OnBrand24 has continued its steady growth to the point where we need additional office space here in the Cummings Center, Beverly, MA. By April we expect to occupy a total of 20,000 square feet to accommodate 225 workstations and more than 250 employees.
Our growth has been company-wide: both inbound customer service, order processing and help desk call center services as well as outbound B2B lead generation, appointment setting, customer win-back and customer surveys/database scrubbing and market research. It’s a reflection of the effectiveness of our customer service specialists and B2B lead generation professionals who deliver our call center outsourcing service, along with our strong management team.
Our success can also be attributed to our call center services business model: Premise-based representatives (no home-based staff); an advanced agent model that provides our clients with experienced, talented representatives for their programs; dedicated senior managers who maintain our “boutique” culture, which means delivering custom programs for each client and giving each client direct access to our management team.
All signs point to continued growth in the future. I wouldn’t be surprise if we’ll need additional space in 2014.
Mark Fichera, CEO
OnBrand24
Call Center Services
Beverly, Massachusetts
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We recently implemented a new call center services system from Five9, a global contact center software company that pioneered the use of cloud-based computing in the call center industry.
No doubt you’ve heard about cloud-based computing, and you may have implemented it already at your company. Or you might want to find out more about it, in which case, here’s a good primer.
Here at OnBrand24, we decided Five9 technology could enhance our goals of maintaining the highest call center services quality standards while also bringing greater operational efficiencies and cost controls.
For starters, Five9 software is pre-integrated with many of the leading on-demand CRM solutions used by our clients, including SalesForce, RightNow, Lead360 and NetSuite.
For another, Five9 is architected for a high degree of reliability and fault tolerance, leveraging redundant phone carriers, internet connections, hardware components, and software servers.
It enables us to conduct more in-depth historical reporting to gain insight into our call center services performance, using over 100 customizable reports on ACD queues, agents, calls and campaigns. Five9 also uses personalized dashboards, views and alerts to generate real-time performance statistics and feedback.
And it offers a contact history database with contact information and prior call activity available for IVR applications and at agents' fingertips while handling calls.
Five9 also helps ensure a positive call center customer service experience by enabling OnBrand24 managers to silently monitor order taking and help desk conversations, and enable either whisper coaching in real time or post-conversation consultation with our customer service specialists.
Five9 released its first hosted inbound call center services software in 2003, and its solutions are used across all of our clients’ industry sectors: retail and e-commerce, manufacturing, healthcare, insurance, financial services and technology.
Taken together, Five9 is an excellent addition to the OnBrand24 technology infrastructure.
Mark Fichera, CEO
OnBrand24
Call Center Services
Beverly, MA
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Senior managers commonly view outsourced customer service, order processing / order taking and help desk call center services as cost centers. But beyond delivering improved inbound customer service, customer loyalty and brand awareness, outsourced call centers can also increase revenue and profits – if you have the right call center strategy – the right call center perspective – in place.
Here are strategic guidelines for maximizing your call center outsourcing service strategy and growing your company’s bottom line.
• Align the Call Center with Your Company’s Goals
To get the most out of your call center outsourcer you need to work in tandem with them, bring them inside. Create a true partnership, not just a vendor relationship. Tell them about your vision, your objectives and your corporate, product and services messaging.
Tell them how you want your company to be perceived. What distinguishes you in the marketplace, what are your most effective sales messages? What are your vulnerabilities and how are they most effectively overcome?
Get together with your marketing department. What product launches and marketing campaigns are in the offing? How can the call center services provider support marketing’s goals?
Make sure the call center services provider understands the valuable role it plays. Talk to them about the value of each customer, about the revenue the average customer represents each time s/he makes a purchase, highlighting the importance of delivering excellent customer service and instilling customer loyalty. The message: the customer who is treated well will be a return customer, and this is a priceless asset to the company.
Introduce the call center to your service manager. What is the price of a maintenance contract? How many are lost because of poor customer support?
• Align Outsourced Call Center Services with Your Program Needs
It’s one thing if you have a relatively straightforward product or customer service need that does not require a great deal of skill from your customer support specialists. But it’s different if your customer support needs are complicated, or if you have significant sales order maximization opportunities that require advanced upselling and cross-selling skills from your order processing representatives.
So calibrate your call center outsourcer’s capabilities to the level of the need you have.
• Training Is Crucial
Managers are often at a loss as to who will train outsourced call center representatives to work on their programs. The answer: you. No one knows your products, messages and brand better than you. So no one is better qualified to pass on that knowledge to the call center you hire.
Equipping your call center services representatives with the knowledge and messages that support your company’s business goals is critical to getting the most out of your outsourced provider. In addition, well trained agents are happy agents because there are equipped to do their jobs well – whether they are providing outsourced customer service, order taking or help desk services. Happy agents tend to be stable employees who remain with their call center, delivering long-term pay-back to you.
• Continual Coaching is Key
Giving feedback to the call center outsourcing services provider is an absolute must. This means making sure your call center services company can provide you with recordings of their representatives. Listen to the recordings and provide feedback on the good and the bad of those calls.
Think of your inbound call center program as a work in progress. It’s never finished. You and your call center services program managers should look for ways to continually improve the program, test new messaging, try new tactics. Besides, looking for ways to improve your program keeps everyone engaged and on their toes.
• Everything Is a Number
This means everything an outsourced call center services company does can be captured and analyzed within a framework of call center services performance metrics. They measure your program KPI’s: average speed of answer, number of transfers or escalations, time taken to resolve the customer’s issue, abandonment rates, average sales order size, increase or decrease in customer service complaints. Make sure your call center services provider has the technology infrastructure to capture these data and provide detailed, frequent reports that let you track your program’s progress. The objective: create strong customer loyalty at the lowest cost.
Implement these principles and your call center outsourcing service will be an effective, efficient contributor to your company’s strategic goals.
Mark Fichera, CEO
OnBrand24
Call Center Services
Beverly, Massachusetts
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One of the most enjoyable aspects of running a call center services company is meeting talented, driven and innovative entrepreneurs about to embark on new business ventures.
We encounter business visionaries on a regular basis. In many cases, it’s surprising no one else is already doing what these entrepreneurs are about to pursue. But that’s often the way it is with the best new ideas. In retrospect they seem almost, well, obvious.
Nevertheless, coming up with a great new idea is only the initial aspect of getting a start-up off the ground. There are host of other challenges: finding talented managers willing to throw in their lot with the new company, raising seed money from venture capitalists, hiring staff, renting office space and keeping operating costs down as the company attempts to take flight.
This is why an outsourced call center services company makes sense for a start-up. It can deliver the entire call center infrastructure – customer service specialists, B2B lead generation and appointment setting agents, telephone and technology infrastructure – with minimal complications and at minimal cost.
Start-ups typically don’t know the scale of the call center services program they will need because their idea is new and market uptake is yet to be seen. The new company might get off to a fast start, or it might need time to find its footing.
Either way, the outsourced call center can quickly scale resources according to the start-up’s call volume. If it’s high, we can add agents to the customer service and order taking team. If it’s low, we can keep the team small. This flexibility eliminates the problem of hiring too many or too few new employees to man the phones, answer emails, engage in live chat or call potential customers.
Most of the entrepreneurs we partner with like to meet with us frequently as their start-ups evolve. This is smart. Good call center programs are dynamic, particularly for new companies. After the initial market launch, their key marketing messages, unique sales propositions and product offerings are likely to change frequently.
They bring that real-world feedback to us so we can adjust their call center services programs accordingly and update our agents assigned to their teams. And we have feedback for them, based on what we hear from their customers.
There’s nothing more exciting than seeing an entrepreneur’s vision confirmed by a strong start in the real world – and then continue to grow. We share in their high hopes and enjoy being an important cog in their blooming success.
Mark Fichera, CEO
OnBrand24
Call Center Services
Beverly, MA
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You see it in email blasts and web sites all the time:
Cold calling is dead.
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When you look at call center companies’ web sites and see the smiling, perfectly coiffed people, you might ask yourself, “Who are these people?”
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Everyone in the retail ecommerce industry eagerly awaited Cyber Monday 2012, which was expected to be the best ever. And it was.
Online spending on Nov. 26, the first work day after the Thanksgiving weekend and considered the year’s busiest online shopping day, reached a record $1.5 billion, according to market tracker ComScore.
That was a rise of 17 percent over Cyber Monday of last year.
Here on the front lines of customer service and order processing, OnBrand24 felt the impact of the boost in Cyber Monday consumer activity. Our company set a single-day record for inbound call volume.
These are calls from customers of our retail and ecommerce clients seeking to place orders, ask product questions, find out how long their orders will take to arrive and other customer service and order processing-related inquiries.
In short, we were a beehive of call center outsourcing service activity.
Cyber Monday was just one day in what has been a very active November. We have been busier than ever so far this holiday season, as reflected in increased online sales on Thanksgiving Day (a 32 percent increase) and Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, (up 18 percent).
All of this has resulted in a significant expansion of our staff and the expansion of our floor space at the Cummings Center in Beverly, MA, 20 miles north of Boston in eastern Massachusetts.
With November closing so strongly, we’re looking forward to a record setting December.
Mark Fichera, CEO
OnBrand24
Call Center Services
Beverly, Massachusetts
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Clients of call center services outsourcers have a right to know the details about the program their vendors are providing. In fact, clients and vendors need to work in close partnership to build, maintain and continually adjust successful call center services programs. And the basis for this is detailed, frequent reporting.
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Oct. 16, 2012 - At times I question the value of some social media, but there’s one site that I find consistently invaluable: LinkedIn. Among its best features are its groups, which let members exchange ideas with other professionals in your industry.
For anyone in the call center services industry, I strongly recommend the group called “Contact Center Operations & Management.” Here’s a recent discussion topic, which those of in customer service outsourcing will find interesting:
If you had to identify the top three most important customer service skills that are a must have for your service reps when interacting with the customer- what would be your top three?
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