Difference between Inbound vs outbound call centers

by Ameya Damle

 

Call centres are the need of the time and must be selected according to the needs of the company. Inbound Call centres are the ones with higher number of incoming calls whereas outbound call centres are the ones with higher number of outgoing calls.

Inbound call centres receives phone calls from customers and potential customers. This type of call centres are more customers friendly and are generally handled by the support teams of the company. These calls focus on resolving the doubts and concerns of the customers along with dealing with their complaints. Sometimes these call centres are the only contact between a company and its customers, so the representatives need to be very polite, helpful and well-versed with the policies of the company.

Outbound call centres also known as sales representatives, are the ones making the calls rather than receiving it. These call centres tend to reach out to customers and potential customers for selling the products or publicizing the company.

Companies either run these call centres internally or sometimes even turn to outsourcing. These inbound and outbound calling are outsourced to external calling centres.

How Inbound call centres and Outbound call centres differs

  1. Operations: Inbound call centre tend to answer calls in order to answer the queries, doubts, or suggestions of the customers whereas outbound call centre tend to make calls for sales.
  2. Objectives: The primary objective of an Inbound call centre is to build a trust and loyalty within their customers, and retain them by addressing their concerns. On the other hand outbound call centres are making an attempt to find new buyers and build interest for their products or services among potential buyers.
  3. Inbound call centres helps the customer with a range of issues including maintaining their accounts by updating their password or any other information, complete their payments or other online payment related issues. Outbound call centres are also used by the company to conduct market research in order to know about the needs or interests of the customers, to understand their competitors and also to set up a meeting with the salespeople.
  4. The Inbound call centres of Subscription-based businesses also receive calls from customers to renew their subscription or about some other details about the plans. On the other hand outbound call centres remind the customers on their updates, offers, payment or renewals.
  5. The most well-known function of an Inbound call centre is customer service and their ultimate goals is a happy and satisfied customer, they will always try to close the interaction positively and also asks for feedbacks and suggestions for improvement. Whereas outbound calls generally tend to annoy the customers, receives their disapproval and negative feedback trying to generate and qualify the leads. Because most of the time these calls are unexpected and the customers don’t have time.
  6. Technology Used: Inbound call centres will require technologies such as call monitoring, call controls including mute, hold, transfer and barge-in; and ticketing Integration. Technologies used by Outbound call centres includes dialers, CRM Integration and Outbound IVR.
  7. Attitude Difference: Agents in Inbound call centres need to be very informative, polite along with excellent speaking, listening and problem solving skills. Agents in Outbound call centres need to be good at recognizing potential buyers, persuasion, selling and also needs to be hard skinned along with a slightly more aggressive attitude
  8. Business Impact and Challenges: Effectiveness of an Outbound call centre is judged in terms of number of conversations whereas effectiveness of an Inbound call centres are measured in terms of customer satisfaction and resolution speed.
  9. Types of call centres: Though the calls received by Inbound call centres are of various types, shapes and sizes but these call can be basically divided into three broad categories, Customer Service, Technical Support and Inbound Sales. Whereas Outbound calls fall into only two categories as they are focusing only on sales, which are Cold Calls and Warm Calls.

All in all both the types of call centres are unique and important, the importance of neither can be underestimated. One can set up a call centre or can reach out to outsourcing depending on the needs of the company and the area where your team is struggling. If the calls from customers on queries, doubts and other tech related support are very high you must opt for an Inbound call centre. But if your team is having a hard time as to conduct the market research, find potential customers and connecting with the high number of leads, Outbound call centre will be the best suitable for your company. In order to run a successful call centre, be it be Inbound or Outbound call centre having a good grasp on language, adequate knowledge on the services, products, change in the market and excellent training of the agents are very important.

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