Outsourcing helps you connect with customers and prospects around the clock. We help streamline how people communicate with your business while reducing your business costs. However, with our free trial, not everything you see on our website is included. Some of what you can outsource to SAS can only be done through a dedicated agent and would not be eligible for a trial, while other call center services that are managed through shared agents can be.

Keep reading below to see what call center services you can take a trial of, what services are only available to paying customers.

What IS included in the free trial

Switching to a new call center or trying a call center for the first time is totally worth it! Considering that an overwhelming number of customers will bail on a transaction because of a poor service experience, you owe it to yourself to at least test out a call center to see if it’s going to work for you. However, we do understand that with any business, budgets are tight and time is your most valuable asset. That’s why we offer our free trial period. We give you a sample of our basic call center services to see if we’re the right provider for you. With our free trial, you can:

• Access our portal: Our secure online portal becomes available as soon as you sign up for service on our 2 week free trial. You have access to all of your messages, have the ability to listen to calls and rate operator performance, generate reports, configure various app integrations, plus so much more!
• Have your calls answered 24/7: Our call center offers live answering 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. So, feel free to use us after hours once you close up shop for the day or have us answer calls alongside your own team all day during business hours.
• Allow agents to warm transfer calls, cold transfer calls, and take messages: Our scripting platform is completely customizable so we can cater to your specific needs. Whether you want us to patch calls directly through, see if you’re available first, or simply just take messages, we can do it all and then some.
• Make changes: Part of offering a free trial is to see how you like the service, and to see if it’s compatible with your business. While you are on our free trial you are able to work with our customer support team to iron out kinks you may come across and make updates as necessary.
• Bilingual operators: On our 2 week free trial, you are able to have access to our bilingual agents. Our programmers will create two campaigns for you, one in English and one in Spanish, and provide you with two forwarding numbers (to be routed to the appropriate agent distribution). 
• Front end automation:  If you are using our bilingual agents, we can even set you up with an upfront IVR that will prompt callers to press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish. 

What IS NOT included in the free trial

While you have access to many of the same features our paying customers do, there are a few limitations. Some features that are not included on your free trial include:

• Live chat: Our live chat services are only available as a paying customer on our dedicated agent program.
• Email response services: If you’d like our agents to respond to incoming emails, you’ll need to sign up for our dedicated agent program.
• Outbound calling: Our outbound calling campaigns can be utilized on either our dedicated or shared agent program, but can only be accessed once you are an active customer.
• Telemarketing or telesales: Our telemarketing services are only available via our dedicated agent program.
• Access password protected software: While our shared agents cannot log directly in to any software, our dedicated agents have a lot more capabilities in terms of what they can or can’t do with your software. However, our dedicated agents are not included with the free trial.
• Hire a dedicated agent: Our dedicated agents come with a 3 month service contract, so they are not included in the free trial period.
• Agent training sessions: On our dedicated agent program you have the ability to participate in agent training sessions. However, this is not available on the free trial.

In order to access the call center services listed above, you would need to sign up for our dedicated agent program.

How does the free trial work

Our 2 week free trial is completely free, which means we will not be collecting any payment information from you at the time of sign up. Once your account is programmed, you will have 2 weeks or 200 minutes (whichever comes first) to see how SAS will work for your company. You can make test calls and/or go live with  your customers, access the portal, make changes, call our support staff for help – everything a  paying customer would do. 

Will someone contact me?

Once we receive your free trial request, someone from our sales team will reach out to you to create a script custom to your needs. This script is what the operators will use to handle your calls.

How do I get my calls to SAS?

Once the script is built, we’ll provide a forwarding number specific to your account. You can have your customers call this number directly, or you can forward your business line(s) to it. Usually call forwarding is set up by dialing *72 on your phone + the forwarding number, but may vary depending on your phone provider.

When can I access the software?

After your account is set up, it’s entirely up to you how you would like to use your trial period! You’ll have full access to playing around in your portal, making updates, listening to calls and critiquing operators, as well as configuring any integrations like Google Calendar or Salesforce, among others.

What if I have problems?

Throughout your trial, our customer support staff will check in to see how things are going, make account tweaks, and answer any questions you may have. We also track your usage during this time so you can see which plan would be most cost effective for you if you’d like to sign up for a paid service.

I’m sold! How do I sign up?

If you’d like to sign  up for our 2 week free trial, feel free to contact our sales team at 1-800-208-6177 or sign up online. 

The post What to Expect With Your Call Center Free Trial appeared first on SAS Call Center.

‘Customer journey management’ is the latest buzz word in the customer service universe. As customer touch points increase, companies find it difficult to monitor and effectively respond to customer interactions through multimodal omnichannels. However, those that can effectively orchestrate the customer’s journey and personalize their interactions reap rich rewards in terms of customer loyalty and increased operational effectiveness. New age contact center technologies and software play a crucial role in capturing customer interactions from various channels. They can even help predict where customers are on their journey. Here are a few to consider incorporating into your business:

1. Omnichannel Desktop: Instead of engaging separate teams to interact with customer queries from different channels, contact centers are now looking at a customer centric approach. Agents are allocated based on customer characteristics, no matter what the channel is. An omnichannel desktop provides a single view of the customer’s journey and allows agents to engage with the customer based on crucial insights their history. This way, agents can optimize the interaction, and increase the chances of cross sales and up sales by customizing offers exclusively for the customer.

2. Personalized Self-Service: Software tools from providers such as Genesys allow contextual and personalized self-service for each customer, cutting across channels and allowing seamless transition to assisted service.

3. Knowledge Management: An effective knowledge management platform is vital to successful omnichannel customer service. This would provide agents and customers alike with proactive contextual knowledge in assisted and self-service situations.

4. Omnichannel Callback: Today’s customer is highly demanding and does not want to be kept waiting. Rather, they would prefer the convenience of requesting a callback – be it from your website, mobile app or answering service. Omnichannel callback allows you to serve customers on their channel of choice, and at their convenience.

5. Analytics & Monitoring: Customer journey analytics and monitoring tools provide insights into the customer’s journey that can predict their behavior patterns and respond effectively. This enhances the customer’s experience, resulting in increased loyalty and a stronger bottom line for the enterprise.

Multi-channel touch points have greatly complicated the end-to-end customer journey. A modern call center infrastructure that aims to be customer centric should consider an all-in-one, open standards software platform from a single vendor. This approach will:

• Reduce multi-vendor complexity
• Allow for increased flexibility and agility
• Provide visibility and operational control across multiple sites with centralized administration

Empowering agents with the tools discussed above will enable contextual customer interactions at every point in the omnichannel journey, thereby benefitting both the enterprise and the customer.

The post The top 5 tools for successful omnichannel customer journey management. appeared first on SAS Call Center.