Inbound Contact Center in the U.S.

Many years ago, the term “call center” was used to describe a center that handled customer service inquiries and problems. Today, the term as evolved to inbound contact center because today’s modern customer service team handles voice calls, email messages, chat messages, text messages and even social media contacts. When we examine the breakdown of customer contact by channel (voice, email, chat, text, social), the distribution is typically in the following range:

Voice calls: 80%
Email: 12%
Chat: 6%
Text: 1%
Social 1%

Omni-channel agents serve customer service multiple channels at once

QCS handles all of these customer contact touchpoints seamlessly using our omni-channel systems to skill customer service agents to the types of interactions they have been trained to handle and for the contact channel which they have been skilled to handle. Most full-time customer service agents that support clients are completely trained for all interactions and channels within a 4 to 6-week timeframe, depending on the client requirements for moving from inhouse to outsource. It is preferred to start with the voice channel and then layer on additional channels once the team is proficient.

What service level goals are typical?

Service Levels are typically set up to mirror customer expectations for each channel. For example, for inbound voice calls, the typical Service Level goal is 80% answered within 30 seconds and less than 5% abandoned. For email, a typical Service Level goal is 95% within 15 minutes and 100% within 24 hours. For chat, text and social, the typical Service Level goal is 95% within 3 minutes and 100% within 30 minutes.

What hours of operation are typical?

Hours of operation are typically set up to mirror customer expectations as well. Most customers do not expect 24x7x365 hours of operation. If you offer reasonable hours of operation for your customer service organization and do an excellent job at servicing those customers within the operating window, most customers will be satisfied with the service availability.

However, some customers and some industries demand 24x7x365. If that is your requirement, we can satisfy it. Our team of experts will work with you to create the staffing schedule that mirrors your requirements on a monthly basis.

Why is the customer service experience so important?

Did you know that price is not the main reason for customer churn? It is actually due to overall poor quality of customer service. Also, a customer is 4 times more likely to defect to a competitor if the problem is service-related vs price or product related. Source: 15 Statistics that Should Change the Business World But Haven’t

Why is an inbound contact center in the US the best choice?

There are inbound contact center options around the world. Some of them are less expensive than US call center resources. However, working with an inbound contact center in the US will help ensure your customers’ experience is on par or better than your competitors. In fact, we have some additional detailed information on why we believe a US call center is best (when serving US customers).