incoming calls' cost is paid for by the business itself. Thus, inbound callers are given an indirect incentive to seek out professional support from the company agents whilst ensuring that your business stretches its footprint over the local phone directories.
   
   

2. IVR solutions act as customisable call managers that can collect, segment, and direct the incoming calls to the agents, as per their availability. These systems can be configured easily to manage huge incoming volumes so that no call goes unanswered and the agent's time can be used more flexibly.
   
   

3. Live dashboards can collate, calculate, and maintain critical daily metrics regarding the incoming call centre’s operations. Supervisors and managers can view the live status of all inbound calls and active agents. Similarly, agents can view their individual and team performances regarding quantities such as % calls completed and missed.

Impact on local businesses

The need for reliable and effective customer communication channels is relevant to national corporations and local businesses. Irrespective of the operation's size, building a brand image is instrumental in establishing a constant connection with the entire customer base. An Inbound call centre can impact local businesses in the following ways:

• The focal point of your brand

  The overall brand image of any local business is determined by the quality of products and service delivery and the manner of customer handling by the business executives. A positive customer experience can significantly mould customer expectations. Therefore, trained agents skilled at managing incoming calls must maintain the overall brand image and integrity.
  

• Greater conversion rates

  Publicity-driven, positive customer experiences generate excellent buzz in the entire community and drive more customers to consider the services or products for purchase. Industry reports suggest that 85% of customers will put forward a good word for any business if they have had a positive experience altogether. Thus, it directly impacts the effective bottom line of any local business through the positive ripple effect.
  

• Retention and repeat buys

  Customers rarely stray onto the path of experimentation and often stick with the tried and tested products. Therefore, creating an excellent first impression on the customers is very important to ensure repeat buys and retain customers. At least 47% of customers purchase more from the same seller after a positive experience. Driving brand loyalty amongst more customers enables them to buy more.
  

• Gathering customer insights

  An inbound call centre also helps to understand the shortcomings in the current operational setups through customer grievances and support calls. Understanding the pain points in the customer experience through the conversations enables businesses to tailor their product offering as per the customer requirement. Further, this also lets the customer know that their voices are heard by the sellers and makes them feel like an active part of the solution.

Inbound call centres can lead to more meaningful conversation and retention rates whilst allowing for greater customer participation in the betterment and execution of the available services. All of these factors are important for rising local businesses in the modern global business environment.