Virtual Call Center

“There's a reason your customers call you: They want to buy something; they want to ask you something; they need help with something they've bought from you.”

Hard to argue with that common sensical position stated on the Contactual (News - Alert) blog. If your customers call you for any other reasons, well, we’d be interested to hear what they are.

But that’s not it, of course: Sometimes you call your customers. As Contactual said, again it’s a rather brief list of reasons: “You want to sell them something, you want to find out whether a payment is forthcoming, you want to be sure they're satisfied so they'll come back and buy from you again and again.”

And again, we’d be interested in hearing any other reasons you might have for calling your customers. Uh, depending on your line of work, that is.

Keeping customer relationships in a healthy state is one reason why a cloud-based call center is so appealing. Done correctly, it can integrate with your CRM applications such as Salesforce CRM or NetSuite (News - Alert) quickly and relatively painlessly.

Once they sign on, with a well-done cloud-based call center, your agents should be able to get a 360-degree view of the customer they're connected to. As Contactual puts it, “They know who's calling, what they've bought, what issues have recently been resolved or are pending. It gives your team to power to handle their calls quickly, efficiently and knowledgeably.”

If you’re not using cloud, by this point, you have to know why you’re not using it. As Contactual says, Gartner (News - Alert) put cloud computing at No. 1 on their Top 10 Strategic Technology Areas for Growth in 2010. For comparison purposes, this is where e-business was ten years ago.

In the blog post Contactual briefly lists the advantages of cloud call center software applications, noting that they offer click-to-dial capability directly from the CRM app, customer CRM records "popping" onto agents' screens automatically, increased operational efficiency by prioritizing and routing calls based on data stored in your CRM system and integration between call center software and your CRM apps, letting agents toggle between the two.