Advantages and Disadvantages of Outsourcing Call Center Services

Advantages and Disadvantages of Outsourcing Call Center Services

There are advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing call center services. Outsourcing is a business practice used by many companies to reduce costs, improve efficiency or when outsourced correctly both. This is accomplished by using external third party vendors to do tasks normally done by internal staff.

How does a company decide whether call center outsourcing is right for it? Each company should create an advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing list. Put advantages on one side, disadvantages on the other and see what’s best. Sometimes you will find that you should outsource all call center services. Sometimes you will see an advantage in keeping certain processes in house and outsourcing other processes. Each company needs to decide what’s best for it based on their circumstances and business targets.

Here are a few Advantages and Disadvantages of outsourcing call center services. Its important to keep in mind that what is an advantage for one company could be a disadvantage for another:

  • Outsourcing enables companies to focus their attention on their core competencies.
  • Outsourcing saves money. When calculating the cost of management, overheard, technology, training, space, payroll, hiring, firing, taxes incidentals and more, outsourcing to a call center lowers the overall cost of operations.
  • Outsourcing to a call center that specializes in certain tasks allows for operational efficiencies. This will not only save money, but increase customer satisfaction, revenue and the like.
  • Outsourcing call center services to a legitimate company, allows the benefit of using up to date technology. Technology is constantly changing and legitimate outsourcing companies have IT management on staff to keep up with the changes.
  • Since the main resource of outsourcing is people, outsourcing service providers focus their attention on recruiting, training and maintaining good people. This allows companies the flexibility to scale quickly and to focus their energy on other tasks.

It’s important to have a proper strategy in place to minimize disadvantages of outsourcing call center services such as:

  • Sharing company data with an outsource provider
  • Losing control of daily activity that is being outsourced
  • Partnering with a call center that does not adhere to the same standards in terms of quality of service, adherence to policies and other sensitive aspects of the business
  • Being a small fish in a big pond. Since the call center has other customers, there is the need to make sure that the business receives the proper attention from the management and staff to meet and exceed expectations
  • Lack of cultural understanding of the customer and even lack of understanding the culture of the business being represented can alter the image the company is trying to project.

From my experience, the majority of disadvantages are due to poor site selection and lack of planning. Though there are advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing services, the many benefits that outsourcing brings far outweigh its disadvantages.

Once you have decided on outsourcing call center services, it’s important to decide on the correct call center for your company. There is outsourcing onshore, nearshore and offshore. There are advantages and disadvantages to all three such as cost, cultural affinity, ease of understanding and quality of service. Learn more about choosing a call center here: https://guatecall.com/how-to-choose-the-right-outsourced-call-center/

If bilingual skills are important, it would also be a good opportunity to select a location that can handle the language without a need to increase labor wages. An example would be if needing bi-lingual English Spanish call center services, it would be best to outsource nearshore where the Spanish language would be readily available.

My biggest advice when choosing a call center would be to partner with a management team that shares the same vision as you and understands the needs of your company. Together you can create an action plan and constantly fine tune it to meet and exceed the company’s targets. Feel free to reach out to me to speak more in depth about this or other outsourcing topics.

This article is written by Perry Silber. Perry Silber is one of the founders of GuateCall. GuateCall is a nearshore contact center located in Guatemala Central America/ Latin America. Our contact center solutions offers multi-channel bilingual English and Spanish call center services. If you would like to learn more about GuateCall and its services in voice, chat or email in both English and Spanish, please reach out to me at 713-474-2222 or by e-mail perry@guatecall.com .

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