What Is An Inbound and Outbound Contact Centre?

You may have heard the terms outbound contact centre and inbound contact centre, but what does each mean? What are the benefits of a contact centre being both outbound and inbound, and why do companies outsource these tasks to contact centres? Here at VeriCall Solutions, we want to explain the differences and why we’ve found encompassing both has been a great benefit to many companies across the UK. Firstly, we need to address the elephant in the room. What is a contact centre?

Here at VeriCall we think the term ‘contact centre’ is out of touch. Everyone thinks of a contact centre as people answering phones. But in this day and age it is much more than that. With the growth in online and digital contact channels such as live chat, facebook messenger, whatsapp and more your old contact centre is now your ‘engagement hub‘ with your customer base – and why we rebranded our site as an engagement hub in 2019.

When 2020 brought the world to a standstill, but catapulted online advertising, sales and customer service forward faster than the speed of light, you would think the idea of a hub, for in or outbound calls, was a dying culture.

However, it seems the world adapted and grew, but didn’t let go of its need of the good old telephone customer service and sales. It seems no matter how interactive our customer experience has become (you can check out VeriCall’s full range of omni-channel CX solutions here : https://www.vericallsolutions.com/services/omni-channel, many customers are still craving the familiarity and confidence that speaking to someone on the phone brings.

What is an inbound engagement hub?

Inbound hubs are receiving contacts from existing customers of a company. These are generally under the term Customer Service or Support teams. These contacts are usually issues customers are experiencing with a product or service of a company, and there is a high expectation of rectification and answers from the individuals answering these calls. It is paramount in order to maintain a good customer experience, that these expectations are met – no pressure!

What happens in an outbound engagement hub?

Outbound hubs are the people proactively contacting your customers or potential customers, usually to sell the products and services of a company. The emphasis is usually to drive up the sales of a company by ‘cold calling’ potential customers from legitimate interest data sets or contacting existing customers to ‘upsell’ products and services. This is a major tool for any business in order to grow their customer database and increase revenue. It’s also that first encounter with many customers, so the experience they receive is really important - again, no pressure!

Why outsource inbound or outbound hubs to another company?

As touched on before, the experience your customers and potential customers have during these interactions is pretty imperative to ensure the growth of your business. Outsourcing these customer service channels may seem crazy, trusting a third party with an important future factor of your business. You may feel that the best person to discuss and sell your business is, at the of the day, you!

But how do you find the time, money and staff to cover the needs of the company? As a business owner, you need to oversee the entire running of the company. Handling these types of calls isn’t a practical solution to meet these needs, and let’s be honest, you’re too busy. So, do you look to creating an in-house team for handling customer service? We know that finding the right person for the job can be hard at the best of times. Additional training may be required, and how many people do you need to employ to ensure your customer’s needs and the sales growth of your company are met? We know the cost of employing many members of staff is quite high, so by using the services of an engagement hub for these tasks, reduces these costs and allows your company to focus on the work.

If you are trying to provide these services in-house and are finding it difficult, outsourcing your inbound and outbound calls to a company that specialises in these services, could be the relief and support you need. Is it starting to sound like it’s relieving the pressure? It’s vital when outsourcing your customer services to a third party to do your research. Find out exactly what your company needs. Find a suitable BPO company (Business Process Outsourcing), that adheres to your company’s values. These could be ensuring every call is answered and being a UK-based company. Find out more about our BPO services at VeriCall Solutions here: https://www.vericallsolutions.com/services/outsourced-services.

So, what is an inbound and outbound engagement hub, and what are the benefits of using one?

As you’ve probably already worked out, an inbound and outbound engagement hub, like VeriCall, encompasses both inbound and outbound contact aspects. Having a one stop company to cover all your inbound and outbound customer service needs. This is a team of highly trained individuals responding to your business’ queries and complaints, as well as driving the sales of your company forward. Sounds good right? By having the same company for both inbound and outbound contacts, you only have to maintain one line of communication of your business’ products, services and values. Again, this is saving you time and money that can be associated with taking on multiple staff members to do the same role, or paying for the services of separate inbound and outbound centres.

The main benefit of using an inbound and outbound engagement hub, is that the hard work of recruitment has been done for you! A good BPO company will have a well-trained team of great communicators, who are customer service focused, ready to staff the phones specifically for your business.

This is a dedicated team, speaking to your customers on your behalf, all day every day. Improving your sales, increasing your customer awareness and database, and giving your company time and money to focus on the products and services you provide.

Having a highly skilled workforce is half the battle when it comes to customer service. At VeriCall we’re so focused on the importance of our customer service, we’ve won awards! And we ensure this level of service is applied to each and every call we make or take for our customers. You can read more about our awards here: https://www.vericallsolutions.com/articles.

Not sure you need inbound and outbound call centre support for your business? No problem, at VeriCall we want to work with you to achieve your goals. If this is only inbound or outbound call centre support, we’ll happily help improve your business’ achievements through this customer service channel.

Learn more about VeriCall Solutions as an inbound and outbound call centre today by visiting our site: https://www.vericallsolutions.com or get in touch: https://www.vericallsolutions.com/contact

Back