To outsource, or not to outsource, what are the benefits and how it helps my business. These are some of the most common contact center outsourcing questions.
Operating a successful business means taking risks to increase profits, but how do you know which risks to take? Many companies spend thousands of dollars performing services that customers need, and which complement their products. The challenge is that companies are not always equipped to offer specific portions of the services. This is where contact center outsourcing and call centers come into play to help your business.
Trusting a contact center with essential services is a risky venture. While the partnership has the potential to save money, it also has the potential to create more problems. It is important to research a call center, to identify which ones offer quality services and work with vendors who they have vetted.
What is contact center outsourcing?
Most companies outsource, they simply don’t realize it. When a company has a separate division that handles credit card purchases, this is a form of contact center outsourcing. Some smaller organizations choose to partner with a third party to oversee portions of their services. Often, these are administrative tasks, such as monitoring warranties or answering phone calls. Many agencies choose to go this route because it saves money. It is almost impossible for a business to have enough staff, or specially trained staff, to handle all components of its business that create a positive customer experience.
What problems does contact center outsourcing solve?
When a company chooses to handle all portions of service internally, they are taking on significant risk. By assuming this role, they become responsible for every aspect and each detail of an interaction with a customer. The more steps a company handles, the more they are at risk for a mistake or an unhappy person. Choosing to keep everything internal limits the business in different ways and creates more steps to make things right with a customer, or places all liabilities for a failed encounter on them. Research shows 78 percent of all companies choose contact center outsourcing and partner with a call center that is already an expert in the industry they are looking to serve.
As almost every agency engages with the public or other vendors, the human risk factor increases. People do not respond the same to every situation; there are small nuances which can greatly affect an outcome. Both employees and customers struggle with the human aspect. It takes a considerable amount of training to effectively mitigate the human factor. Call center specialists are highly trained in this area. Businesses list the following as key factors in the decision process: cutting costs, solving capacity issues, focusing on the vision of the agency, enhancing the quality of services, accessing intellectual capital and driving transformational change.
When you consider contact center outsourcing and choose to partner with a call center, your business flexibility increases. As a company launches new products or growth occurs, an employer does not have to worry if they have the right amount of staff. Rather than paying for each employee, this partnership allows the agency to pay only for the time spent on the phone or performing the specific task.
Growth into new markets requires local employees who are fluent in both the local language or dialect and culture. Instead of hiring new staff and investing in onboarding costs, a partnership with a contact center allows for such situations. Outsourcing to a contact center located in the geographic area will enhance the customer experience.
The best way to improve the customer experience is to have quick response times. But as any leader knows, it is almost impossible to predict spikes in business accurately. Yes, studying trends and performance in past years can generate predictions, but they are simply that, predictions. Once again, times of increased volume require additional staff, which, even if hired as seasonal employees, will raise the overall bottom line.
Finally, telecommunication infrastructure is difficult and costly to maintain. A strong partnership with a highly rated call center will eliminate this cost. Such a working relationship will allow both the organization and customers to enjoy the latest technology without the expense. Contact center outsourcing mitigates most of the risks and costs associated to providing a world class customer service experience to your clients.
What countries are on top of the contact center outsourcing game?
Within the Americas, the United States, followed by Canada, Mexico, Peru and Brazil are the top countries utilizing outsourcing. In the European market, the United Kingdom, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Denmark are the top consumers. The Asian market is lead by Australia, followed by India, Russia, Hong Kong, and Japan. The countries which lead in economies and sales are also the countries which choose to cut their risk and partner with contact centers.
Which way is the contact center going?
The use of contact centers, across many sectors of the economy, is anticipated to grow. Growth is likely particularly in banking and finance services, insurance markets, automotive and aerospace fields, manufacturing and telecommunication. Contact centers are used in almost every field. These are specialty fields and maintaining adequatelytrained staff, who are currently in the fields, can greatly increase cost.
Robotic process automation
Many businesses are looking at robotics and automation to not only reduce costs but to also improve the customer experience. Some sectors are also experiencing a talent shortage, so using robotics can help in this area. For many industries, this will cause a shortage of jobs and place a strain on longstanding relationships. Only the agencies able to afford the expense of robotics will benefit. Utilizing a call center can alleviate this need and worry. The company will already have a cost-effective method in place.
Cloud adoption
Cloud adoption provides a framework for analyzing specific audiences and their role within and without the agency. Each portion is broken down into a perspective, and that perspective is applied to the departments it addresses. Common perspectives include business, people, governance, platform, security and operations. It would be costly and difficult for any organization to properly manage each perspective. Working with a contact center enables perspectives which are not specialties to be outsourced. This reduces costs, increases business and places specialists in each role.
Conclusion
Choosing to work with a contact center can not only save money for a company but also allow for higher quality services performed by experts. Also, the overall risk for the organization decreases as it is no longer liable for each step. Outsourcing such roles to experts create the ultimate customer experience.
