Call centers are often an essential part of a business. It is where your customers can turn when they have questions or problems. The people who work in your call center make the difference between satisfied customers and disgruntled ones. Because your call center is so vital, you may hesitate to entrust it into someone else’s hands. However, outsourcing your call center can actually make your business run smoother and result in some satisfying savings.
You Only Pay for Productive Time
If you own and operate your own facility, you pay for every minute that your employees are on the clock. You pay for those five-minute bathroom breaks and those chats with the neighbor to catch up on football. You also have to pay for employee coaching, and that usually involves paying two people, the employee and the coach. All those manpower minutes can add up.
When you partner with an outsourced call center, you only pay for the time the call center spends actually helping your business. For example, if a customer service representative makes $20 per hour but is only productive for 50 minutes of that hour, you would only pay $16.67 if that person worked at an outsourced call center.
This savings is particularly striking when you consider the hours of training it takes to get new hires up to speed. If those new hires work for an outside company, you don’t pay anything for that person’s basic training.
You Save on Technology Costs
When you decide to invest in new technology, it may be a while before you see a return on your investment. You have to put out money for the equipment itself as well as for setup, installation, and training time; all of that can turn into a financial burden.
Let your call center partner shoulder the cost. Because professional call centers help multiple businesses, it is often more cost-effective for them to invest in the latest technology. State of the art CRM software, phone systems, and instant messaging technologies can make the customer experience smoother. Good software can also furnish you with revealing metrics about how the facility is performing.
You Can Boost Customer Satisfaction
One of the biggest benefits of outsourcing your call center is that it makes your business more accessible to customers. You may not have the resources to have people answering the phone late at night or on weekends, but outsourced centers do. You’ll be less likely to lose customers whose schedules make it impractical for them to reach you during your regular business hours.
Another advantage is that call centers often come with multi-language support. You won’t have to squander time and money on sifting through piles of applications to find job candidates that speak the languages your customers speak; your communications partner will have already done that for you.
Beware the Lure of Overseas Options
In your hunt to save money, you may be tempted to outsource your call center to an overseas business. The low wages in other countries might seem appealing. However, choosing an overseas partner could actually cost you more money in the long run. Customers may be dissatisfied when they speak to someone who doesn’t know their culture or their language very well.
Overseas calls centers can also damage the customer experience — and thus cost you money — because the representatives may not be fully qualified to handle customer inquiries. A 2010 survey found that 32 percent of participants who talked to someone at an overseas facility had to speak with more than one person.
Your call center can make your business fly or fall. By outsourcing to a domestic company, you can save money and be sure that your customers are in trustworthy hands.
