Outsourced Bilingual English Spanish Call Center Support – GuateCall

Outsourced Bilingual English Spanish Call Center Support – GuateCall

by Guatecall News

GuateCall’s bilingual English Spanish call center services will help you penetrate the U.S. Hispanic market and build a loyal Spanish speaking customer base. Whether you need inbound customer service, web chat or email support, our fluent Spanish call center agents are here to help. Our Spanish call center also helps by providing outbound services to generate new customers as well as other services such as market research and follow up calls.

The U.S. Hispanic population has an immense buying power and is growing rapidly, not only because of its size, but because its average household income is growing considerably. Major companies have focused on this population for years and other savvy companies are now targeting this market as well. GuateCall’s bilingual English Spanish call center support is prime to help you reach this growing market. GuateCall offers a best in class outsourced call center support experience. We do this through our American owned and run bilingual English Spanish call center support center located nearshore in Guatemala, Central America.

The U.S. Hispanic population is now over 57 million people and growing.  In 2015, Hispanics controlled $1.3 trillion in buying power, an amount larger than the GDP of Australia or Spain, according the Selig Center for Economic Growth, up 167% since the turn of the century. The increase is more than twice the 76% growth in non-Hispanic buying power during the same period. The center’s projections show U.S. Hispanic buying power continuing this trend, reaching $1.7 trillion by 2020.

Worldwide, the Spanish speaking population is growing and with the developed internet connectivity that is now well established in Latin American countries especially Mexico, Guatemala and the rest of Central America as well as South America, the need for Spanish call center support has never been greater. The Hispanic population and more specifically, the younger Hispanic population is very brand aware and love to shop. They use their mobile phones as their preferred method of shopping online. They love seeing brands speaking their language and appeal to their culture. It creates a unique connection between them and the brand which translates to loyal customers and a large revenue stream.

When picking a bilingual Spanish call center to help service the Hispanic population, the choice between using a US based call center and a nearshore call center become clear. The obvious choice would be to look at nearshore call centers. Here are a few of the great benefits to outsourcing nearshore to a bilingual English Spanish call center company:

  • The ability to have a large supply of native Spanish speakers to service your customers.
  • No need to pay the premium wages for Spanish call center agents like in the US. This is a significant savings that can range from 30-50%.
  • Guatemalan Spanish Call center agents in particular have a very neutral Spanish so they are easily understood by all Spanish speakers.

GuateCall’s bilingual nearshore English Spanish call center is perfectly situated to help you penetrate and service the Spanish speaking Hispanic market. Guatemalan Spanish Call Centers are so successful because they are known throughout the world as having a very neutral, easily understood Spanish accent. No matter where the Spanish speaker is from, our Spanish call center agents will be easily understood.

GuateCall’s Spanish call center agents can help you with maintaining and or creating ways to target and service the Hispanic population. Some of the offerings for our Spanish call center services include:

  • Inbound Spanish Call Center Support
  • Outbound Spanish Call Center Services
  • Spanish Customer Service
  • Spanish Up-Sell and Cross-Sell
  • Spanish Retention Programs
  • Spanish E-mail Services
  • Spanish Web Chat Solutions (Click to Chat)
  • Spanish Business to Business Programs (including Demand Generation & Appointment Setting)
  • Spanish Market Research
  • Spanish Satisfaction Surveys
  • Spanish Lead Generation and Qualification

At GuateCall, we pride ourselves on being an extension of your brand. We work hand in hand with our customers to meet targets while upholding the vision and mission of the company. Take the opportunity to reach out to us and see how GuateCall will help your business grow!

How to Choose the Right Outsourced Call Center?

How to Choose the Right Outsourced Call Center?

by Guatecall News

There are so many options to choose from in the outsourcing industry today, how does a company decide in who’s hands to put their customer interaction?

Usually, when speaking with companies or industry experts, the first question we hear is what do you charge for bilingual inbound customer service support? There is usually a target range broken down to some country average such as Guatemala is X Dollars per hour, Mexico is Y Dollars per hour and the U.S. is Z Dollars per hour etc etc.

My thought is, how long is a piece of string? What kind of support?  What level of knowledge does the agent need to give the customer experience necessary? What level of English does he or she need to have? What quantity of agents and how many hours? In what way can our call center be a difference maker in the customer’s business? The list goes on and on.

So how to choose? Obviously price plays an important role in any buying decision. We always want to strike a balance of affordability and high end service. The key is to give great value. At Guatecall, we positioned ourselves as offering a higher level of service while staying in a more affordable price range. We did this by locating our call center nearshore in Guatemala, Central America.

Being nearshore and employing people from the top 20% of our robust contact center industry, mixed with our can do attitude and environment, allows us to give our customers great service and value, our employees a higher pay as well as give back to our community.

Given all that, you might say, great but other companies say similar things. That’s true and some might also actually do it ;-).

When I read about companies and what they speak about when it comes to customer experience, the word passion pops up often. But what is this passion about? Every company is, or atleast was, passionate about something. The key is to understand what the company is passionate about and if we, as an outsourcer, share the same passions and set of values. If so, we are well on our way to a mutually beneficial relationship. If not, well that’s why there is chocolate, vanilla and every other flavor under the sun.

By aligning your company with our Latin American bilingual English Spanish call center, you will be well on your way to scaling your business and increasing revenue. Our call center is well versed in inbound and outbound services, web chat (click to chat), email response, surveys and other critical business needs. With our aligned passion and can do attitude, the sky is the limit! How can we help you succeed?

This article was written by Perry Silber, COO of GuateCall. GuateCall is a Near-shore contact center provider of multi-channel bilingual English and Spanish call center services located In Guatemala, Central America. Whether through voice or chat, we can provide superior services to your organization. If you would like to learn more about GuateCall and Call Center services in Latin America, please reach out to me at 713-474-2222 or by e-mail perry@guatecall.com.

Guatemala’s Bilingual English Spanish Call Centers – GuateCall

Guatemala’s Bilingual English Spanish Call Centers – GuateCall

by Guatecall News

GuateCall has built a reputation of delivering high end bilingual English Spanish call center and BPO services from Guatemala, Central America. The Multi channel services offered include but are not limited to phone, email, online chat and social media response. GuateCall offers its services to companies in the United States, Canada as well as throughout Latin America. The key to GuateCall’s success is its ability to become an extension of the brand it represents and instilling a can do attitude within the culture of the company. This helps build a great customer experience for both the end consumer as well as the outsourcing client.

GuateCall is located just a short 3 hour flight from Multiple destinations in the United States, such as Miami, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Newark and Atlanta. This major convenience allows for more face to face contact opportunities with our clients.  With its beautiful scenery and friendly people, Guatemala is an ideal destination to mix both business and pleasure.

Guatemala is a major player in the contact center space and provides contact center support to many of the top Fortune 500 and 100 companies in the U.S.  This leads to a tremendous pool of qualified, well versed employees in all ranges of work from inbound customer service, click to chat services as well as email response and all types of back office work.  Needless to say, at GuateCall, we target the top 20 percent of the contact center workforce in Guatemala. This gives us access to a well versed, highly tenured and skilled staff. Since GuateCall is not a public company, as most of the call centers in Guatemala are, we have the ability to cut a lot of the fat from our competitors prices and offer the highest standards at a fair price.

Another great benefit to the bilingual Guatemalan call center agent is their accent neutrality. It’s a given that we employ agents that are easily understood in English, but did you know that Guatemala is famous for its accent neutral Spanish? No wonder learning Spanish in Guatemala has become such a hot spot for many tourists. Our bilingual agents can help your business tap the $1.2 trillion U.S. Hispanic consumer market by being able to communicate with your clients not only with an easily understood Spanish accent but by connecting with your clients via the same mentality and culture. You don’t need to be limited by the staff and space you have at your current location. Our contact center outsourcing solutions enables your business to partner with a preferred contact center that has consistently out performed our customers’ current in house and out sourced solutions across multiple platforms.

Isn’t it about time you learned more?

This article was written by Perry Silber, COO of GuateCall. GuateCall is a Nearshore contact center provider of multi-channel bilingual English and Spanish services located In Guatemala, Central America. Whether through voice or chat, we can provide superior services to your organization. If you would like to learn more about GuateCall and Call Center services in Latin America, please reach out to me at 713-474-2222 or by e-mail perry@guatecall.com.

 

Belief in the Concept!

Belief in the Concept!

by Guatecall News

In the previous post we spoke about how a contact center interaction can essentially make or break relationships with customers and/or potential prospects.  We spoke about how many call centers whether on shore, near shore or off shore need to improve their game both through infrastructure as well as processes and personnel.

We touched on the concept that millennials working in call centers today are feeling the pressure of management on one side and customers on the other.  They are looking to earn an honest living and are looking to do just enough to maintain their position and earn a paycheck.

Being that these representatives are the face of the company, we surely expect maximum effort and genuine desire from our agents on every contact whether by phone, chat or email.  So how can we achieve this ideal?  How do we motivate the age group that seems to be unmotivated?

At GuateCall, our Central American contact center in Guatemala, we believe that our people need to be inspired and motivated by a higher purpose.  A higher paycheck is obviously a great place to start and the bigger the pay the more motivation it brings. The question becomes is it the sustainable type of motivation that looks to benefit, not just the “I”, but our customer and our customer’s customer?

We found that a key element in meeting and exceeding our customer’s expectations is by applying the three Beliefs. These beliefs are at the core of our training and are constantly referred to throughout the call center.  They have become part of the culture of our company.

The Three Beliefs are:

–Belief in the Concept

-Belief in the System

-Belief in Yourself

Today we will be discussing the first belief, Belief in the Concept. A typical customer trains our trainers on their company, what they do, how they do it, how long they’ve been doing it and all their systems and processes.  These trainings are obviously a key to understanding our customer’s needs and how to accomplish the tasks necessary.   When these trainings are completed and we establish GuateCall’s trainings to our employees, we have our trainers and managers look at the customer and figure out the “why”.  The “why” this company is needed and what purpose do they serve?  How they benefit the life of their customers and what makes them a “needed” part of the customer’s life?

Once this is figured out, sometimes it could be a bit challenging ;-), we apply these ideas to our training and our Quality Assurance. We also create interactive training sessions that allow our trainees as well as our seasoned agents to come up with their own ideas as to why this company is needed by their clients. They also come up with new benefits that maybe have not been thought of before. We then consistently remind our team about them.  These reminders could come from a team lead mentioning it on the floor, a QA analyst messaging the team or just a quick who has a new benefit they’d like to share with the team message. (Many times those get rewarded with a treat or a round of applause.)

It’s crucial to get a strong buy in from the agents about who they represent and their importance to society.  The key to making this a core belief for the agent is the consistency in which it is discussed.  All ideas are great, but could be easily put in the back of the agents mind if not brought up consistently.

Our next Belief system is the Belief in the System.  This will be discussed in a future post so please look for it on www.guatecall.com .

 

This article was written by Perry Silber, COO of GuateCall. GuateCall is a Near-shore contact center provider of multi-channel bilingual English and Spanish services located In Guatemala, Central America. Whether through voice or chat, we can provide superior services to your organization. If you would like to learn more about GuateCall and Call Center services in Latin America, please reach out to me at 713-474-2222 or by e-mail perry@guatecall.com.

 

 

 

Contact Center Solutions

Contact Center Solutions

by Guatecall News

Contact Center Solutions and interactions can essentially make or break relationships with customers and/or potential prospects.

That’s a scary thought when we consider that most companies contact center solutions infrastructure is out of date, under budgeted and in desperate need of upgrades in hardware, processes and personnel training.

Major decisions need to be made about how to tackle these issues.

I’m not a hardware guy but am thankful to our amazing IT team that keeps up with the latest and greatest and keeps our systems running smoothly and efficiently.

What I do know a little bit about is contact center solutions processes, training and especially working with people.  With a large percentage of contact center solutions employees being millennials, the usual this is how the company does it and this is what we expect schpil followed up by all types of measurements for conformity will not win brownie points with contact center solutions employees and for sure not give the level of service today’s customer demands.

To address this in our contact center solutions company, we implemented the Three Beliefs.  These Beliefs are the core of our interaction with our clients and with our client’s customers.  Our employees embrace them and they are consistently spoken about during training and daily interaction. They are one of the main reason’s we consistently provide services that meet and exceed the expectations of even our most demanding clients.

The Three Beliefs are:

–Belief in the Concept

-Belief in the System

-Belief in Yourself

I will write a paper on each of these Beliefs as each is so vital to the success of our customers. Look for a follow up post on our blog at www.guatecall.com in the coming days. It will give more of an insight as to how these beliefs allow our team to deliver outstanding customer satisfaction and increased revenue for our clients.

This article was written by Perry Silber, COO of GuateCall. GuateCall is a Near-shore contact center provider of multi-channel bilingual services located In Guatemala, Central America. If you would like to learn more about GuateCall, please reach out to me at 713-474-2222 or by e-mail perry@guatecall.com.

It’s Not The Call Center – It’s The Company

It’s Not The Call Center – It’s The Company

by Guatecall News

Companies are spending lots of time and money trying to increase customer engagement and sales.  There are new roles, departments, endless meetings.  There are new tools, new metrics, gamification, QA structures, bonuses, Multi-lingual service. The list goes on and on.

Yet with all of that, customers are generally dissatisfied with the service they receive when reaching out to companies via phone or chat.  More than that, customer service representatives are generally just as excited to give exceptional service as the client is to reach out to the company (a bit of sarcasm).

So why is this the case?  First thing that comes to my mind is Classical conditioning, think Pavlov’s dogs.  If you’re not familiar with this term, look up Pavlov’s dogs on the internet.  It’s a study done in the late 1800s by a Russian physiologist named Ivan Pavlov. (Pause here and read up on it if you don’t already know.) Customers today are conditioned to assume they will receive an uninterested, unknowledgeable, scripted customer service representative on the phone or web-chat and the customer service agent is assuming they will get more complaints, more issues and generally just wants to do good enough to hit his metrics, get good QA scores and make a living.

So what is a business to do?  How do we break this cycle?

From a call center operations perspective it’s nice to think that the reason that people don’t do what you need them to do, or conform to your standards, or make good choices is simply that they don’t know enough.  If the problem is a lack of knowledge than its easy to give more training, give them a couple of tests to make sure they got it and you’re good to go.

What about those dreaded employees who constantly show up a few minutes late to their station to log in? Oh, that’s easy you say. Just let them know that being late isn’t allowed.  Give a DP. Threaten to fire them if this happens. It tends to fix the issue.

The thing is all these and more are symptoms of a bigger issue. Your reps most likely view their job as a temporary necessity.  They want to do what is expected and get paid.  They don’t necessarily care about the same things that the company cares about and the reason they don’t care isn’t that they don’t know what you know or can’t figure out how to show up to work five minutes earlier.

The challenge for a company is to understand their call center IS their touch-point with the customer.  It is the key to customer experience and must be treated, not as a necessary evil that constantly gets budget cuts, but as a marketing opportunity that can be utilized to increase company revenue and customer satisfaction.

A great way to start making a change is to educate our people about our belief systems.  What is it that we care about as a company? What DRIVES us, what’s our PURPOSE  and WHY it matters.  This coupled with great training, good pay, fun atmosphere and a SINCERE caring for our people, not only in words but by action, will help drive a change in the culture of the contact center. Invest in the contact center and watch a truly measurable difference occur.  Not in your KPI’s, but  in your company’s bottom line.

This article was written by Perry Silber, COO of GuateCall. GuateCall is a Near-shore contact center provider of multi-channel bilingual English / Spanish services located In Guatemala, Central America. If you would like to learn more about GuateCall, please reach out to me at 713-474-2222  or by e-mail perry@guatecall.com

The Best Marketing Strategy you already have – Customer Care!

The Best Marketing Strategy you already have – Customer Care!

by Guatecall Uncategorized

What are we willing to spend to get customer interaction on social media?  What about great feedback?  Even more so, what about a customer referral to not one, not two but a group of friends?

Now consider that these questions are not only a Marketing department conversation.  They hit at the heart of what progressive companies should be speaking about at their Customer service and Sales department meetings as well.

We are all aware of the power of good marketing.  Heck, we’re all consumers and can relate to how a good marketing effort drives our desires.  It brings us, as customers, to the company.  The thing is, it just brings us there, it doesn’t engage us once we’re there and it surely doesn’t keep us shopping or referring others.

For all that brands, and their marketing departments, in particular, talk about customer relationships, the relationship that counts the most for consumers themselves is still that great interaction that can only exist between them and a real person that’s friendly and knowledgeable. Chances are that person is a customer service representative.  We need to make a connection with our customers, to interact with them on their level.  We must listen to what customers are saying and be in tune with what they are not saying.  Whether speaking to a customer service rep on the phone or chatting via web or on social media, a great interaction with a customer or prospect is the opportunity companies should be embracing.

Human interactions — especially in the age of online shopping and self-service are what your customers will remember and what they’ll talk about, perhaps very publicly. So, from a marketing standpoint, the quality of those interactions is enormously significant.  I’m always reminded that it takes 10 positive interactions to erase 1 negative experience.  How scary are those numbers to companies solely focused on KPI’s and cost reductions?

Marketing departments spend significant resources to engage perspective consumers and re-enforce positive messages to existing clients.  It is critical that companies invest in customer service agents, or whatever buzz word they want to label them as, and recognize that these are the people who will ultimately shape the experience and image your company has with its clients.

This article was written by Perry Silber, COO of GuateCall. GuateCall is a Near-shore contact center provider of multi-channel bilingual services located In Guatemala, Central America. If you would like to learn more about GuateCall, please reach out to me at 713-474-2222 or by e-mail perry@guatecall.com.

10 Leadership Quotes in Our Customer Service Training!

10 Leadership Quotes in Our Customer Service Training!

by Guatecall Inspiration

At Guatecall, we pride ourselves on our constant training of team leadership and therefore resulting high quality of customer service that we provide. Here are some quotes that we enjoy and we hope you enjoy them too!

1: “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
-John Quincy Adams

2: “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”
-Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder

3: “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

4:“The true mark of a leader is the willingness to stick with a bold course of action — an unconventional business strategy, a unique product-development roadmap, a controversial marketing campaign — even as the rest of the world wonders why you’re not marching in step with the status quo. In other words, real leaders are happy to zig while others zag. They understand that in an era of hyper-competition and non-stop disruption, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to stand for something special.”
-Bill Taylor, from article “Do You Pass the Leadership Test?”

5: “Leaders instill in their people a hope for success and a belief in themselves. Positive leaders empower people to accomplish their goals.”
-Unknown

6: “The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.”
-Theodore M. Hesburgh

7: “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”
-John F. Kennedy

8: “A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.”
-Jim Rohn

9: “The single biggest way to impact an organization is to focus on leadership development. There is almost no limit to the potential of an organization that recruits good people, raises them up as leaders and continually develops them.”
-John Maxwell

10: “The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.”
-John Maxwell

Customer Experience in Latin America

Customer Experience in Latin America

by Guatecall News

It all started with a phone call I received today. On the other side of the line was a great guy that I met in Guatemala, Central America a couple of years back (Joe). We exchanged small talk for a while about family and life in general and then we got to the reason for his call. Joe was presented a job offer to sell call center services in the New York City area. He remembered that I was in the contact center industry so he was hoping I could share some insights and experience and help him get a head start in his new call center career. I was more than happy to help.

The first thing I needed to establish was where the outsourced call center was located. I was told it was nearshore in Latin America. He was excited to mention that since he knew GuateCall (our outsource contact center) was also located in a nearshore Central American country, Guatemala. He knew I would understand the market and the capabilities of the call center industry in the Americas.

However, I cautioned him not to bundle all contact center capabilities and services of the Americas together and not to make generalizations about nearshore outsourcing. At GuateCall, our customer service capabilities and culture are very different from many business process outsource centers I know.

I gave an example of two different restaurants on the same street. Restaurant “A” had great food and great customer service and Restaurant “B” had average food, decent staff and was pretty much marginal. Their location was the same, but Restaurant “A”, with the great food & staff, clearly had management that created a culture in which the employees could thrive and succeed in. The employees took ownership and pride in their work and it showed in the customer experience at the restaurant. While I acknowledged that the pool of workers in an area makes a difference, I still stuck to my original premise that the main difference between one company/ restaurant/ call center and the next is the culture on the floor that is implemented by management. It’s the law of “sow and reap”. What management is invested in will clearly show in the end product.

I then proceeded to ask him about the “type” of customer he was targeting. He mentioned that in New York City there are a lot of companies and vendors selling on Amazon.com and he thought he could take advantage of this market by offering them an agent taking customer service calls and responding to emails. He envisioned one agent servicing 2-3 different vendors.

I’m well aware of many contact centers that offer this type of “shared services” and even though I understand the financial reasons for wanting to opt for this type of service, I explained to Joe that GuateCall won’t take on that kind of business. There was just complete silence on the other side of the phone. He asked me why I would be willing to turn down good business.

I again gave him Restaurants A & B on the same street example. A good nearshore contact center that delivers excellent customer service cannot be all things to all people. The culture that management has implemented on the floor of the call center and how that translates to servicing clients defines who your customers are and if they meet your profile.

As an example, a vendor sells a product on Amazon.com and for whatever reason, the consumer wants to return it. A canned call center response could be sent with no issue. However, going a step above could be reaching out to the customer to understand the reason for the return request and finding an alternate solution. Going one step further still would be to understand the product lines thoroughly and be able to give better product recommendations based on that knowledge and possibly even creating multiple sales (up-selling and cross-selling) from the customer interaction.

A follow up call to make sure the customer was happy with their new products would most likely win over this client for future purchases. It could also create referral business.

Today, retail space is so competitive and pricing is very transparent. Companies are looking for ways to differentiate themselves from their competition. Taking a page from Zappos.com, I believe the best way to go about this competitive edge is excellent customer service. Consumers want to be serviced on their terms: voice, chat, email and social network. They don’t want to sit on the call que, they want to make the most of their time and they for sure want to speak to someone that can give them more than a canned response. Consumers can tell if they are speaking to a knowledgeable person or just another “call center agent”.

Being in the contact center business, I am constantly being told about all the negative interactions people have with call centers, especially foreign ones. However, once they learn that there are different types of contact centers with different quality levels: with very little or no accents; are knowledgeable about the products they represent and with immediate response times, they tend to be more open to the nearshore outsourcing concept.

I go on to explain to Joe that outsourcing is the same as any other business. There are call centers that specialize in different industries and there are higher quality, average quality and lower quality call centers.

I also mention that service levels go hand in hand with the commitment of the company that outsourced to the call center. How much do they want to invest in their customers? How much time and training and continual training of employees they decide on can be a huge game changer. Not only training that is based on the products or systems, but also training the mentality of the call and how to listen beyond the words being said. Training that puts yourself in the customers’ shoes and figuring out how to go that extra mile. Reinforcement of those trainings on all interactions on the floor from team leads, quality assurance as well as team agents, to make the customer service experience exceptional.
A great fit between the client, the call center and the end consumer ensures this.

Concluding my conversation with Joe, I encouraged him to speak with the manager of the call center he would potentially be representing. To have an open and honest conversation to make sure he understands their culture, their service levels and what their true capabilities are. This way he can focus on the proper target market for the contact center he is representing. All services are not created equal… here is to Joe finding the right clients with the right needs for his new adventure.

This article was written by Perry Silber, COO of GuateCall. GuateCall is a Near-shore contact center provider of multi-channel bilingual services located In Guatemala, Central America. If you would like to learn more about GuateCall, please reach out to me at 713-474-2222 Ext 116 or by e-mail.