As an e-commerce business owner, you are probably well aware of the importance of providing great customer service. Studies and statistics back up this notion; as American Express notes, shoppers are willing to spend 17 percent more at companies that deliver outstanding service. On the flip side, more than half of shoppers have stopped a purchase midstream due to a negative experience with a company.

The aspect of customer support is not only limited to a standard e-commerce business, instead other types of businesses like hospitality, medical, telecom, or travel agencies too require a dedicated customer support team to assist them with their queries.

One of the ways that many businesses seek to meet the needs of their customers is through the outsourcing of phone answering services and chat services. For instance, if you run a travel agency and need to manage a lot of queries, you can outsource to an answering service company that can handle these customer issues for you. In a similar way, physicians can use Physicians answering services to streamline their medical plans and help their patients schedule appointments.

As an alternative, businesses can set up a call center to provide round-the-clock customer service. This is particularly useful for customers who need help during the night, as they will be able to speak to someone and ensure their call is attended to.

As it turns out, in addition to being great for business, outsourcing your call center activities is an exceptionally smart financial decision. To further look into this phenomenon, let’s look at the different types of call center solutions that currently exist and how each one can have a positive impact on a company’s bottom line.

Inbound Voice

When you want to connect your customers’ questions to readily available answers, an inbound voice call center option is a great solution. As Aspect notes, this approach will match the best agent to each caller, thus ensuring the fastest and most efficient resolution to questions and/or issues. This effective approach to customer care may not only result in a sale, its cost benefit also comes from each agent’s quick ability to handle each call and working as efficiently as possible.

Also, if your company moves into a new market, it may be difficult to determine how many new agents to hire; if you add too many people to your staff, this can cause a decrease in your bottom line, says The Balance. On the flip side, call centers are flexible and can easily scale to the ebbing and flowing of your company’s spikes or declines in business.

Outbound Voice

For business owners who want to use a cloud call center to help with bill payments and appointment reminders, an outbound voice center is a financially wise option. This type of system can send proactive and personalized service communications to your customers, which may help improve the number of on-time payments you receive from your customers, as well as decrease the chance of no-shows, which can use up your staff’s valuable time.

Omnichannel Agent Customer Contact

An omnichannel call center solution allows customers to engage with the agents with on their preferred channel. Instead of merely focusing on traditional phone calls, your customers could use email, social media, texting, online chat and other options to get the service they need and deserve. By transforming a seemingly basic interaction into a strong connection with your customer, you will have a more cost efficient plan in place that also reduces customer frustration. Omnichannel agent options also allow call center employees to get contextual information so they can join in the conversation if it turns out that the customer needs to speak with a representative without having to ask the customer to repeat information. This feature alone can help to keep consumers happy and more likely to want to do business with your company.

Self-Service With CX Automation

Another type of call center solution includes self-service options for customers, including interactive voice response (IVR) software. This option is ideal for consumers who like to get things done whenever they want, without necessarily having to speak with a live agent. This type of self-service option not only leads to happier customers who like using IVR to get an account balance or pay a bill, it is also very cost effective. IVR calls have been shown to cost about one-tenth the amount of a live agent call.

No Matter What Option You Choose, Call Centers Are Cost Effective

As you can see, there are a number of call center options, each with their own positive impact to your company’s revenue. From being highly scalable and efficient to helping increase customer satisfaction and therefore sales, adopting a call center may be one of the best decisions a business owner can make.