Business 101: Outsourcing Order Taking Services

The introduction of outbound telemarketing had assisted companies to effectively handle services such as appointment setting, cold-calling, b2b lead generation, lead nurturing and the likes. When customers continue to flow in the firms sales pipelines, the need for an efficient customer service support enlarged.

Now, inbound call centers sprang to life to cater every customer inquiry and their problems. Among the many services they are offering is order taking. Through the aid of telephone, customers across the world have the privilege of placing an order at daylight or eventide. With telemarketing service provider as business partner, companies are rest assured that every order dialed by every prospect is taken care of.

Order taking services administered by outsourced inbound call centers has been the best method to excel all the way, whether a firm is service-oriented or a manufacturing plant. This is so because telemarketing firm aids its client company to focus on core business. Consequently, internal departments of the organization function smoothly and proficiently.

The broad order taking services can be broken down into: online order taking, order processing service, phone order taking, web order taking, sales order taking, live order taking and appointment scheduling.

A host of assistance can be given by a call center to its client firms. Included in the array of these services are:

• Order Processing
• Catalog Orders
• Product Recall
• Subscription Services
• Media Analysis
• Cross selling and up selling
• New Product Information
• Product Technical Information
• Promotional Product Handling

Add Live Chat To Your Answering Services

One of the things we do with our time is chatting. Be it face-to-face, over the phone, snail mails, telegrams or instant messaging, engaging in a dialogue is a leisure made fun by everyone. With the twenty-first century technology breaking the barriers of time and place, there are lesser impediments to exchange “hellos” anywhere and anytime.

Truly, live chat has offered good changes in the way people interact and communicate. Utilizing this as a front line method in marketing campaign is a welcoming and beneficial idea.

Most people are comfortable with telephone as one of their means of communication, both personal and professional. However, younger generations have been avid users of the Internet, whether they are searching for information or confirming a friend request in social networking sites. Therefore, when prospects are with their PCs, notebooks and laptops, it would be necessary to broaden customer service through live chat.

To add, more and more people resorted to online venue to buy goods and services. For the record, e-commerce websites such as Amazon and eBay generated billion dollars of annual sales.

When prospects are browsing the Information Superhighway, the best that companies can do is to make sure that someone is going to answer the prospects' concerns. With this, more opportunities enter in the sales pipeline and resources will be used efficiently.

Just like a live answering service through the telephone, live chat ignites human touch for your firm's website. Let the company explore all avenues where it can offer customer service support.

How Do You Choose A Reliable Answering Service Provider?

If you own a small company or a start up business, are contemplating on having a small business enterprise, you might want to consider hiring an answering service. This call center service is widely-used by businesses because it helps them create a professional image and it saves them good money that would have been otherwise spent on hiring and training more people for in-house telephone tasks that they cannot attend to personally. But how do you choose a good answering service company?

Use the Internet. The world-wide-web offers the easiest and quickest way to learn about anything and everything, including answering service providers. You will discover that there are thousands of providers to choose from with just a few mouse clicks. Make a note of those that seem to fit your phone answering needs.

Do a little research. You can also check with the Better Business Bureau (BBB) for the company's legitimacy. Read customer reviews. Visit the company's website and find out what clients say about the provider's services. You want to make sure that the answering service company is reputable and not fraudulent, and that they can provide your customers excellent service on your behalf.

Check for the best rates. Of course, you would not want your hard-earned money to be spent on unworthy services. Check out the going rates and prices and see what services your money can have. Most answering service providers provide options or packages to fit the size and budget of the company.

When you're sure about the company's reputation and the rates are reasonable, work diligently with that provider in order to achieve the best results from your answering service. After all, the reason for hiring such a service is to enhance your company's image and provide excellent customer support, not the other way around. An unreliable provider can not only jeopardize your customer relationships, you will also waste time and money.

Answering Service Can Do Wonders For Your Business

It is quite surprising to find a busy professional or a business enterprise that does not have an answering service. In today's modern business world, there is a need for professionals to have at least an answering machine. Where business transactions are involved, it is best to have an answering service in place to manage all customer calls. No matter what reasons they have for calling in, it is vital to have the necessary tools in order to provide them with superior customer service.

However, how do you choose the right answering service to suit your needs? The answer depends on what it is that you need to accomplish. If you require a service that can make schedules and take appointments for you, you require a live person and the technology to perform the task. There are professional answering services that can do just that. The good thing about professional answering services is that they are absolutely customizable, so you can select one from a range of services that matches your needs.

Different types of answering services have been developed to fit the needs of everyone. Whether you are a professional always on the go or a business owner who operates a very busy firm, there is an answering service that can work for you. There are answering service companies that are capable to handle incoming calls with LIVE operators, 24/7/365. There is no need to make excuses or miss business opportunities. Choose from high-quality answering service providers that can take care of your business with efficiency

Is Your Business Up To Speed?

The way businesses are conducted nowadays is a far cry since the pen last saw the paper. The words 'rolodex' and 'filofax' are now a thing of the past (as I’m even sure a lot of you don't even know what those things are), and is now replaced with a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). Today, the postman is breathing easier as his load of letters has become lighter thanks in part to the E-mail, the Internet, mobile phones and the SMS.

Thanks to modern science and engineering, businesses has changed drastically over a short period of time. The question being raised now is ' Is Your Business Up To Speed?' Are you, as a business-owner, taking advantage of these new technologies to survive the cut-throat world of marketing and commercialism?

Enter the order taking call centers for flower shops. It's actually designed to help them deliver quality service through a timely response to customers' inquiries and orders. Not just because they eliminated the pen and paper system in traditional order taking, but because the answering service call centers focus more on tasks like answering calls and order taking. Flower shops could focus more on running their shops, and even more on their core businesses, while not being interfered with successive phone calls from their customers. Accommodating customers with their concerns would no longer be an issue. Answering service call centers would guarantee that their business communication goes without any hitches.

An effective order taking and answering service handled properly would gain customers' trust that definitely adds up to the reliability of one's services. If this happens, naturally, what would happen next is that other people would also know about you through the customer's word-of-mouth, thus increasing the chance of having more potential clients. Flower shops that hire answering service call centers are more likely to retain their loyal customers because of exceptional customer service skills by meeting their needs on time. Because of the staff that is specifically tasked to do the order-taking and phone answering – there are no missed opportunities for making sales.

Order taking answering service is not just for flower shops but for any service-oriented enterprise as well, like pet grooming and supplies, restaurants, confectioneries, specialty food, insurance or pizza delivery.

A Rolodex is a rotating file device used to store business contact information (the name comes from the words 'rolling' and 'index')

A Filofax is a trademark name for a personal organizer it's also a datebook containing space for addresses, a calendar, and specialized inserts, as maps and checklists.

Call Center Order Taking Services for your Business

You could see huge benefits from contracting with an answering service call center, if any part of your business is over the phone then, order taking services are a key step in the sales process between you and your customer. If you fail here, you've failed to make a sale, and that is the last thing any business needs to be doing in the current challenging economic times.

Let's get to brass tacks, when it comes to taking an order via phone, you need a very reliable agent ready and waiting to take the call at that very instant. If you get the business you want then you can't afford to have employees answering the phone in their spare time - and you can't afford to just employ one person on the phones.

Here's a fun fact: 70% of new customers will hang up if the phone is not answered within 20 seconds. To close a sale, you need to make sure that your business answers the phone quickly and effectively. If you value your business and the profit it brings, you will not delegate your order taking tasks to an answering machine. An answering machine cannot and will not answer any question or concern a customer calling-in may have.

The first step toward a successful order taking service is getting qualified order taking call center agents. An order taking call center must place emphasis on training agents to take down orders accurately at a galloping speeds as callers placing orders will not enjoy repeating them without feeling the irritation. The BPO agents have to key in orders accurately, efficiently and in an error-free manner. The manufacturer cannot deliver them if the agents are not taking down the right orders. The brand value of the client will suffer as there will be customer complaints on the service. It’s not just important to receive the orders; it’s equally important to process it as well. Processing the order would mean running it through the right channels so that the correct department is reached.

Unless your company has very deep pockets, then the best option for bagging those sales is to obtain the services of an order taking call center. You get the services of a fully dedicated department with none of the costs by integrating their order taking systems with your own database,.

A couple of benefits they bring include:

Order taking agents available 24 / 7 all year round.

Compliance with industry regulations

Tailor your contract to fit the needs of your business

Possibility of expanding then hiring multilingual services

When someone picks up the phone to get in touch with your business, the hard part of sales is over. Can you really afford to strike out because of something as elementary as a busy phone line or an out-of-office call?

Think Outside the Box with Your 24 Hour Answering Service

You can have the live operator answering your phone lines and sell more of the products and services you want to sell. All you have to do is write down a script of exactly what you want the operator to say and she can view it on her monitor every time a current or prospective client calls. The live operator can answer with your business name and follow with, for example, special pricing on air conditioners if you're an electrician, discounted meal times if you're a restaurant, newly arrived products in you're a retail store. And you can drive more callers to your 800 or local phone numbers by advertising in newspapers or on the Internet and having those numbers answered by live operators who make the order-taking for your product or schedule appointments for your services.

Financial Answering Services

A financial service answering service understands the special needs of financial service firms and customers. All finance businesses benefit from an answering service by offering around the clock customer service and support. Banks need an answering service 24 hours a day that is secure. Brokerage firms need an answering service to keep in touch with their customers in good or uncertain markets. Customers may prefer a domestically located answering service.

Getting that incoming call answered promptly and professionally with a live operator that is willing to help your caller now, will pay off for your bottom line. Partner now with a financial answering service.

Reason to Use a Phone Answering Service: Versatility

Anyone would want to use a phone answering service for their businesses. Wondering why?

“Versatility is Strength.” With a phone answering service, you have the option to receive only the calls you want, when and where you want them to. You can also avoid talking to sales people who you think are just wasting your time, energy and effort. With the business phone answering service’s versatility, you have the capacity to receive every business calls when you are not even around to answer them. This also eliminates the chances for your business to miss its opportunities with potential customers by having all the chances answered.

Connect more effectively with your customers. Grow your business with CallboxConnect.

Types of Answering Service

The concepts behind answering services and how it works are not new to us. But while the answering service has been with us for a long time, its capabilities and equipment keep evolving as business demands changes and technology advances.

Answering Service providers often offers services from these categories:

* Live Answering Service
* 24 hour Phone Answering Service
* Internet Answering Service
* Call Center Service