Background on Outsourcing
Modern technology has made it easier than ever to outsource contact centers when companies are looking to offload costs.
If you’re interested in potentially moving your contact center offshore, you’ll probably have a lot of questions you need answered before you feel confident doing so.
At The Cattalyst, we’ve spent more than 20 years fielding questions from business owners in the same situation you may be in now.
This article compiles some of the most common questions we’ve received about outsourcing a contact center to help you make a more informed decision for your company.
So, without further delay, let’s get into it.
What is outsourcing, exactly?
We should begin by defining outsourcing. To put it simply, outsourcing is the act of handing off one of your company’s business units to a third-party vendor that specializes in it.
For example, outsourcing contact centers involve replacing your current call-answering unit with a team managed by another company.
The goal of this move is typically to save money on labor costs. But outsourcing can also free up your in-house workers to focus on more value-additive tasks to increase overall productivity.
AKA remove the redundant tasks that your agents don’t like doing.
As a leader, outsourcing can also be beneficial to you. It can free up however much of the weekly schedule you’ve been devoting toward managing your contact center and its employees.
That could mean a significant increase in the amount of time you have available to focus on the tasks that allow you to have the biggest impact.
Questions to ask as you decide whether outsourcing is right for your contact center
Let’s take a look at some common questions we answer about the decision-making process when it comes to outsourcing contact centers.
Asking yourself the following questions and reviewing our answers will help you move closer to deciding whether outsourcing is right for your business or not.
Q: How could this impact my brand?
A good first question to ask is how the change could influence your brand.
Remember, an outsourced contact center will mean that your customers will be speaking to a customer service agent you may not know or how long they’ve spent training on your product or service.
This can be a risky proposition, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The top-rated outsourcing companies have really strong track records of providing excellent customer support. You just need to make sure that you find a top-rated outsourcing partner to continue delivering great support to your customers.
Outsourcing your contact center could even improve the quality of your customer service by allowing the outsourced BPO to focus completely on providing service. Once again, it will likely come down to the quality of the outsourcing partner you find.
Q: Can we maintain quality?
Another key question to ask yourself is whether you’ll be able to maintain your current quality standards if you outsource your company’s contact center.
The challenge is often the level of insight that you have into the ongoing activities of the outsourced contact center.
For example, business owners can walk into an in-house contact center at any time to get a hands-on feel of how it’s performing.
The same thing isn’t usually possible with outsourced contact centers – or at least not consistently.
That means you have to trust the person who runs the outsourced team to honor your wishes and make quality a priority.
Your answer to this question could also vary based on how you’re measuring quality. If your metrics require more in-depth data tracking and analytics than offshore partners can provide, you may need to come up with a new performance-tracking model if you want to use an outsourced contact center.
Q: How much can we save through outsourcing?
Next up, consider the amount of money that you can save through outsourcing.
That answer will be the difference between the amount you’re spending on an in-house contact center now and the amount your outsourcing partners quote you for their services.
Plus determine if it’s really worth it.
One thing to note about this is that outsourcing contact centers means that you can typically scale up and down much easier as your needs change.
You won’t have full-time contact center employees on your payroll if you outsource, which will make it possible to add and subtract customer service agents on an as-needed basis.
This could also save you money – especially if your company has sizable variations in seasonal demand.
Q: Is my team’s time better spent elsewhere?
If you run a smaller business, where everyone pitches in on running the contact center, then this question may be especially important for you.
But it could also matter for larger companies too with hybrid workforces.
The idea behind the question is to assess how your potential outsourcing decision could influence the amount of value you get from your team.
In some cases, outsourcing contact centers could free up specialized employees to perform specialized tasks that bring extra value back to the business, such as digital marketing experts focusing on ad campaigns or sales gurus focusing on conversion.
In an ideal world, you would have employees using their specialized knowledge and skills to generate value for as high of a percentage of the hours that you pay them to work. Outsourcing may help you do that. But the impact will be larger for some companies than it is for others.
Q: Do I need to micromanage this business unit?
Another reasonable question to ask yourself is how you feel about giving up control over the contact center. If you hand it off to an outsourcing provider, you won’t have a vision of the intricacies of the contact center’s daily operations.
Once again, the solution is choosing the right outsourcing partner. If you can find someone you trust to run the business unit, you may feel much better about letting go of full control over it.
That being said, it’s also worth mentioning that you will have the final say over how your outsourced contact center runs. So you can always put a stop to practices you don’t like and institute ones that you do.
The challenge can sometimes be that you may not realize everything going on inside the business unit.
Q: How will our customers feel about the change?
Consider how your customers will feel about your decision to outsource your contact center. They may be talking to customer service agents who speak English as a second language and may have accents.
Are your customers the type of people to be put off by this?
If so, outsourcing may not be the right move.
However, nowadays, you can find outsourcing teams in just about any part of the planet. This makes it easier to find a source of cheap labor that will also be able to communicate effectively with your target audience.
Q: Can I find a reliable outsourcing business to partner with?
When business owners begin seriously contemplating all of these questions, this is typically where they end up.
The success or failure of your outsourced contact center will often come down to whether or not you can find a reliable partner that you trust.
The trouble is, that can be difficult to do if you don’t have any contacts in the outsourcing industry. And that brings us to the final question you should ask yourself as you decide whether outsourcing is right for your business.
Q: Have I spoken with an expert?
If you’re thinking seriously about outsourcing your contact center, then you owe it to the business to speak with an expert before doing so.
Outsourcing experts can clue you into various pricing details, practices, features, and concerns that you may not recognize on your own simply because you haven’t encountered them before.
At The Cattalyst, we’ve spent decades learning the intricacies of the outsourcing industry. We’ve also built relationships with industry-leading outsourcing providers across the planet. We’d love to leverage that expertise to help you make the right decision about your company’s outsourcing strategy.
But don’t just take our word for it.
You can visit our website to schedule a free outsourcing consultation with us anytime if you’d like to learn more.
The bottom line: Should your company outsource its contact center?
The bottom line is that outsourcing can be a great move for a company that wants to save money, improve scalability, and improve customer satisfaction ratings.
However, it’s not the right move for everyone, and speaking with an outsourcing expert is always a good move before finalizing your decision.
