TO SETTING UP ASIMPLE

CALL CENTER

AN EXHAUSTIVE GUIDE

Table Of Contents

3 Introduction

4 What is the primary purpose of your call centre?

2GUIDE TO SET UP A CALL CENTER

12 What are the metrics you’d like to measure?

13 What’s your budget?

14 How Businesses in India Use Cloud Call Center.

16 5 Simple Steps to Set Up a Cloud Call Center.

Introduction

3GUIDE TO SET UP A CALL CENTER

A. What is the primary purpose of your call center?

B. What are the metrics that are important for your business?

C. What is your budget?

Think about the following before setting up a call centre:

We speak to thousands of clients every month. One of the most commonrequirements businesses have is to set up a simple call center. A place for customersto call in when they have queries. For any business, it is way to keep the customershappy.

Multiple modes of customer interaction have opened up in the last decade includingemails, live chat, social media, etc. However, most customers still prefer a quickphone cphone call to resolve a problem.

This guide will help you understand the process involved in setting up a customersupport center. We have a list of questions, a checklist of sorts, that will help youarrive at a decision that works best for your business and customers.

4GUIDE TO SET UP A CALL CENTER

You intend to use this call centre for customer support over phone calls. If that

is the case, you’re possibly doing one of 3 things right now:

a. Using multiple mobile phones or a landline number

b. Using an EPABX system

c. You’re starting from scratch and have no set up at the moment

1. Customer support call centre

2. Sales hub (making outbound sales calls)

3. Sales support call centre (receiving sales enquiries)

4. All of the above

Let’s go through all of them one at a time

There are a few possible answers to this question:

You’re trying to set up a simple call centre for your business. But before you get

started, the most important question you have to ask yourself is this - What is the

primary purpose of my call centre?

WHAT’S THE PRIMARY PURPOSEOF YOUR CALL CENTER?

If you’re running a small call centre using an EPABX system, there are the problems

you must be facing:

i. High setup cost

ii. High maintenance cost

iii. Very long turnaround time for changes

iv. Information black hole regarding your customer conversations

v. Lack of customisability

An EPABX system is like a telephone exchange. Think of what you can do with a

simple landline phone that is run by a telephone exchange. You can receive and make

calls. While that works perfectly fine if your phone number is something you need for

people to reach you, it does not fly when you have to use your phone for customer

support.

The reason it does not work is that you have no information about the clients who

aare trying to reach you. What if customers have called you after you’ve left for the

day or when you’ve stepped out for lunch? What if your road is dug up and your

phones stop working for 15 days?

These are all scenarios we have dealt with, and this is what makes an EPABX system

unreliable for customer support.

5GUIDE TO SET UP A CALL CENTER

If you’re at “c” at the moment, you’ve come to the right place. You can get a simple call

entre set up and get started in less than 30 minutes. And since you’ve come to us while

you have no setup, it is safe to assume that you’re leaning towards setting up a

cloud-based call centre. If you’re confused, read on. In about two mins, you will have

the clarity you’re looking for.

Try It Yourself!

6GUIDE TO SET UP A CALL CENTER

If you’re currently using multiple mobile phones and landlines to run your support,

you know that is inefficient and only adds to the chaos. When you use multiple mobile

or landline numbers to run support, here’s what happens:

i. Multiple numbers floating around causes confusion with customers

ii. Missed calls due to lack of tracking

iii. Scattered customer information

iv. No way to keep track of follow-ups or reported issues

Channels decide how many parallel calls you’ll be able to make or receive. You don’t

want to be missing calls just because your cloud telephony provider doesn’t give you

enough channels.

7GUIDE TO SET UP A CALL CENTER

Learn more about IVR

While this sounds like a basic feature, it is something you should definitely have.

An IVR greeting along with some help on picking the right person they need to

speak to forms a positive impression in the customer’s mind within 30 seconds of

calling you. This also helps you customise the experience for every customer who

calls in.

Make sure you have clear and easily understandable prompts. Don’t make your

custcustomers wait for too long on the line. No one likes to listen to a machine talk

endlessly.

When you’re seeking to set up a simple call centre for customer support, these are

some of the features you should look for

8GUIDE TO SET UP A CALL CENTER

What if a customer calls you after office hours and realises that no one is around to

answer their call? Can you get this client to leave you a voicemail?

We can not stress enough on the importance of listening customer conversations.

These conversations are a gold mine of information. They help not only in

gathering customer feedback but also refining your process.

You can also use these conversations to train your agents better. Recordings of your

customer calls also give you an accurate picture of how your company deals with

customers. Acting on this information goes a long way in improving customer

ssatisfaction.

If your first agent is busy when a customer calls, you need to be able to transfer

the call to the second agent in line seamlessly. And this needs to happen fast.

To the end user, they should only hear the phone ring, listen to an IVR message

and speak to an agent.

9GUIDE TO SET UP A CALL CENTER

As your business grows, it makes sense for you to invest in a good CRM and a

helpdesk software (if you’re planning on setting up email or live chat support).

In that case, it helps you integrate your phone calls with this software as well to

ensure that your customer information is not scattered.

As someone who runs a small business, you must be juggling multiple things at the

same time. Ensure that your phone system can notify you about events that are

important for your business. For example, with Exotel, every time you miss a

customer call, we can send you an email or SMS notification letting you know that

you did not attend a customer call.

Your systems must be able to identify when a customer calls after office hours and

play an appropriate message. This message will let the customer know that they can

not expect an immediate resolution and will have wait until business hours the next

day. Sometimes, setting the expectations right is half the battle won.

When you receive a call from a potential customer, they need to find your sales team

and speak to the right person without wasting time. That’s why it is necessary to have

a multi-level IVR with clear instructions like Press 1 for sales, Press 2 for support, etc.

It does not matter if you have the same set of people manning both sales and support.

Having it laid out in a clear manner like this helps the customer believe that you’re a

professional company who will take care of their needs in a timely and orderly fashion.

Call Routing

Unlimited channels

Time based call routing

Voice mail Notifications

In addition to

10GUIDE TO SET UP A CALL CENTER

Features you should look for:

Some of the features you’ll need have already been explained above:

The sales team of a company is vital not only because they are the revenue generators

but also because they are the ones that directly interact with your consumers. When

sales conversations are carried on over the phone, it becomes necessary to track and

analyse conversations, understand agent productivity and predict the sales cycle.

Exotel is largely an inbound company. So, our inside sales team plays a significant role

in talking to customers who are interested in buying Exotel. In fact, we are one of the

bbiggest users of Exotel ourselves. So, here’s what we have learned from our experience

of selling for nearly half a decade.

11GUIDE TO SET UP A CALL CENTER

Missing a call means losing a potential customer. With Exotel, you can link your

phone system to your CRM and these will get recorded in the CRM as leads.

You can use either calls or SMS to collect feedback from customers at the end of your

call.

If a potential customer’s phone number is in the DND or the Do Not Disturb registry,

you should still be able to call them. On Exotel, we help you “whitelist” these numbers.

Here’s a detailed writeup on how we can whitelist numbers on Exotel.

What if you can send your customers reminders about their trial period or send them

event based SMS?

12GUIDE TO SET UP A CALL CENTER

You can use either calls or SMS to gauge your customer satisfaction level. Here is a

detailed write-up on using calls or SMS to measure C-SAT

Number of calls missed

Number of calls answered

Number of calls made

Total minutes of calls answered

Total minutes of calls made

Number of calls answered by an agent

NNumber of callbacks

Amount of time spent on calls

Distribution of calls through the day

Group-wise distribution of calls

Here are the two most commonly sought after metrics to ensure your call centre is

performing well:

Using Exotel reports, you will have access to the following metrics:

Agent Quality

Customer Satisfaction

WHAT ARE THE METRICS YOU’DLIKE TO MEASURE?

If you have a limited budget to spend, cloud telephony is your best bet. With Exotel,

you have plans starting from as little as Rs. 9,999 and with pay-as-you-go plans, this

is your best value for money.

Everything else in your consideration set, EPABX, setting up your own PRI lines, etc.

is more expensive.

The answer to these 3 questions will help you arrive at your decision on the kind ofThe answer to these 3 questions will help you arrive at your decision on the kind of

system you should go with for setting up a call centre.

orSign Up & Get Rs 1000 Credits

13GUIDE TO SET UP A CALL CENTER

View Pricing

WHAT IS YOUR BUDGET?

-Nandini Viswanath Director of Customer Care, Urban Ladder

Exotel enabled us to avoid missing any calls. We now have the data of callers, so even if we miss a call, Exotel sends us alerts and data to call the person back right away.

NOT MISSING CUSTOMER CALLS

-Kumar Vinod Sr. Manager, Operations at Redbus

We used traditional PBX system for our call center. But that doesn’t have thecapabilities of Exotel’s IVR system.So, we decided to use Exotel for our IVRcancellation system.”

IVR TICKET CANCELLATION

14GUIDE TO SET UP A CALL CENTER

HOW BUSINESSES IN INDIAUSE CLOUD CALL CENTER.

15GUIDE TO SET UP A CALL CENTER

-Sanjiv Singhal COO, Scripbox

They (Exotel) have been an integral part ofScripbox’s journey so far. Their turnaroundtime is very quick and they support us eamlessly with our contact centre operations.

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

-Bharath Devanathan COO, Nearbuy

Due to the fact that Exotel is a cloud telephony solution we spent zero on developing an infrastructure and even with a large variety of solutions that Exotel has to offer, it was pretty easy to configure.

VIRTUAL CALL CENTER

-Tarun Sharma Head- Operations, Box8

We use the app builder to build differentcall flows for our various outlets. We also usethe call recording feature quite a bit. It is great to be able to go back and listen to our customer conversations.

CUSTOMER INTERACTION

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5

Create a Call Flowby Simple Drag & Drop

Applets

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Set Up an Exophone.Your Virtual Number

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SET UP A CLOUD CALL CENTERIN 5 SIMPLE STEPS