Turning Your Call Center Into a Contact Center

On a regular basis, most of us log into one of the many social media outlets – LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter, to name a few – to keep in touch with family, friends, and acquaintances as well as to promote ourselves within the business world.

We see the ease with which gainful connections can materialize among strangers, ideas shared, and new business relationships formed. Why then are so many of us failing to see the benefit of adopting social media technologies and channels of communication as our own business tools?

Mexico or the Dominican Republic?

In the direct response industry, working with the most effective contact center within your budget is a necessity – because every single call is an opportunity to make a solid, positive connection with your customers and in turn drive sales and loyalty. This is especially true when working with multilingual or bilingual contact centers, which have seen a steady rise in work over the past couple years as U.S. Hispanic marketing has seen explosive growth in the direct response world. With many of these centers located outside the U.S., you have to take additional components into consideration: the stability of a country's business economy, its compatibility with U.S. business culture, its telecommunications infrastructure, location and so on.

Vixicom LLC exhibited at the 2011 ERA
Convention and Expo in Las Vegas, NV

The ERA D2C Convention is produced by the Electronic Retailing Association (ERA), the only trade association in the U.S. and internationally that represents leaders of the direct-to-consumer marketplace, which includes members that maximize revenues through electronic retailing on television, online and on radio.

Filling Your Call Center with Proactive Self Reliant Agents

Direct response is a scripted environment, but every client would love to know they have an army of agents who think for themselves in the call center selling their products and managing customer needs and expectations. These agents would have been trained to put themselves in the caller's shoes and, as a result, know how to close the deal, save the sale, or solve a difficult customer service issue.