How CallerDesk helps SMBs with virtual call centre solutions

In today's competitive landscape, effective communication is the cornerstone of customer acquisition and retention for businesses of all sizes. 

While large enterprises—fueled by deep pockets—often have dedicated call centres, micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) find it difficult to achieve the same level of communication prowess with limited resources at their disposal.

Charanjeet Singh, a Ludhiana-based hosiery factory owner, says that with limited personnel available, he often finds himself unable to attend to customer calls or follow-up inquiries crucial for expanding his business.

Despite his attempts to hire a dedicated executive to manage customer calls, the lack of proper data maintenance and follow-up protocols led to suboptimal outcomes, hardly showing any positive results.

In response to the challenges faced by small and medium businesses (SMBs), Kaushal Bansal and Rajesh Kumar Dimania launched CallerDesk in 2016. The Noida-based company offers a virtual help desk for callers, delivering comprehensive call centre solutions entirely through the cloud. 

“India stands as the world's second-largest BPO industry hub, significantly driving employment opportunities. However, traditional on-premises call centre setups incur hefty capital expenses and lack flexibility, demanding high maintenance,” Bansal tells SMBStory. 

He adds, “For SMBs, investing Rs 30 to 40 lakh in a conventional call centre—inclusive of data centre costs—poses a significant financial burden.” 

Recognising this need, the duo launched CallerDesk, which reduces operational costs and overcomes communication challenges for SMBs, thus offering a viable solution.

How CallerDesk help SMBs?

In 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, most on-premises call centres were hit by unexpected challenges and had to pivot to remote working. The greater challenge for smaller companies continued to have a customer support team available while working from home.

Dimania says, CallerDesk helped bridge this deep and evident gap. 

The company is seed-funded by the IIM Lucknow enterprise incubation centre and has a Unified Communication-Virtual Network Operator (UL-VNO) licence in four cities, including Gurugram, New Delhi, Gautam Buddha Nagar (Noida), and Bengaluru Urban. UL-VNOs are an extension of Network Service Operators.

“In just 30 minutes, businesses can run cloud call centres in operational mode, along with remote workforce compatibility. For this, a customer support executive requires a laptop, mobile phone, or softphone integration to start handling incoming and outgoing business calls,” Bansal explains.

A softphone utilises software to replicate the functions of a desk phone directly on your computer or device screen.

He adds, “With the help of our platform, a company support executive can work routinely from home, unlike previously, when they needed to be in the office.”

Moreover, SMBs have been using Interactive Voice Response (IVR) calling and chatbots, which do not need a full-fledged calling team. However, Bansal says that the IVR system doesn’t solve the whole purpose of customer retention or lead generation. 

CallerDesk enables SMBs to manage large volumes of calls efficiently, offering features like call tracking, team productivity analysis, and smooth call routing, which isn’t possible for callers to do manually. 

SMBs using a tool like CallerDesk can generate an analysis report of their customers and use it to boost their business. 

Since its inception, CallerDesk has partnered with Startup India and NASSCOM, among others, to support startups and SMBs in their customer retention journey. 

CallerDesk, Bansal says, is given to customers at a subscription cost of Rs 1,000 per month per user, where SMBs hire executives to manage their customer support services.

Challenges and the way ahead

At present, CallerDesk has around 700 SMBs as its clients. However, Bansal says competing with traditional solution providers—who still prefer the traditional call centres because they believe migrating to the cloud is expensive—is the biggest challenge. When, in fact, it is cheaper than the traditional system. 

CallerDesk competes with the likes of SquadStack, Exotel, etc. 

According to Dimania, the Indian customer relationship management software market is projected to clock revenue worth $1.22 billion in 2024. 

Talking about future plans, Bansal says, the company aims to onboard more SMBs since the market is huge. “There are more than 6.3 crore MSMEs in the country, there is huge potential,” he says.