Sooner or later, many companies need to organize a call center. Create it yourself or use the services of a third-party call center? Let’s figure out in which cases one or the other option is preferable. 

Role of call center for business

A modern call center is capable of simultaneously responding to hundreds of subscribers. This is possible due to the formation of a queue of incoming calls and their gradual distribution among the free operators. In addition, some calls can be successfully processed using voice menus, without the need for a live conversation.

But a quick response to incoming calls is not all, it is equally important to accurately identify the client’s request and quickly find the relevant information in the databases, without the subscriber hanging on the line waiting for an answer.

Today, businesses have become much more serious about organizing communication with their customers. According to statistics, companies used to lose up to 30% of incoming calls due to the workload or incompetence of their employees, which led to the emergence of special units responsible for communications. And if at first the use of call-centers was peculiar only to large corporations, then interest in the technology began to grow on the part of medium and small businesses.

How does a call center work?

Now the market is most in demand for modern and flexible solutions for organizing call centers, the cost of independent implementation of which may be unbearable for small and medium-sized businesses. After all, this is not as simple a task as it might seem at first glance. You will need to rent and equip a room with an Internet connection and telephone networks, purchase special equipment and software, hire and train operators. All this can lead to an unreasonably high call service cost.

Among other things, it will not be easy to choose the best option from dozens of offers offered by the market today for organizing professional call centers. This is not only equipment, but also specialized control systems that provide a quick search for information that customers need. Thanks to such systems, situations are gradually becoming a thing of the past when a subscriber who needs an urgent answer “hangs” on the line for a long time.

When choosing a solution, its scalability is not the last factor, because business growth entails an increase in load. Therefore, an ideal solution when there is an urgent need for a fast and inexpensive organization of a call center can be outsourcing, which can start in a few days, from the very first days collecting statistics necessary for analyzing and planning options for further development of the service. By the way, when choosing your first operator, you should pay attention to his “portfolio”. The presence of large customers indicates the high quality and reliability of the service.

What to choose in-house call center vs customer support outsourcing services

It has already been mentioned that organizing a call center on your own requires a lot of money. Special equipment, software, jobs, employee training and quality management are needed.

The outsourcing call center already has modern and unified equipment and software, it has developed programs for recruiting and training personnel, and has implemented effective management systems. With all this, you will pay only for the time of processed calls, even if dozens of operators are involved in the process. The savings are obvious.

When making a choice, it is important to consider not only the financial side, but also the quality of customer service. An internal call center cannot dynamically change the number of employees depending on the peaks and valleys of calls; infrequently, the company has specialists to train new operators, psychologists and consultants.

Therefore, the question of choice should begin with the definition of key tasks, which can be divided into four groups:

1. The first is help desk support, answers to the same type of questions that customers constantly have. Outsourcers can handle this kind of work more effectively.
2. The second group of tasks includes support that requires deep knowledge of the product, the use of personal data or confidential information. Naturally, full-time employees will cope better with this, but even in this situation, many prefer to outsource primary call processing, directing only relevant requests to their own specialists. Such a “mixed” scheme is justified both economically and in terms of efficiency.
3. The third direction is the sale of goods or services by telephone, “telemarketing”. This process is often associated with a large number of so-called “cold calls”, which requires careful selection and training of personnel. It is more profitable to outsource this area of ​​work to an outsourcing call center in order to fully use the capabilities of trained employees and modern solutions. This allows you to use telemarketing with maximum impact.
4. And finally, the virtual secretary service. This freelance call handling option is the least expensive and is a real boon for start-ups that don’t yet have an office, companies whose employees are constantly on the move, or those firms that have a lot of incoming calls during off-hours.

Summing up the above, we can conclude that in most cases it is preferable not to organize the work of a call center from scratch, but to use a ready-made solution on an outsourcing basis.

The service desk business continues to evolve rapidly, becoming more flexible and efficient. You will not surprise anyone with the fact that users can connect the services they need or disable them at any time. Operators in their work use more and more complex and maximally flexible conversation scenarios, providing for hundreds and thousands of options for the development of a conversation. It is enough for a call center employee to make a few movements with a computer mouse to get the information the subscriber needs, as a result, an ever smaller number of calls may go beyond scripts and require the transfer of calls to your full-time specialists.

It is not surprising that the volume of consumption of call-center services in the world market demonstrates a steady growth – by 10-15% annually. According to experts, the annual turnover of domestic operators has already exceeded 5 billion US dollars.

The business world has seriously and for a long time turned its face towards outsourcing call centers, virtual offices and all new software solutions for communications.

What is cheaper: an outsource call center or in-house team?

Own staff of operators will cost no less than paying for the services of an outsourced call center. It is important to consider that a call center is not only operators. This is also equipment, software, training and adaptation of specialists. Therefore, it is necessary to add the costs of HR, the control service, IT specialists and trainers to the costs of employees.

Work specifics

When it comes to working with “warm” customers who need additional information to make a purchase decision, the knowledge of a “generalist” operator may not be enough. If the client needs advice from a narrow-profile specialist, it is rational to use the combined option. In this case, outsourced operators receive incoming calls and, if necessary, switch clients to the on-duty employees of the customer company.

Outbound cold calls require experienced, stress-resistant operators who can handle objections. It will take a lot of time to train such employees, and outsourcing call centers have a staff of just such operators. In addition, their services can be useful for one-time marketing events. For example, the outsourcing call center from GotYourBack Support offers to conduct surveys and customer surveys, as well as research using the “mystery shopper” method.

Conclusion

It is rational to resort to the services of an outsourcing call center in the following cases:

• the work involves a large number of the same type of calls that do not require the involvement of specialists;
• during seasonal bursts in the number of calls, for example, during the holidays;
• to conduct one-time marketing research;
• in case the company’s management wants to speed up business processes as much as possible by leaving the solution of urgent issues to professionals.

An outsourcing call center is a great opportunity to save money on arranging the infrastructure of your own contact center. An alternative solution could be a combined approach, when part of the work is outsourced, and part is performed by the company itself.