Inviting customers to make contact:
How delivering better service means generating more revenue

Differentiating your products and services from your competition's is more complicated than ever. If you add functions or features, your competition can replicate them. If you lower prices, you could risk reducing revenues, sparking a price war and damaging your brand and reputation by creating the impression that price is the major reason to purchase from you.

Fortunately, there is another answer. Today, the most effective way to stand out in your marketplace is to offer the ultimate in customer service, before, during and after every sale. Whether you sell directly to consumers or deal with other businesses, your customers will remain loyal and recommend you to others if you:

• are available to them whenever they have questions
• make it possible for them to reach you by their choice of media (whether it's the phone, Web chat, text messaging, e-mail or fax)
• prove that you're responsive to their needs

So how do you deliver that kind of service without making major capital investments in hardware and software and employing new people to answer all those queries after regular business hours? There is a way.

The virtual contact centre

Instead of purchasing the software and hardware required to talk to your customers online and on the phone, you can subscribe to a hosted service.

For example, TELUS CallCentreAnywhere™ resides at TELUS, rather than at your office, which means you simply pay for as many "seats" as you need. Each seat enables someone to use the system, anytime, anywhere, with just a phone, a PC and an Internet connection. If you need more people during peak seasons or because you've grown, you simply add seats.

With a hosted service, instead of a huge capital investment up front, you:

• have access to the very latest, leading edge contact centre features for a predictable monthly fee
• don't have to hire new technical people to manage and maintain the system
• don't have to worry about technology obsolescence or upgrades to the system and software

Find the right features

If you're considering a virtual contact centre solution, make sure it provides all the features you're likely to require. Say you decide to extend your business hours by hiring people to work from home. You'll want a system capable of routing calls depending on the time of day. You may also want to add skills-based routing. This will allow customers to select the skill level they need from your agents. For example, someone who wants directions to your office will not need to take the time of your technical support personnel. Using a simple menu, you can ask your customers to dial 1 for hours of business and directions, 2 for sales, 3 for support, and so on.

What works for you works for your employees

As you've already seen, one of the advantages of virtual call centre technology is that your employees don't have to work from the office. They don't have to work from 9 to 5 either. This allows you to extend your business hours and your customer service, while offering your employees more flexibility. At the same time, it means you can hire people who would normally be too far away to work for you. You could even lower your overhead by employing personnel who live in an area with lower overall wages.

Most of all, it's what your customers want

Today, people are no longer just talking to each other on the phone. More and more of your customers are using text messaging, online chat and e-mail. Knowing this, who do you think they'll be more likely to purchase from? The company that's open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and only advertises a local phone number, or the company that offers them a choice between calling from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and communicating anytime via their computer keyboard or mobile keypad?

In short, to raise the bar on your competition, you have to give your customers what they want. And what they want is for you to be available to them and to offer them the ability to talk to you their way, not yours.