Top Voice and Call Centre Services in Singapore

If you’re anything like most people, you’ve probably seen a job advert for a call centre operator and left wondering, “do call centres still exist?”

Of course, they do – and it’s not like they’re going anywhere.

You’re mistaken for thinking customers would choose a different way to seek assistance even after being put on hold for 30 minutes. For some reason, some customers still prefer to reach out to businesses via a phone call rather than wait around for a live chat or email response.

What’s VoIP?

VoIP = Voice over Internet Protocol

VoIP is the technology that enables traditional telephony services to work over a computer network—no need to handsets or copper wires. With VoIP, you can make or receive calls using your internet-connected computer and headset.

Simply put: it’s phone or voice call services delivered over the internet. It’s sometimes referred to as IP telephony, broadband telephony, internet telephony, or broadband phone service.

How Does VoIP Work?

VoIP uses packet-switched protocols to enable traditional telephony services to work over a computer network. Everything starts with VoIP technology padding voice signals into packets, more like an electronic envelope.

They’re then transmitted over VoIP-compatible network like LAN and reopened upon reaching their destination or the recipient.

Top VoIP Providers for Small Businesses in Singapore

How VoIP Differs from Traditional Telephony Services

VoIP different from traditional telephony services in that it uses packets, which allows for the transformation of relatively more information.

Other than that, the technology gives you access to more applications and tools that can potentially help your team to be more productive and agile.

What’s a Call Centre?

A call centre is the department that fields incoming and outgoing calls from both new and existing customers. They’re handled by agents or telephone representatives; whose role is to manage all phone calls and keep track of both open and closed cases.

To manage everything and keep these teams organised, offices use call centre software, which distributes inquires and facilitates the interaction that occurs.

It’s a tradition for big companies to set up call centres for the purpose of:

• Handling incoming queries
• Offering customer support
• Conducting market research
• Carrying out telemarketing

Top Call Centre Service Providers

How a Call Centre Differs From a Contact Centre

Many people use the two terms interchangeably when they actually mean two different things.

A contact centre refers to a team that interacts with customers across a broad canvas of channels, including SMS, phone calls, live chat, social media, and emails.

A call centre, however, only offers over-the-phone assistance. If your agent operates with any other channel or media other than a phone call, then they’re operating a contact centre and not a call centre.

How a Call Centre Works

A call centre operates as a vocal communication centre or department that customers use to report complaints, seek assistance, or make requests. They’re managed by customer support representatives who field both incoming and outgoing phone calls, besides solving customers’ problems.

Everything can be broken down in three stages:

• A customer makes a phone call or requests for one from a customer service agent
• The agent responds and works on the customer’s issue
• The phone call representative may request for more time to solve the problem if it proves unattainable to solve the issue on the first call

Technologies Used in Call Centres

Call centres use a few technologies that facilitate their operations. These technologies include IVR, ACD System, and headsets.

It’s to be, however, noted that things have significantly improved over the past few years, especially since customer service became a key competitive differentiator between businesses. More innovative technologies have emerged.

Many of these technologies are meant to help support advisors offer better customer support services. They include:

• Smart desktops
• Screen pops
• Knowledgebase

Some of these technologies are designed to help out with reducing contact volume or with improving the efficiency of call centres. They include:

• Workforce management systems
• Process Automation
• Chatbots

Newly introduced technologies that have proven to be pretty resourceful include speech analytics, proactive messaging, and customer feedback solutions, among others.

Software Used in Call Centres

The software used in call centres are mostly API-based and are designed to allow for real-time customer experiences over multiple channels, including social media, voice, SMS, chat, etc. Many of them operate as Automatic Call Distributors (ACD), where they automatically route incoming tasks.

They can recognise an incoming call and even quickly scan for a piece of predetermined information. The information is then cross-referenced against your database and routed and distributed according to your instructions.

Top Call Centre Softwares

• TalkDesk

Price: Varied

TalkDesk is a call centre dedicated to helping large teams manage their phone support and speed up things. The platform is designed to help you out with all the things you may need to offer excellent customer support at scale. You can use it to manage your workforce. Plus, you’ll be provided with a bevy of industry-specific features that make your work easier.

• Bitrix24

Price: Free

Bitrix is a contact centre built around the idea of a to-do-list. It’s designed to help teams collaborate in getting their work done. It also operates as a collaborative platform for getting work done. It’s an all-inclusive contact centre with multiple customer service channels, including live chats, telephone lines, email queues, and more.

• Zendesk

Price: $29/Month

Zendesk is one of the most extensive customer support platforms. They have one of the most feature-rich call centre solutions for all types of businesses. Using their automatic ticket creation solution, agents can take advantage of their Slick help desk and offer assistance to their customers across a wide selection of channels.

• LiveAgent

Price: $39/Month

LiveAgent operates as a multi-channel help desk that allows you to offer assistance to your customers over any channel that they choose to reach out to you. It’s the only tool on the list that doesn’t charge you a per-minute usage fee, which makes it affordable for small and medium-sized businesses.

• CloudTalk

Price: $15/month

CloudTalk is one of the most advanced call centre software. It comes with a broad selection of tools and features to work with. A good example is the custom queue feature, which allows the support team to dictate how incoming calls can be distributed. You can also use it to route incoming calls to agents that are best suited to solve them.

Must-have Functionalities for the Call-centre Solution that you Choose

After you decide which call centre software to use, you can now go ahead and decide which functionalities you’ll need. Each call centre solution offers a list of features that can prove useful when operating your call centre.

However, to be more efficient and productive in your operations, there are features that you wouldn’t want your software solution to miss. We’ve identified a few of these functionalities and features:

Handling Calls

Your call centre software must provide ample capabilities for call handling. Among the things we expect it to have is support for phone numbers. Modern cloud-based call centre solutions allow you to either integrate your existing phone number or to choose between the virtual phone numbers provided. Besides handling incoming calls, we expect the solution to also allow you to make outbound calls.

Here are the call handling features you wouldn’t want your call centre software solution to miss:

• Call Control Feature: for holding, muting, forwarding, and ending calls.
• Call Recording: All calls must be recorded just in case any of your agents fail to deliver.
• Blacklisting: for blocking bots and spams.
• Call Queue Management: for setting up queues while callers are on the line waiting for your agents to respond to their calls.
• Automatic ticket creations: for ensuring your team of call centre agents gets to solve every raised issue. Call centre agents use it to keep track of the issues raised.

Routing

Not all agents have the same capabilities. You want to make sure that you assign each caller to the right agent, one with the abilities to solve their problems. A good call centre software will provide routing capabilities that streamline your call centre workflow and enhance your customer experience.

Here’s a list of routing features to pay attention to:

• Interactive Voice Response (IVR): IVR automatically routes your callers to the most suitable agent or department. This is usually facilitated by keypad or voice input selections.
• Forward to Phone: Allows agents to respond to the issues raised by customers even when they’re out of the office. The calls can be forwarded to their personal phones, instead of waiting until they get back to the office.
• Queue Callback: With this feature, customers can request for a call back when they do not feel like waiting in the queue.
• Business Hours Management: this routing functionality informs callers about your office hours or when you’ll be available to address their issues.

Contact Management

Call centres are all about helping businesses provide the necessary support to their customers. That’s why any call centre software must come with a powerful contact management functionality. There should be an option for agents to access detailed information about their customers and their history of interacting with your business.

Here’s a list of contact management features your software solution should have:

• CRM Integration: for integrating your CRM solution with the call centre software.
• Interaction History: for keeping track of all cases or issues raised in the past. All these cases must be retrievable and easy to refer to should there arise a need for it.
• Caller ID: Each caller must be assigned a caller ID that your agents can use to pull out more information on them and to make sure that each one of them receives personalised support.

Monitoring and Performance

The call centre software you use should provide you with a detailed reporting of how everything is performing so you can know if you’re headed in the right direction or if your agents are doing a commendable job. Without proper monitoring or reporting, your call centre will never be efficient.

Here’s a list of monitoring and performance features your call centre software shouldn’t miss:

• Call Monitoring

  With this feature, you can discreetly listen to the calls being made or received via your call centre to know if your agents are really putting in the hours or sleeping at work.

• Performance Monitoring

  This feature provides an overall analysis of how your call centre is performing., including call load and the number of missed calls.

• Agent Ranking

  It ranks agents in order of their performance. You can use it to know how fast your agents are responding to calls, their average duration of calls or conversations with clients, and so on. It motivates agents to work hard.

• Feedback Monitoring

  With this feature, customers can leave their feedback behind so you can know if they’re really satisfied with the quality of support they got.

Types of Call Centres

Beyond blended, inbound, and outbound, call centres can be further classified into:

• In-house Call Centres

An in-house call centre is owned and operated by the company itself. They have their own agents as part of their team of employees.

• Outsourced Call Centres

A company may decide to hire a third-party provider of call centre services to handle calls and everything else on their behalf. It’s an option companies settle for when they want to avoid the overhead costs that come with hiring agents and investing in call centre technologies.

• Offshore Call Centres

A company may decide to outsource call centres services to an agency or organisation in another country. Companies do this to save the money that they would have otherwise used on wages and to make sure that their call centre services run around the clock. Others do it because it’s relatively cheaper compared to the cost of outsourcing a call centre agent from the same country they’re in.

• Virtual Call Centres

Virtual call centres strictly operate online. Agents operating in virtual call centres tend to be geographically dispersed and answer calls using cloud call centre technologies, not phones. The agents can either operate in small groupings or directly from home.

Call Centre Analytics and Reports

You can measure the success rate and efficiency of your call centre and its agents by tracking a list of Key Performance Indicators or KPIs. The KPIs being tracked can vary depending on the organisation’s functions. For instance, an outbound call centre may decide to keep track of cost per call, total calls made, revenue earned, and the tasks completed, among other metrics. The metrics for inbound call centres may include things like First Call Resolution (FCR), abandoned call rates, and average wait time.

Why Hosted VoIP Call Centres?

Telephony has undergone radical change over the past few years. It’s now online, and less dependent on traditional telephony equipment and phone lines, thanks to VoIP technology.

With VoIP, call centre managers have more control over their operations. Many of the manual processes have now been automated, and the processes streamlined for enhanced efficiency.

Faster, cheaper, and easier to operate here are five compelling reasons to switch to a hosted VoIP call centre:

Ease to Use

With VoIP, everything is cloud-based. You do not have to worry about complicated hardware installation or software upgrades. All these processes can be automated, so you only have to worry about the quality of customer support your call centre is providing.

Responsive Scaling

Hosted VoIP allows you to scale up or down in an instant. You can take in more teams or agents without worrying about resources. As a result, get to increase the level of customer satisfaction, call centre productivity, and the ability to stay on top of your sales targets.

Full Automation

Forget about wasteful manual handlings by automating everything. Forget about manual dialling, manual spreadsheets, and manual reporting, and have every single one of these processes automated.

Flexibility and Mobility

Hosted VoIP allows agents to work from home. All they have to do is log into a cloud-based VoIP system and start receiving phone calls. Location is irrelevant so long as they have an active internet connection and know what to do.

Cheaper to Run

VoIP systems are cheaper to run and operate. First of all, there are no monthly telecommunication fees. They can also be implemented using existing hardware and technology.

The cost you can reduce by switching to VoIP include:

• The cost of making local calls by up to 40%
• The cost of making international calls by up to 90%
• Start-up cost by up to 90%

All this while also increasing the number of outgoing calls.

Industries that Use Call Centres the Most

Industries that interact with their customers via phone can greatly benefit from call centres.

Here are a few examples of these industries:

• Airlines

Airlines tend to have toll-free numbers that their customers can use to speak to their customer service agents or to engage with IVR menus. They can use these numbers to check their flight status, frequent flyer mileage balances, or to obtain their flight details.

• Healthcare

Healthcare centres usually have call centres that customers can call to make appointments, ask questions, or confirm appointments. When a call is made during off-hours, a healthcare provider may use an outsourced call centre to receive calls and then route it to one of their on-call physicians.

• Retail

Customers call retail shops for assistance or to make purchase inquiries. They can also call them after purchase to seek assistance or to request a return or report a missing item.