Live Operator Answering Services

Live operator answering services are costly to run, especially if you're doing business in the domestic United States. That's why more and more U.S. corporations--particularly small and medium-sized businesses--are farming telemarketing work overseas. Telemarketing outsourcing, as it's commonly known, has its benefits and drawbacks, but industry momentum is clearly in favor of outsourcing.

You can assist your live operators by employing what’s known as IVR--integrated voice recognition--to assist with spacing out customer calls and reducing the number of so-called easy to reference calls. Of course, an overreliance on IVR can prove annoying to customers. It might be smart to build in an override for clients who don't have time to get stuck in your operator holding queue.

Training Your Live Operators

One interesting tactic which some companies now use to discriminate between normal callers and agitated callers is to expedite frustrated customers first. The way this works is that, when a frustrated client throws a “fit” over the phone--say, she presses the zero button 10 times a row--the IVR system automatically recognizes this person as a “frustrated caller” and puts her through to the operator faster. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this innovative IVR approach may help assuage customer frustration.

Another way to make your call center work smoother is to take care of your operators. Most overseas call centers work their agents hard and don't offer appropriate breaks. If you do use outsourced labor, make sure that you employ fair management tactics. Stressed out or psychologically defeated operators are less effective in terms of managing their clients.