The thought of outsourcing a call center might scare you a little if you have no experience using it. If so, it’s only due to misconceptions about what’s involved and the value it can bring.
One thing you likely can’t deny is you need to use a call center in your business. Without one, you’re only going to fall behind in being competitive and in effectively communicating with customers. With business competition becoming more intense every year, you’ll need a call center in some form to stay in the game.
How do you really know if you should outsource? Take a look at these five considerations to help you make a more educated decision.
1. Using a Call Center In-House vs. Outsourcing
To weigh options on outsourcing, you need to decide whether investing in a call center in-house is a better long-term option. Evaluate how much time you spend in communicating with clients or speaking to prospective clients who are unqualified for the services your business offers.
Look at the technology you already have and the cost to hire and train employees to manage your CRM or calendar. One thing you shouldn’t do is have only a few people in a particular department take on all your calls. Doing this only leads to quick burnout while progressing the chance of continual turnover in your workforce.
With outsourcing, you won’t have to worry about overworking your employees. You’ll already have a team providing a call center from another location.
Most of all, you won’t miss out on the various opportunities you could enjoy when not placing all burden on a few people. A quality outsourcing service gives you an entire team experienced in operating a fully-equipped call center.
2. Do You Have Proper Staffing for a Call Center?
Unless you can gain a true competitive advantage working with technology in-house, outsourcing will help considerably on finding reliable business communication skills based on your position. Some of this includes customer service, using a virtual receptionist, screening calls for solicitors, internal communications, trouble ticketing, and dispatch.
Most of all, you’ll want to know if your staff is capable of handling a call center. Did you know in-house employees typically only work at a 60% efficiency rate? When you factor in sick days, vacation time, and emergencies, you’d place more burdens on a limited staff. Also, with 6,228 minutes spent interacting on the phone, staff available may become overwhelmed and miss important calls.
Downtime like this is always a problem in wasting money. Letting an outside source provide your call center ensures you have a well-trained team. Better yet, you only have to pay for what you need rather than worrying about keeping in-house talent on a continual payroll.
3. Do You Need Help With Your Help Desk?
It might sound strange to ask for help with your help desk. Nevertheless, it’s worth considering how stressful this job title is.
How overworked is your IT department in keeping up with this role? Tier I tech support might sound relatively simple. It can quickly become chaotic when working with a limited amount of people.
While it’s true you’ll pay a little more for premium outsourcing here, it’s really going to depend on what you need. For instance, if you need to provide Tier-I tech support, in-house costs might initially sound reasonable.
Yet, what happens if your support agents experience constant high-volume calls? Obviously, you’d end up paying more in expenses than if you outsourced.
Once again, it pays to audit your company and realize what you’d have to spend to stay competitive.
4. You Need Your Employees to Focus On Other Things
Another way to tell if call center outsourcing is right for you is to determine whether your employees need quality time to focus on other projects.
As mentioned above, you don’t want to put all call center pressures on a limited staff. Even if you do have a large enough team, you may need them to work on other top priority things for the time being.
Forbes notes this as a major business decision to take very seriously. Ultimately, outsourcing helps your staff stay hyper-focused on the things more apt to take you to the next level. Besides, operating a call center is perhaps not in your staff’s wheelhouse for customer service or taking after-hours calls.
Also consider the access you’ll gain in helping fill a major gap in your company. If you really need a call center, being able to gain access to it immediately through outsourcing is going to help your reputation with any current customers.
Remember, no one outside your company will know you’re outsourcing your call center for lead qualification. Prospective leads are the ones who ultimately see the benefits. They’ll have all their questions answered without you taking a risk setting up a call center with agents who don’t know what they’re doing.
5. Decide if Outsourcing a Call Center Brings More Value
Initially, outsourcing might seem more like something you have to do rather than bringing real value you can trust. It’s true that you should thoroughly vet your outsourced call center service first to ensure they’ll bring value rather than liabilities.
What’s most important to ask is whether a call center can realistically become an extension of your office. Some of your employees may think they can handle a call center, but reality is always a different story.
In truth, no one can do everything perfectly. Relying on outsiders who’ve had extensive phone training are ones who bring the value you need. When competing in a more challenging business world, how people perceive you is everything. You only have a brief window of opportunity with phone customer service, and outsourcing brings this value to keep your reputation pristine.
Finding the Right Call Center Service
Where do you turn to find a superior outsourced call center service? If you’re still not sure about outsourcing this, we invite you to visit our website at Westpark Communications.
By visiting our site, we’ll help answer more questions you may have about whether outsourcing is truly you best choice now or in the future.