How To Provide 24/7 Customer Service Without Working Around the Clock

Offering around-the-clock customer service help is something most customers expect companies to provide. In fact, 75% of customers expect a resolution within five minutes when contacting customer support for help. 75% also rate fast response times as the highest factor in a positive customer experience. 

The thing is, one person or one team can't provide 24/7 support, which means it's time for more creative solutions.

Many businesses get stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to customer service. You've got an influx of calls and not enough staffing or processes in place to keep up with them, or maybe you don't have the budget and infrastructure to hire an entire in-house team.

Scaling a team can be difficult, especially for small companies. Even if you're not overflowing with calls, offering 24/7 customer service is a vital perk to add to your company as more and more customers are looking for "after-hours" customer service help.

Failing to meet clients’ expectations is detrimental to any brand. It will result in bad reviews, a poor reputation and dissatisfied clients.

How To Know if Your Business Needs 24/7 Customer Service

It’s time to dive into your analytics and reports to see if 24/7 customer service help will benefit your company and customers.

First, do a little check of your company's current position: 

Are you available on all channels? Are you meeting quotas or expected service levels (SLAs)? How many calls are going missed and emails unanswered per day? Are you receiving negative feedback from customers who don't hear from you?

The biggest downfall of the typical 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. structure is that it's very inconvenient for clients who aren't living in your time zone. And if your business has prospects from all around the globe, offering 24/7 client support is vital to having satisfied customers. Another thing you should consider is providing client care in their native language — especially if you have an influx of calls from the same country. 

Another pitfall of the standard working hours is problems usually don't wait for your office to open. They can happen anytime, anywhere ... and some of them could be urgent. 

Expanding your customer service team and offers can help improve sales, increase customer happiness and boost your reputation. When your customers' needs are pointing toward around-the-clock customer service, it's time to start looking for ways to provide that.

4 Ways To Provide 24/7 Customer Service

There is no better time than now to start offering readily available customer service to your prospects and customers. 

Utilize Remote Workers

Even before COVID, work-from-home jobs were becoming more popular. Now that many companies and industries have embraced remote work, it's easy to find remote employees to help expand your customer service team.

You can hire remote workers from all around the globe, which is especially helpful for overnight shifts. Hiring remote workers in foreign countries is the most beneficial way of covering America's overnight hours — that way, the workers will be working in their standard working hours.

Remote teams can also bridge any language gaps you see consistently (i.e. many Spanish callers with no one on the team who speaks Spanish). Offering customer service help in multiple languages (if it makes sense for your business) is a smart choice, and it will make the whole client care experience more personalized. 

Hire an Overnight Team

An in-house overnight team can be costly and risky, but it is still an option. Consider the cost it will take to pay for the whole team, any benefits if they're considered full-time, the expenses to keep lights and electricity on all the time, etc.

The good thing is, you won't need to pay for more desk space or equipment because they can work at daytime employees' desks. If your overnight team is more extensive, you may need to hire a manager or find someone trustworthy. You are leaving them your office in the most vulnerable hours, after all.

If your brand is small and just starting, chances are you probably don’t need an entire overnight team of full-time workers. But if you have many calls that come in overnight or you need additional help with answering emails, this would be beneficial.

Before considering this option, make sure to write down all the risks involved.

Work With an Answering Service

Outsourcing work to a partner, like an answering service or call center, can help you handle your after-hours customer service inquiries. It is usually the most convenient option, as you're handing your business to a professional while not having to pay as much money as you'd spend implementing other solutions.

Answering services can also help with more than just answering phone calls. Many of them can make outgoing calls to help with business development, schedule appointments, send out reminders, answer emails and other secretarial duties. It’s like having an entire team working for you without the risks that in-house employees bring. The answering service will handle your phone lines on nights and weekends so that you don't have to worry about another sales call going unanswered. 

Another perk is if your company has a specific script or verbiage to use while communicating with clients or has a certain "vibe" you'd like to obtain, an answering service will tailor their communication style to your brand.

The cherry on the top is hiring an answering service is significantly less expensive than hiring an in-house or remote team, as they generally charge only the time spent answering your calls.

Implement Automated Systems

Another convenient solution is an automated system. Nowadays, many computerized systems can walk customers through specific steps on the phone — like Southwest Airlines. They give you many options via an automated system so you don't have to wait for a customer service representative. Clients can do things such as check flight status, check rewards and more.

It will also enable you to stay available when customers need you the most, similar to an answering service.

According to 99 firms, 41% of consumers rated live chat as their preferred channel for contacting support teams. That means if you are not available for chat help when customers are shopping or close to purchasing, you're missing almost half of your opportunities for sales. Depending on the nature of your products and services, using live chat could set you up for success.

Start Offering Around-the-Clock Services for Your Customers and Prospects

Knowing what options you have available is crucial to making a knowledgeable decision for your business. When researching solutions more, be sure to keep your budget, location, wants and customer needs in mind. After all, their needs are of utmost importance.

Don't implement remote help in other countries if it's not needed or use an automated chat system if it doesn't get utilized. In most cases, the least expensive and most beneficial option is an answering service. 

If you opt for this solution, you'll be paying inbound calls on a per-minute basis. There are different types of services as well that you can cater to your needs. 

So, how much does it cost to hire a call center? That depends.

For shared calls — where a large team of operators answers the phone — the price range is usually from $0.90/minute to $2.50/minute. If you choose a more dedicated approach, where a smaller group of operators answers the calls from one company on a per-hour basis, the additional price range goes anywhere from $20–$28 or $30–$50 for international calls.

There is A Better Answer for your needs.

2023 Buyers Guide

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Dialer Solutions

 

1.)

Premium Listing Call Center Studio Call Center Studio Call Center Studio is the world’s first call center built on Google and is one of the most secure and stable systems with some of the industry’s best reporting. It is one of the most full-featured enterprise grade systems (with the most calling features, one of the best call distribution, outbound dialing features and integrations—including IVR, AI Speech Recognition, blended inbound/outbound calling and includes Google’s new Dialogflow and Speech API. Call Center Studio is the absolute easiest to use (with a 10 minute setup), and is the price performance leader with lower equipment cost and less setup time.

2.)

Acqueon Technologies Inc. Acqueon's AI-driven conversational engagement software enables sales, marketing and service organizations to engage in emotionally connected dialogs with customers via their channel of choice for significantly improved results. The Acqueon suite adds multichannel campaign management, contact center analytics, desktop, and CRM connectors for your contact center software of choice, including Amazon Connect, Cisco, Nice inContact, and Twilio. Acqueon conversational engagement software leverages the Acqueon IQ platform to aggregate data from the various applications, assemble rich customer contexts, and drive next-best-action using powerful statistical and predictive models.

3.)

Avyukta Intellicall Consulting Pvt. Ltd. Dialer CRM VoIP CTI Cloud Solutions We are a single roofed solution for Dialer / Hosted Dialer / VoIP / CRM and CTI Solutions . With 300+ call center clients in above 9 countries and recent features such as : Dynamic custom agent crm popup avatar module 10+ Custom Reports Cloud Telephony with/out "Host your Trunks" option and End to End CRM on the cards we are supposed to grow exponentially within the next 6 Months

4.)

Cloud IT Services GmbH Dialfire Dialfire offers you a complete call center solution that is simple and intuitive to use and adapts to your needs. It's completely cloud-based, saving you the hassle of setting up a phone system and installing software. In addition to predictive dialing and call blending of inbound calls, you can create personalized campaigns through an intuitive and easy-to-use interface. Features include automated workflows and full control over the agent screen. You can see the full list of features here:

5.)

ComSys S.A. CList for Outbound Campaigns Management CList by Comsys is an application that helps contact centers enhance the performance of their outbound campaigns. It accomplishes that by enabling the planning and execution of sophisticated communication strategies. Additionally, the AI-powered module of CList extends the possibilities of outbound campaigns delivering unprecedented results. Comsys is a provider of οmnichannel customer engagement solutions that assist companies around the world in delivering unique customer experiences. For the last 15 years, Comsys designs and implements complex projects for clients from the outsourcing, financial services, telecommunications, and retail sectors. Comsys enjoys strategic partnerships with t... (read more)CList by Comsys is an application that helps contact centers enhance the performance of their outbound campaigns. It accomplishes that by enabling the planning and execution of sophisticated communication strategies. Additionally, the AI-powered module of CList extends the possibilities of outbound campaigns delivering unprecedented results. Comsys is a provider of οmnichannel customer engagement solutions that assist companies around the world in delivering unique customer experiences. For the last 15 years, Comsys designs and implements complex projects for clients from the outsourcing, financial services, telecommunications, and retail sectors. Comsys enjoys strategic partnerships with technology vendors like Cisco®, Aspect Software®, and Microsoft® for the delivery of innovative interaction management and contact center optimization solutions.

6.)

Consilium Software Consilium UniCampaign™ Reaching the right person with the right information on the right channel at the right time is a tall order. That’s the power the new Consilium UniCampaign™ has been adding to Cisco outbound contact centers, easily tripling or quadrupling results, from improving digital customer acquisition to managing post-sale customer relationship. Delivering proactive outbound engagement in a game-changer product, Consilium UniCampaign™ is an omnichannel List and Campaign Management (LCM) solution which complements the strength and robustness of Cisco's Outbound Dialer with the implementation of multichannel (voice, email, and SMS) outbound contact strategies. The new 7th release of UniCampaign™ is des... (read more)Reaching the right person with the right information on the right channel at the right time is a tall order. That’s the power the new Consilium UniCampaign™ has been adding to Cisco outbound contact centers, easily tripling or quadrupling results, from improving digital customer acquisition to managing post-sale customer relationship. Delivering proactive outbound engagement in a game-changer product, Consilium UniCampaign™ is an omnichannel List and Campaign Management (LCM) solution which complements the strength and robustness of Cisco's Outbound Dialer with the implementation of multichannel (voice, email, and SMS) outbound contact strategies. The new 7th release of UniCampaign™ is designed to automate all elements of outbound campaign execution, including business workflows, prioritization of contact channels, and handling responses from contacted leads via multiple channels. UniCampaign™ provides a turbo boost for Cisco contact centers outbound dialing with the most powerful set of multi-level filters and threshold-based campaigns, real-time one-touch control over stopping and resuming dialing, and across-the-board actions which can be applied to all campaigns or selectively. The Consilium Callback Manager module, known as UniCBM™, is an intuitive callback management solution integrated within UniCampaign™ for contact centers to end long hold times for customers during peak call hours. Our customers wanted to create data-driven outbound contact rules, based on client profile and propensity modeling, data on digital interaction preferences, and insights from external data sources such as CRMs and social media. UniCampaign™ has native integration with CRMs like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics to drive seamless import and export of calling data and dialing in a FIFO (first-in, first-out) or LIFO (last-in, first-out) fashion. If your CRM already has integration to online channels such as your website, Instagram, or Facebook, your online leads can get qualified by preconfigured business rules and called, emailed, and / or texted without any human intervention. UniCampaign™ is trusted by 100’s of clients across key verticals, ranging from top Fortune 500 and global organizations to industry-leading startups, helping them provide an entire canvass to communicate with customers, whether it is for sales through web or social media campaigns, deepening loyalty, improving cross-sell purchases, or debt collections resulting in proactive customer experience (CX) across all outbound digital channels. New features at a glance • Right Party Connect Optimization (RPCO) to make result-oriented calls that meet business objectives • Option to monitor real-time progress of each campaign using UniCampaign™ Dashboard • Multi-campaign disposition where agents can disposition call outcomes independently for each campaign • Enables Right Party Connect (RPC) by displaying all campaigns mapped to a specific contact • Multiple emails and SMS campaign templates for sending appropriate emails and broadcast SMS • Callback Manager (UniCBM™) to reduce the impact of customer abandon rates and calls waiting in queue, resulting in higher customer satisfaction

7.)

contactSPACE contactSPACE Dialer software that makes customer contact pain free, so your team aren’t worried about complex technology and can focus on what they do best. Dramatically increase agent productivity using a variety of dialers, combined with AI, leveraging data-driven contact strategies to ensure the right agent is contacting your customers at the right time. Take control, and ensure your team are on-message by designing the perfect agent interface with a drag-n-drop visual WYSWYG editor. Rotate CLIDs, and auto-wrap certain calls to ensure maximum agent productivity and performance.

8.)	CTCOMM Genesys PureConnect Genesys PureEngage Tegsoft

9.)

Cloud IT Services GmbH Dialfire Companies of all sizes rely on the cloud-based call center platform Dialfire and its powerful predictive dialer. Dialfire is ready to use within minutes and easily personalizable. From small ad-hoc to large multi-step campaigns, Dialfire offers high scalability. Adapt customer masks and automate workflows per mouse click. Integrated scripting and APIs ensure a smooth connection with external systems.

10.)

Megacall Megadialer With Megadialer you will get a customized call center software. With the creation of personalized questions, surveys and sales script you will have the information you need from your customers quickly and efficiently. Improve the performance of your agents with a 100% online contact center, real-time analytics and predictive dialer to optimize the time between one call and another. All rates include: Instant Call Reports On-Demand Recording Call Supervisor Call Layout after Completion Your Own Caller ID Call Monitor Automatic Re-Calls Automatic sending of Mails Incoming Call Management Real-time Activity Panels Call Lists for Agents Different Levels of Administration

11.)

Noetica SmartBound™ Advanced outbound solution including predictive dialing, featuring patented technologies such as Live Person Detection (LPD™) and SNoDrop™ using Artificial Intelligence to deliver compliant & effective predictive dialing with 0% abandoned call rates. The solution includes its own CRM system as well as visual campaign creation and management as well as automated data import and export capabilities. The package comes with highly visual and open call scripting technology and an SDK (Software Development Kit) is also available for embedding the dialer into your own user front end.

12.)

Nuxiba Technologies CenterWare Discover Nuxiba's all-in-one dialer solutions. Either predictive or automatic, our software adapts to your business needs with a powerful and easy-to-use system. We offer TCPA compliance options, so you never have to worry about issues with the law and PCI Data Security so you can protect your cardholder's data information during every call. Stop worrying about technicalities and focus on the most valuable aspect: giving the best service and customer experience with our intuitive features. All of our features and modules are fully adaptable to any business needs. Obtain the benefits of using software fully tailored to your business, start saving money, and boosting your productivity.

13.)

PhoneBurner PhoneBurner Reach more contacts, in less time with PhoneBurner. Powering thousands of client and millions of calls, our cloud-based software eliminate repetitive tasks so agents have up to 4x more live conversations. Unlike other dialers, PhoneBurner delivers 100% delay-free connections with no awkward pause. Conversations start off with promise, not hangups. - Call 60-80 contacts per hour, per agent - Instantly leave voicemails - Send 1-touch emails - Automate workflows and call logging - Record and transfer calls - Access reporting and analytics - Intelligently distribute leads - Dial from local Caller IDs - Get free white-glove onboarding Scales to any size team with no contracts, no setup fees, and no per minute charges. Start a free trial without a credit card.

14.)

PrimoDialler Predictive Dialler A predictive dialler is an outbound call system that automatically dials from a list of telephone numbers. Also known as Power or Auto dialers it will automatically help agents make more calls, generate higher rates of connections, increase conversions, manage voicemail, no-answers and disconnected numbers. We’ve made it easy to get started, we offer packages to best suit your needs and don't tie you into long term contracts. Don't take our word for it take out a no-commitment free trial!

15.)

Teckinfo Solutions Pvt. Ltd. InterDialog UCCS The InterDialog Dialer is an independent & intelligent auto dialer software that controls the outbound calls using various algorithms. This call center dialer works as Predictive Dialer Software, Progressive Dialer Software, Preview Dialer Software or Power Dialer Software based on the requirement of the process. It allows the system to create groups/caller lists and then dials out to multiple calling groups/lists at the same time, thus helping target a wider market segment in a shorter period of time. The predictive dialer software and automatic dialer algorithms used by the InterDialog Dialer are designed to improve efficiency by lowering the wait time, the number of dropped calls and t... (read more)The InterDialog Dialer is an independent & intelligent auto dialer software that controls the outbound calls using various algorithms. This call center dialer works as Predictive Dialer Software, Progressive Dialer Software, Preview Dialer Software or Power Dialer Software based on the requirement of the process. It allows the system to create groups/caller lists and then dials out to multiple calling groups/lists at the same time, thus helping target a wider market segment in a shorter period of time. The predictive dialer software and automatic dialer algorithms used by the InterDialog Dialer are designed to improve efficiency by lowering the wait time, the number of dropped calls and the idle time of agents. They are configured to allow the Dialer to decide which group to call, which agent to divert a connected call to, etc. These decisions are based on various factors such as the approximate duration of a call, the number of agents available, the number of connections, etc.

16.)	Tru29 Outsource Solutions Inc. Custom Outsourced Solutions Tru29 Solutions tailor fits a dialer solution that will truly suit your needs.

17.)

voiptime Voiptime Contact Center Our contact center solution allows processing the high volume of client requests from different channels (voice, webchat, email, web callbacks), running massive outbound dialing campaigns, and makes all call center operations visible for management. Voiptime Cloud Contact Center is a professional calling solution for outbound and inbound calls. It’s a plug-and-play software that immediately increases the productivity of your call center department. With the help of our solution you are able to: - Automate lead prospecting and have 4x more live conversations daily; - Increase the agent occupancy up to 80-90% with the help of the fastest Predictive dialer; - Smooth out the peaks of calls by... (read more)Our contact center solution allows processing the high volume of client requests from different channels (voice, webchat, email, web callbacks), running massive outbound dialing campaigns, and makes all call center operations visible for management. Voiptime Cloud Contact Center is a professional calling solution for outbound and inbound calls. It’s a plug-and-play software that immediately increases the productivity of your call center department. With the help of our solution you are able to: - Automate lead prospecting and have 4x more live conversations daily; - Increase the agent occupancy up to 80-90% with the help of the fastest Predictive dialer; - Smooth out the peaks of calls by running different inbound and outbound tasks on the same agent group; - Track all important KPI and monitor your remote teams work in real-time mode; - Reduce your operational costs and scale up your cloud contact center when required.

 

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