It has been sometime since you have established your business. Pat on your shoulder, you have done a great job! Now, you have been receiving a huge number of calls from customers to enquire about your product/service. However, you are finding it tough to keep up pace with the calls, as you are falling short of the requisites for a good call center. Here comes the test – will you go ahead with call center outsourcing or try to strengthen your resources and call center infrastructure to build a good in-house call center?
Why You Should Consider Call Center Outsourcing
If you are facing a similar problem and are unable to decide if you should outsource call center activities for your business, you should consider following pointers:-
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Cost
Reduced cost is as obvious as the morning sun once you go for call center outsourcing as pointed out by a research, that companies save around 30% to 60% by outsourcing call center services. Savings can be considerably large for you as to get to outsource investments in facilities, equipment, operations and staffing. At the same time, you have to be vigilant to avoid overlooking any hidden costs. You should also be mindful that you choose a good BPO/KPO to ensure you don’t lose customers due to poor customer service, because the cost of reacquiring lost customers might burn a hole in your earnings.
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Staffing
When you opt to outsource call center activities, you can certainly save time and stay away from hassles to manage hiring, training, scheduling and running a team of call center reps. Furthermore, it will also allow to provide trouble-free 24/7 customer service. On the other hand, a recent study conducted by MIT stated that call center outsourcing results in a significant decrease in service quality and customer satisfaction. Reps located at remote locations might lack the necessary business knowledge and skill sets to provide superior customer service.
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Big Data & Latest Technology
Outsourcers often have multiple clients which make it easier for them to host the best and latest technologies for multichannel customer service. This is something that requires a lot of work if you choose to integrate the most recent technologies into your in-house call center. When you opt for call center outsourcing, you also gain insights from big data garnered from features such as social media, cloud services, email, chat, VoIP, etc. However, there is always a threat of security with the amount of data you choose to share with the outsourcers. Thus, tread your steps carefully.
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Call Volume
If you are about to launch a new marketing initiative for your business, you must be prepared to handle an increased volume of calls. Outsourcing your call center is a welcome idea to meet this objective. You can also choose to outsource a part of call center activities to a BPO/KPO for answering calls during periods of excessive call volume. While this is an excellent idea but you should be aware that the focus of reps at outsourced call centers might be divided as they are often assigned to take and receive calls from multiple clients. This results is division of their attention and thus, reps might not sound too interested while interacting with your customers.
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Quality Monitoring
You can be rest assured that answer time and first time call resolution are of prime importance to the outsourcers. Your in-house call center may not have the expertise or resources to provide continuous and structured quality monitoring and performance improvement plans. Once you choose call center outsourcing, you can surely get rid of all the aforementioned pains. Nevertheless, it should be noted that your job of quality monitoring is not over after handing it over to outsourcers. You need to ensure collaboration between your departments and reps of BPO/KPO to guarantee that that same quality is maintained, and put the same policies in place for greater customer satisfaction.
Have you ever faced a dilemma while thinking to go ahead with outsourcing call center. Share your experience in the comments below.
