What is an Inbound Call Center? – Services, Benefits & Challenges

Today, businesses offer various support channels for customers to contact them. One of the most convenient ones is voice calls.

Businesses use inbound call centers to handle these incoming calls.

In this blog post, we explore what an inbound call center is, how it can benefit businesses and successful implementation strategies.

What is an Inbound Call Center?  

An inbound call center is a department where incoming calls from customers and potential clients are handled and answered. It could be for offering customer support, collecting after-sales feedback, or generating leads.

The call initiated by customers through the contact number or website is routed to the agent.

Inbound vs. Outbound Call Center – How They’re Different?

Inbound call centers receive calls from customers, which are answered by agents. These calls are mostly related to product inquiries, technical support and leads generated through marketing promotions.

On the other hand, in outbound call centers, agents make calls to potential or existing customers. These calls are typically the result of sales and marketing efforts. For example, the sales team makes cold calls to reach prospects for lead generation.

Other purposes of outbound call centers include market research, upselling, verification, and more. 

Inbound Call Center Services

Inbound call centers cater to a wide range of business use cases for generating revenue and increasing sales.

Here are the most common use cases of inbound call centers:

→ Customer Support

Phone support is one of the quickest ways to get a response from the customer support team. In fact, research by Salesforce suggests that more than 89% of service professionals are contacted through phone support.  

Customer support teams rely heavily on inbound call centers to better understand their customers’ expectations. They answer product queries, understand customer issues and provide technical support. 

Inbound calls by the customers help improve customer experience through call recordings, voicemails and text messages, providing support at all touchpoints. 

→ Feedback 

Customer feedback is an essential metric for measuring customer satisfaction rates. You might have noticed plenty of businesses asking you for feedback through a link that you receive as a text message right after the support call. 

While most companies use email to record customer feedback, text messaging is a more personal way of asking for it right after the call. Using inbound call center software allows agents to customize their surveys and collect customer feedback. 

For example, GoDaddy sends a customer satisfaction survey through email or text right after hanging the tech support call. 

→ Marketing and Sales

Have you ever seen a website with promotions and limited-time offers that tempted you to contact the sales team? Companies with dedicated inbound call centers run these campaigns and prepare their agents for prospects’ inbound calls.

Inbound call center agents work in tandem with the marketing team to pass on the most interested prospects. Let’s say a company runs a promotional discount on its homepage, and the prospect makes the inbound call to inquire about the discount. 

This gives agents an opportunity to move prospects through the sales pipeline and turn them into potential customers. Inbound call center software also provides omnichannel support through WhatsApp, text messages, mail, and phone support. 

Benefits of Inbound Call Centers 

An inbound call center aims to improve the customer satisfaction rate while keeping various aspects together.

Here are the benefits of inbound call centers: 

1. Improves Customer Service 

Consumers want proactive customer service from the companies they buy from. Inbound call centers offer prompt response to the customer through the inbound calls. 

Be it minor product-related inquiries or critical issue resolutions, a dedicated team of agents caters to customers’ needs with personalized assistance in real-time.

Even with a large volume of inbound calls, inbound call centers can efficiently manage calls and improve customer satisfaction.

2. Boosts Customer Loyalty

Customers are more likely to be retained when they feel heard. When customers are stuck, they need a quick resolution for the issue. Through inbound call centers, customer support teams can provide prompt responses to customer issues and enhance customer loyalty. 

This is also crucial in strengthening relationships, which can be used to upsell products or introduce customers to a new offer or promotion.  

3. Round-the-clock Availability

An inbound call center is a cohesive part of a business with customers across the globe. You can’t afford to miss out on inbound calls even after working hours. That’s why a dedicated inbound call center offers 24/7 support to customers throughout the globe, catering to various time zones. 

Challenges with Inbound Call Centers

Inbound Call Centers offer great benefits but come with a set of challenges. Here are some common ones: 

→ Language Barriers

Many businesses face challenges offering support in multiple languages to their customers. This impacts effective communication and customer satisfaction levels. In fact, 68% of consumers would switch to a different brand that offers support in their native language.

Companies should provide multilingual support, train agents in the language, and use language translation tools to ensure seamless communication. 

→ Technical Issues

The major concern with calls is the technical issues that agents may need help with while connecting with the customers, which may lead to customer dissatisfaction and operational challenges. 

Inbound call centers should keep a check on their system downtimes and mitigate technical issues promptly. The agents need to be trained in troubleshooting the system and ensure that customers face rare downtime over calls. 

→ Unexpected Surges 

Sometimes, businesses might be flooded with a large volume of calls from customers. For example, a technical issue with the product or promotional offers. This could result in massive call drop rates and increasing customer dissatisfaction. 

Furthermore, inbound call centers may face ineffective manual routing during this time, resulting in longer call queues.

How to Build an Effective Inbound Call Strategy? 

Handling a large volume of inbound calls and optimizing call agents requires a robust strategy. However, it starts with equipping your agents with feature-rich Inbound contact center software. 

Here is a detailed breakdown of each of these strategies:

i. Use the Right Software 

High-volume Inbound call centers cannot merely function with a few phone devices and manual routing systems. As the incoming calls scale, you might need an inbound contact center software that suffices the need.

For instance, an automated chatbot can manage the callers in a queue or provide automatic routing to connect your call with the right departments.

The software should also include reporting dashboards with insights and visualization of agent’s call performance. 

ii. Regularly Train Your Agents

Keeping a team motivated and performing well in an inbound call center means making sure the agents are really into their jobs. When agents care about their work, they’re way more likely to give amazing customer service. 

For this, customer agents should be trained to treat each call as their personal milestone and ensure timely resolution. This should also be followed by assessing their previous performances and collecting customer feedback so that agents can improve with time. 

iii. Focus on Customer Experience

If the customers have a good experience with the call center, they are more likely to stay and recommend it to others.  This results in a reduced customer churn rate and a positive brand reputation over time, impacting the ROI positively.  

For the improved customer experience, the customer support team should be trained on bridging communication with the customers. They should have a 360-degree view of the customer’s past experiences and purchases to feel them personalized.

iv. Automate Where Possible

A blend of manual and automation tasks can result in higher productivity and better outcomes. For instance, using advanced call center software with features like intelligent call routing and interactive voice response (IVR) can significantly reduce manual tasks and enhance service quality. 

Companies should also focus on automating repetitive tasks such as call distribution and basic customer queries to reduce the dependency on agents. To streamline operations further, businesses leverage inbound call center software powered by AI that helps agents in real-time about the issues. 

v. Use the Right Metrics

Managers should regularly track call center metrics and KPIs to assess the team’s performance and identify areas of improvement and strengths. 

Using the right KPIs, such as average handling time, first call resolution rate, customer satisfaction score, and agent utilization, can provide valuable insights into operational efficiency.

Conclusion

An inbound call center can enhance customer service, boost loyalty, and provide cost-effective support. By focusing on customer happiness, agent engagement, and smart technology use, you can improve operations. Challenges may arise, but a solid plan can help overcome them.

An inbound call center is essential for maintaining customer satisfaction, whether it’s for IT support, direct customer assistance via a helpdesk or marketing products. Above all, it is essential to keep track of your KPIs and ensure your efforts are moving the right way.