In our previous article, we covered the pros of call centers in a self storage facility business. But as we said, there are always two sides of the coin. Let’s talk about the cons.
Cons
Its no secret that putting facets of business into the hands of others can be scary and stressful. It is crucial, however to learn how to effectively delegate as your company grows so that you can keep moving forward. If it is going to succeed, the brand of your business needs to flawlessly integrate with your call center, and that can be a huge challenge. If this isn’t done properly, there are some pretty big problems that can present themselves:
Communication barriers. For many people, when they think of a call center, they think about being put on hold, taking to a rep who has no clue what they are talking about or who cannot speak English, and who are transferred from one department to another. This is so frustrating for a customer, but it doesn’t have to happen like that! You don’t have to out source to another country or hire a long-distance call center. You can do this right from your hometown, or even right out of your headquarters.
Product Knowledge
No one knows your products like you do! Even still, there should be absolutely no disconnect between you and your managers, and your call center team. Unfortunately, this does happen too often. When your renters or tentative renters call with questions, your call center need to know how to answer them, or at the very least how to find the answer. One way to overcome this problem? By including your call center in staff meetings! Let them hear what is going on within the company and what the goals for the company are. If you keep everyone on the same page, everyone will be more confident and customer service team will be more knowledgeable, leading them being able to answer any questions that come their way.
Collaboration. Having collaboration between your call center and your property manager is going to be essential to product knowledge, but making this happen can be difficult. If the call center is in a different state or not local to your facility, it can be more difficult to get everyone together at the same time. If communication is already a problem in the business, adding a call center team is only going to magnify that problem
Collaboration
Collaboration between your call center team and your property managers is key to product knowledge, but sometimes collaboration can be difficult. If your call center is in a different state or far away from your facilities, your property managers will need to make a solid effort to include customer service reps in meetings and loop them in with updates at the facility-level. If communication is already an issue between managers, adding a call center team could just exacerbate the problem.
Before you bring in a call center, be sure to know the strengths and weaknesses of your team so that you can anticipate what challenges you are going to have to overcome! You are also going to need to make sure that the pros outweigh the cons!
