5 Unique Ways You Can Save and Make Money by Outsourcing to An Expert!

In the next set of blog posts I’ll outline how many companies can cut costs and improve sales even in a down economy! The idea is to capitalize on efficiencies so that you can concentrate on the areas your company does best. It makes sense to outsource, save money and increase sales and customer satisfaction all at the same time.

I’ll focus each blog post on a specific service that Time Communications offers in the hope that you will find a solution to one of your needs here, and take advantage of our cost savings to increase business for you.

Save With a 24 Hour Answering Service

When a professional courteous person ALWAYS answers your phone, even during the holidays and weekends, you will save money. An employee will never be as dependable as your phone answering service because it is always on time and never calls in sick. This means no more wasted days interviewing a receptionist only to find that they are going to quit a couple of months later.

This also means you will no longer need a receptionist on the payroll. That saves you money right away. With a phone answering service the customer can call in the middle of the night and get a real person on the line, so you never have another missed call.

Take a look at some of the benefits of 24/7/365 customer service support.

• Dispatch of service, emergency, or technical support personnel.
• After hours, weekend, holiday, overflow coverage.
• Dedicated receptionist during normal business hours.
• Live operator answering service.
• Medical service bureau.
• Message delivery service.
• Toll-free telephone answering service.

Employee Time and Attendance Tracking

Now, more than ever, it has become necessary to manage time and attendance accurately. The traditional time clock does not meet the needs of the modern work environment, where employees frequently work from home or multiple locations.
Consider an unbiased third party, available around the clock, to help you gather, track, and trend information.

Do you need to know ahead of time who will be late or absent, for optimal utilization of your resources and manpower?

We can be your time clock, allowing your employees an avenue to “punch in or out” or have a way to call in sick/late if needed. We’ll set up a dedicated line for your employees to call when they expect to be late or absent. We will gather the data you are looking for, create the desired reports, and send those reports to you using the delivery method and frequency of your choice.

Best of all, our service will quickly pay for itself in time savings, reduction of time theft and elimination of payroll errors.

Engage a Virtual Receptionist

A virtual receptionist lets your customers think they are talking with your front desk instead of a remote location. It also makes smaller companies seem larger, and eliminates the costs associated with hiring a receptionist. Virtual receptionist services eliminate missed calls by allowing 24/7 live agents to take the calls that your staff misses, either while on another call, busy with a project, or away from their work area. Virtual receptionists can work with e-mail, fax or call transfers. The options are endless.

Face it; hiring a receptionist is expensive. You have to pay a salary, employer taxes, benefits, recruitment costs, retention costs, and training costs. You have to provide and maintain office space, computer, software, phones, copiers, faxes and furniture. The alternative is to hire a virtual receptionist at a fraction of the cost, saving money while maintaining the level of service you expect for your customers.

Remember that your virtual receptionist will not need to leave for lunches and vacations! Save money on benefits, taxes, and insurance so that you can focus on what you do best! A virtual receptionist can connect the caller directly to you no matter where you are, or we can "text" the message to your wireless device, email it, or place the message on voice mail for you to retrieve at your convenience.

Outsource Your Help Desk

If toll charges are costing your company an arm and a leg, you can save thousands of dollars annually on long-distance charges by streamlining your help desk and support services. Provide your customers, partners, and suppliers with 24/7 support on technical issues, and you will increase customer satisfaction levels and customer loyalty. Try using an online customer-service tool that enables your website visitors to communicate with customer service personnel using text chat or voice over IP.

Customers can click on a help button, which rings the computer of one of your help representatives. Then the customer can chat, speak, or leave an e-mail asking for help. Most customers choose the chat feature.

Call center agents can provide answers to commonly asked questions, built on a logic tree. This database of “Frequently Asked Questions” can be modified at any time to meet your company’s needs.

This can be a huge time-saver for your customer service department; giving technicians much needed time to spend on more difficult issues. If we’re unable to solve your caller’s problem we can forward a message to you or, if necessary, we can connect the caller directly to you. In either case we will assure the caller that the right person, with the right answers, will get back to them shortly.

Use Web Based Order Taking Services

One misconception about order taking is that “if you want a job done right, you’ve got to do it yourself”! Order taking can easily be outsourced, freeing your valuable staff for more essential functions. This cost saving measure is easy to implement and can be done quickly.

Make sure you choose an order taking service that works on a 24/7/365 basis, with the capacity and capability to handle any call volume and any size of product catalog - from a single product to large catalog orders. You will probably want an order taking service which will work through your existing e-commerce website or using your own proprietary system so that there is no duplication of data entry or possibility of errors.

You can train call center agents on all your products to ensure that every order is complete, including shipping/handling, credit card verification and validation, cross-selling, up-selling, state taxes and billing information. The idea is to increase the percentage of calls that convert into actual sales, so you can also explain the use of cross-sells and up sells to these call center agents.

Messages can be delivered to different departments within your company, depending on the nature of the call (i.e., place an order, check on the status of an order, customer returns and callback requests) thus streamlining sales and fulfillment channels.

With some input from you and a scripted frequently asked questions document, call center agents can answer questions related to your business both easily and thoroughly, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of your customers’ calls, and saving you money!