Many companies, small and large alike, hold the firm belief that the best way to ensure a top-quality customer experience is to handle all call center processes and services in-house. While this call center model does offer a wide range of benefits, there are also a wide array of benefits that outsourced call centers can provide, especially to rapidly growing companies who are struggling to keep up with client engagement demand. These benefits have not escaped the notice of businesses across many industries, and it’s now anticipated that the call center outsourcing market will expand by as much as $14.05 billion by 2025.
If you are exploring the idea of outsourcing your business’s call center services, keep reading. The points described in the article below are factors you’ll want to keep in mind. Please continue to explore six of the primary benefits of outsourced call centers and learn what they may be able to do for your business.
Related: Improving the Customer Experience With An Inbound Call Center
Table of Contents
What, Exactly, is Call Center Outsourcing?
In short, call center outsourcing is an overarching umbrella term that refers to the practice of hiring a third-party company to manage your customer service and various call center operations. These third-party vendors- for example, Blue Valley Marketing– can function either domestically or overseas and can be tasked with handling a wide range of responsibilities depending on the wants and needs of your particular business.
The primary advantage that draws businesses and corporations to outsource their call centers is that they don’t have to spend money on facilities, equipment, human resources, or keep up with the latest technologies. Because of this, businesses can save a considerable amount of money, time, and resources, especially over extended periods. Most importantly, companies can focus all of their resources on their core business and leave it to their third-party call center partner to handle all necessary customer service and other operations on their end.
Why is There a Stronger Need to Outsource Call Center Services Than Ever Before?
We’ll take the time to delve into the six primary reasons why growing businesses need to strongly consider outsourcing their call center services later in this article. But first, our experts at Blue Valley Marketing want to make a note of some recent developments and issues that are making the need to outsource call centers arguably more critical than ever before.
Issue #1: It’s Challenging to Find Quality Call Center Reps Right Now
This particular issue is actually being fueled by a range of factors at the moment. First is the fact that the minimum wage is steadily rising in many locations across the United States. While this is very beneficial for many employees, it’s also resulting in higher operational costs for businesses. While some larger businesses and companies can handle the increase in wages, others can’t and have therefore needed to downsize by laying off staff in various departments- including call centers.
There is also the fact that many people don’t particularly enjoy call center work, especially if they don’t feel they’re being paid enough. While people within all industries have participated in what’s now known as The Great Resignation over the past few years, it’s undeniable that many people who quit their profession were former employees working for call center departments of businesses. Many of these people are also not interested in re-entering a call center career.
Because of both of these issues, it’s recently become tough for businesses to find, hire, or retain quality call center representatives. The lack of call center reps has heightened the need for businesses to outsource their operations to third-party call center companies.
Issue #2: Companies are Now Short on Call Center Reps
Partially because of The Great Resignation and partially because of downsizing, many companies are now very short on call center staff, which has caused a wide range of problems around the level and quality of customer service they can provide consumers. For example, call center wait times have skyrocketed for many businesses, requiring customers to remain on hold for several hours rather than minutes before they can receive help. Sadly, this trend is likely to continue since- as clearly noted above- companies are also having trouble finding and hiring new call center representatives.
By outsourcing call center operations to a third-party company, businesses can be sure that their consumers will receive quick, quality service that will leave them pleased and willing to continue working with said business in the future.
Issue #3: COVID-19 and Remote Work Have Changed the Call Center Game
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses have wisely chosen to allow their call center staff to work remotely over the past few years to help promote the health and safety of their employees. However, many businesses have run into issues with this. Put simply, managers, supervising staff, and even companies as a whole don’t know how to deal with the massive changes to their workplace environment.
The realization that they don’t know how- or want- to deal with a remote workforce of internal call center representatives has encouraged many businesses to outsource their call center needs. If your business is struggling with the same issues, it may be time to consider making the same decision.
6 Primary Benefits of Outsourcing Call Center Services
While call center outsourcing offers a massive range of advantages to businesses, we’ll focus on exploring the six most important benefits below.
1. It Removes the Need for Omnichannel Investment
In the current age of technology and business operations, consumers have very high expectations regarding the services they expect to receive when interacting with companies. In short, customers want to communicate through the channels they regularly use in their daily lives, and that they’re most comfortable with. That means calls or emails for some, but that could mean social media, webchat, or even Zoom meetings for others.
Omnichannel technology provides a unified way for businesses to connect with their customers across all possible channels and devices that consumers may want to use via a specially integrated system. Said system also keeps track of customer history, interactions, and activity across all connection modes used, making it easy for businesses to obtain a more thorough, holistic view of a customer’s journey. However, said systems can be incredibly expensive, and many businesses can’t afford to acquire them. When outsourcing their call center operations, the third party they contract with may have access to an omnichannel system.
2. Outsourcing is more flexible and scalable for growing businesses.
As businesses grow, the volume of calls, e-mails, chats, and other digital interactions they receive naturally grows, and so do the expectations of their customers. Outsourced call centers have the specialized training, experience, and resources needed to meet those rapidly changing needs while ensuring top-quality customer service. Third-party call centers can also provide 24-hour service, off-hours service, and much more.
Related: Blue Valley Marketing Launches New Call Center
3. It costs much less than operating an internal call center.
Operating an internal call center is labor-intensive, especially due to the continuous process of recruiting, hiring, and training new agents- larger call centers have a 44% turnover rate, so they’re constantly looking for new employees. This requires considerable time and money to deal with, and that’s not even mentioning the various facility and infrastructure costs, including computers, internet, workstations, specialized software, and high-quality phones. Outsourcing your call center removes these costs as part of a contract fee with the outsourcing company that’s often much less expensive than internal operations.
4. Businesses gain access to the latest data, analytics, tools, and technologies.
Third-party call centers invest in a massive array of advanced tools and software to serve many critical functions, from data collection and analysis to customer support and much more. By partnering with these call centers, a business won’t have to worry about purchasing these tools for themselves and can be confident that the various needs of their clients will be met more effectively.
Are you searching for a new, top-quality source of outbound and inbound calling services, lead generation, and content marketing to effectively promote your business and increase the efficiency of its operations? Blue Valley Marketing is a trusted source of call center and marketing solutions, so consider reaching out to our team today!
5. Outsourced contact centers can provide a better customer experience.
Third-party call center agents are specifically trained on how to provide optimal levels of customer service and are often able to handle calls quicker since in-house agents typically have to focus on multiple other tasks outside of call center operations. Having agents specifically focused on answering customers’ calls, and nothing else helps ensure a better customer experience overall.
6. The practice increases monitoring capabilities and quality control.
Third-party call centers have the tools, processes, and well-trained staff to record calls and effectively monitor performance for quality control. This allows them to perform daily, weekly, and monthly reviews and adjust their performance as needed to ensure the optimal quality of their services.
Related: 3 Ways Small Businesses Benefit From Inbound Contact Center Services
BONUS: Third-party call centers are more specialized and tend to have expertly trained staff.
For a call center to operate successfully, it requires employees that are specially trained and have a range of specific knowledge and skills to take care of customer interactions as effectively as possible. Third-party call centers are specifically focused on ensuring their employees can provide the best customer service and have years of experience working with proven strategies meant to deliver optimal results in customer interactions.
The Growing Popularity of Call Center Outsourcing
At present, call center outsourcing is quickly becoming one of the most common ways for businesses to interact with their customers without having to hire full-time employees. This is one of the reasons why the global call center outsourcing market is set to grow by $21.72 billion between 2022 and 2026.
Outsourcing allows businesses to focus on their core competencies while letting someone else take care of customer service needs. This means that companies don’t have to spend time training employees on how they should handle calls or answering questions about policies and procedures. They can just focus on making sure the product or service is provided as well as possible.
Large multinational companies like Amazon, AT&T, Microsoft, Pfizer, and Verizon are currently working with US Based and overseas customer support teams to offer tech support, customer care services, and a variety of other customer-oriented services.
Call center outsourcing has become a way for these companies to not only ensure customer satisfaction but also win customer loyalty by providing 24/7 customer support. All these things work in conjunction to ensure their business growth, but how? How can call center outsourcing help grow your business? That’s what we’re going to walk you through today as you continue reading the rest of this post.
How Call Center Outsourcing Can Grow Your Business?
A call center is a strategic business unit that can be a key part of your business growth. A well-managed and well-run call center can help you achieve your business goals by providing several benefits to your company.
Let’s dig deeper into some of those benefits and how they can help your business grow.
More Cost-Friendly
When you outsource your call center to a company that specializes in call centers, you can expect to see several benefits. One of these is lower costs.
Running a call center in-house is often more expensive when compared to outsourced solutions. Outsourcing your call center services can help your business save up to 70 percent on labor costs. When you outsource your call center, you can reduce your overhead and increase the number of calls you take with fewer staff members.
In addition to saving on overhead costs, outsourcing also allows you to save money by eliminating the need for expensive equipment and facilities.
For example, if you have an in-house call center, you need to make sure that the space where employees work is secure, ergonomic, and technologically advanced enough for them to do their jobs well.
If you outsource your services instead, all of these things are taken care of by your outsourced provider. This means that you don’t have to worry about ensuring that they have access to everything they need. Your outsourced provider does it all for you.
Provide 24/7 Support to Your Customers
Providing 24/7 support to your customers is a crucial part of running a successful business. It’s important to be able to provide customer service at any hour of the day or night, and it can be hard for many companies to do this effectively without outsourcing.
With call center outsourcing, you’ll have access to a team of professionals who are dedicated to providing 24/7 support for your customers. They’ll have the knowledge and skill set that’s necessary to handle any customer service issue that comes up, no matter how complicated or unusual it may be.
More Flexibility and Scalability
Call center outsourcing offers more flexibility and scalability than in-house call centers for several reasons. These are discussed as follows.
- Outsourcing allows companies to tap into a global pool of skilled and experienced call center agents. This means that companies can easily scale their call center operations up or down depending on their business needs without the need to recruit, train, and manage a large in-house team.
- Outsourcing call center services allows companies to take advantage of the latest technology and infrastructure without the need to invest in expensive equipment and software.
- Companies can enjoy the benefits of the latest call center technology, such as cloud-based systems, which can be easily scaled up or down as needed.
- Since customer support is no longer an in-house concern for most cases, it’s an opportunity for businesses like yours to operate with more flexibility. That means you get to invest in other areas with the money you’d otherwise have to spend on building and developing an in-house customer support team.
Increased Sales
Call center outsourcing can lead to an increase in sales for businesses by providing access to a highly trained and skilled workforce who can handle a wide range of customer inquiries and complaints.
Here are a few ways this works.
- By outsourcing, businesses can benefit from round-the-clock customer service, which can help to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. This can lead to retaining business as well as word-of-mouth recommendations, leading to an increase in sales.
- Outsourcing providers typically use advanced technologies and techniques to boost sales, such as lead generation, upselling, and cross-selling, which can be difficult to implement and maintain in-house.
- Outsourcing can also help businesses to focus on their core competencies and better allocate resources, which can lead to improved productivity and cost-efficiency, which in turn can lead to an increase in sales.
No Need for Extra Office Space
If you’re looking to grow your business, it can be tempting to add more staff. However, adding more employees isn’t always the right decision. As the owner of a growing business, you need to consider whether or not you have the extra space in your office to accommodate new hires and what the costs are going to be.
With the COVID-19 pandemic situation calming down, the demand for office space is growing as workers return to their physical workplaces. As a result of that, you can expect the costs associated with these workspaces to climb.
By outsourcing your call center work, you’ll save money on office space, hiring new employees, and paying for employee benefits. Not only will your business save money, but it will also be able to focus on its core competencies and increase overall productivity, which will allow it to grow faster than ever before.
Outsourcing Your Call Center Services? Blue Valley Marketing is Here to Help
If you’re operating a successful business that’s currently experiencing rapid growth, then it may be time to consider transferring your in-house call center operations to Blue Valley Marketing, a trusted and experienced partner with 5 locations in the USA and one nearshore location. Doing so can provide a massive range of benefits, from saving your company vast amounts of money to helping ensure your consumers are provided with optimal levels of customer service by specifically trained call center agents. If you’d like to move forward to partner with a top-quality call center to outsource your operations, please consider contacting our experts at Blue Valley Marketing today. Also, don’t forget to explore our wide range of educational resources for access to even more information on quality call center operations.
Has your business reached a point in its growth where it would benefit from outsourcing its inbound and/or outbound call center services? Trust Blue Valley Marketing to connect with your prospective customers and be confident that we’ll provide the same level of care they’re used to seeing from you!
Last Updated on February 3, 2023 by Ronen Ben-Dror
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