Why Call Center Outsourcing Should be a Priority
Call center outsourcing has gained popularity over the past few years. Especially as industry titans like The Wall Street Journal, Hershey Foods, and Time Warner Inc. continue to leverage BPOs to cut costs and improve efficiency. For larger companies, call center outsourcing can be highly beneficial, and should be a priority for those looking to expand.
It’s an unfortunate truth that many startups and smaller businesses tend to overextend their in-house staff, assigning too many tasks and responsibilities. Ultimately, this often ends up taking focus away from their main responsibilities, creating bottlenecks and hampering productivity.
This is why call center outsourcing can be so advantageous. Employees can remain focused on their core roles and responsibilities, customers are kept happy and the entire company continues to function like a well-oiled machine.
By making call center outsourcing a priority, you can make the most of an enhanced workforce. Without having to worry about overworked representatives delivering lackluster support to your customers.
Why Call Centre Outsourcing Should be a Priority
Reduced Costs
As we’ve mentioned previously, establishing a call center necessitates significant investments in premises, equipment, operations, and employees. Outsourced call centers disperse these costs among a large number of clients, allowing them to pay only for the services they require – on a transactional or per-hour basis. Agents can also be “shared” across numerous clients by outsourcers. Clients benefit from the “shared-agent” strategy since it decreases idle time and lowers the cost-per-call rate.
Flexibility and Scalability
Because call levels fluctuate, an in-house call center is vulnerable to periods of low volume, when personnel is idle. Multiple clients benefit from outsourced call centers, which helps to mitigate the severity of call volume peaks and valleys. Agents can work more efficiently, and managers may better arrange their workforce, lowering call costs. Outsourced call centers also have the size and staffing to quickly ramp up call volumes during peak seasons or during large marketing campaigns.
Specialized Industry Knowledge
For particular industries, outsourcers may have specialized expertise in call center services. The outsourced call center’s executives and managers will have useful ideas and tried-and-true techniques that can only come from years of experience. For example, DATAMARK has supplied contact center services for a variety of customer-rewards programs, as well as call center services for international customs and other shipping operations in the transportation and logistics industry for many years.
Dedicated “Call Managers”
Outsourced call center agents are trained to manage a variety of clients’ operations, unlike in-house agents who are normally trained to handle a specific product or service. Outsourced call center agents can swiftly adapt to diverse call settings and market themselves as professional “call managers” as a result. When you combine these talents with bilingual competence in Spanish and English, you can create effective multicultural, multichannel connections that result in satisfied, repeat consumers.
Expert Management and Support Staff
Outsourcers are specialized service providers who compete to hire top managers and support workers with extensive call center experience. Because they are generally limited to delivering customer service for a single product or service, in-house call centers often struggle to develop the institutional knowledge and skills required for top-tier customer service. Outsourcers hire and retain experts in workforce planning, quality assurance, technological support, and training for call centers.
Cost Management Tools
The majority of outsourcers’ business models are focused on transaction expenses. They’ve invested in technologies and skills to properly measure per-call costs to assist ensure call center profitability. This degree of pricing data is generally disclosed with clients on their monthly bill for services, allowing them to assess the efficacy of marketing efforts and overall operations. In-house call centers, on the other hand, may have expenditures that are difficult to attach to each call or customer interaction, making cost management and profitability difficult.
“Big Data” Collection and Analysis
Outsourcers recognize the value of recording and analyzing call data in order to get insights that will help their clients improve their processes. Outsourced call centers have worked with a variety of clients and have access to data from a variety of marketing and advertising efforts. Analysis systems that help unearth relevant insights from massive amounts of raw data are among the technologies that outsourcers invest in–the expenses of which are divided between numerous clients.
Quality Monitoring and Control
Make sure to treat customers’ calls and messages from other channels (such as email and webchat) appropriately under outsourcing service level agreements (SLAs). The main priority and some of the measures of call center quality include response time and first-time call resolution. Outsourced call centers should use monitoring technologies to guarantee that SLAs are met, as well as performance assessment and improvement strategies. In-house call centers may lack the resources or knowledge needed to implement systematic, ongoing quality monitoring and improvement initiatives.
Access to Latest Technology
Outsourcers will research and invest in the best multichannel customer contact technologies. Cloud-based platforms, VoIP, email, webchat, SMS messaging, and social media monitoring are all characteristics of these software solutions. For certain in-house call centers, the most cutting-edge contact center equipment may be too expensive. Outsourcers can spread the expense of these platforms across several clients because they have multiple clients.
Call Center Service 24/7, Seven-Days-a-Week
Every client wishes they could call, email, or enter a webchat session with a live customer care person at any time of day, on any day of the week. However, most businesses can’t afford to have that level of round-the-clock access in-house. Outsourcers, on the other hand, with call centers on both sides of the globe, can provide service that “follows the sun”–at a fraction of the expense of doing it in-house.
Final Thoughts
Choosing whether or not call center outsourcing is a viable option for your business can be a difficult decision to make. And, there are several variables to consider. However, it does mean lower expenses, less time spent training new personnel in a high-turnover environment, increased efficiency, and more flexibility, allowing you to focus on growing your business. These benefits alone should make it a priority for any growing company.
Noon Dalton is your dedicated resource to provide remote teams. Contact us today for more information.
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