Many are familiar with call centres and the services that they provide to businesses. The way businesses sell products, communicate to customers, and expand has changed. Virtual answering services have adapted as well, moving away from services that only focus on call services and integrating more services. Contact centres do so much more than just handling inbound and outbound calls. They provide businesses with the complete service but there are differences between inbound and outbound contact centres.

What is a Contact Centre?

Although the types of phone calls outlined above are crucial to many businesses, you may have discovered that you need additional services. It’s important to understand, however, that call centres merely handle phone calls, whether outbound or inbound. On the other hand, a contact centre like Infinity offers a vast range of modern, multichannel services where both inbound and outbound contact is accomplished through various communication methods. These include texting, emailing, video, paging and push notifications, in addition to phone communication.

The Difference Between Outbound and Inbound Calling

The main difference between an inbound and outbound contact centre is that an inbound contact centre receives messages and calls, and an outbound contact centre makes calls. Outbound centres place calls to consumers, usually with the goal of making a sale. These are sometimes referred to as “cold calls.” Centres that take incoming calls are typically customer service oriented, and representatives are there to solve problems, provide information, and help the company retain loyal clients. Infinity Virtual Answering efficiently handles both inbound and outbound calls.

What Does an Inbound Contact Centre Do?

Provide Customer Service

In addition to performing basic contact centre duties, inbound contact centres are the centres used when a customer needs help resolving an issue. In other words, an inbound contact centre is where customers and potential customers contact a company. For example, when you call a company’s help centre and request assistance with obtaining a refund, the inbound contact centre is where your call goes.

Provide Technical Support

Similar to customer service, inbound contact centres also provide technical support if a customer needs help navigating the company website or troubleshooting a product. For example, if you call a company about a leaf blower that will not turn on, your call would go to an inbound contact centre.

Help with Inbound Sales

Inbound sales consist of customers searching for more information about a company or product. In this case, the inbound call centre is no longer helping current customers but supporting potential ones. For example, if you call a company inquiring about whether their foundation comes in your shade, someone at the inbound call centre will help you out.

Other types of inbound calls our qualified specialists can place for you:

What Does an Outbound Contact Centre Do?

Make Cold Calls

Outbound contact centres, as the name suggests, make outgoing calls. In other words, someone from a company makes calls to potential customers and markets the company’s product to them. Cold calls are those outgoing calls that are the first correspondence between a company and a potential customer, meaning the customer has not inquired into the company previously. For example, when a telemarketer calls and asks if you are interested in learning about a new fitness program without you having requested that call, you are receiving a cold call from an outbound contact centre.

Make Warm Calls

On the other hand, a warm call is when an outbound contact centre contacts a potential customer that has previously interacted with the company. For example, if you sign up on a company’s website to receive more information about a new exercise machine and the company calls you the next day, you are receiving a warm call from an outbound call centre.

Other types of outbound calls our qualified specialists can place for you:

Make the Transition from a Call Centre to a Contact Centre Today

Rather than limit yourself to a call centre, let us handle all your communications from one centralized channel. This will ultimately create a reliable and seamless experience for all your customers through multiple strategies.

This centralized business model also allows your organization to quickly and easily implement changes and boost positive results because one channel is responsible for all tasks. Whether it’s an exemplary customer service team you need or sales representatives with proven track records who can get the word out about your products and services, locating the best contact centre is vital to your success.

Reach out to Infinity Virtual Answering to find out more about our vast array of services and the impressive difference they can make in the daily operations of your business.