Insights

How to Outsource a Call Center

Outsourcing a call center has become a common strategy used by businesses wanting to simultaneously cut costs whilst offering exceptional levels of customer service to both existing and potential customers.

With over 600 specialised call centers in the UK to choose from, we’ve compiled our top tips on how to outsource successfully.

Know When to Outsource your Call Center

Whether you are at a point where you can no longer handle the volume of calls your business receives, or you feel that your business is starting to suffer due to the distraction of phone calls taking employees away from their day-to-day tasks for long periods of time, it may be time to outsource your call center.

As any business grows it’s inevitable that there will be an increased demand for customer communication.

In order to satisfy these demands, it may be necessary to consider outsourcing your call center, freeing up your staff for other tasks.

Understand the Advantages of BPO for your Call Center

There are multiple advantages of BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) for your call center which can be enjoyed almost immediately.

Cost-Effective

Savings of up to 15% can be made by outsourcing your call center. Depending on the nature and size of your business, it can entirely remove the need to hire staff, provide training and purchase expensive equipment such as laptops and phone sets. Employees on call duties can then be freed up for other tasks.

Improve Quality of Service

With well-trained call center agents, your customers will benefit from a professional approach to the communication they receive.

65% of customers who make a call will be doing so after having tried at least one other method of communication. This may mean that customers are frustrated and dissatisfied – hence it’s essential that they are in contact with agents who have been highly trained.

Improve Speed for Answering Calls and Handle Time

Traditionally, call centers aim to answer 80% of calls within 20 seconds – providing direct and efficient communication to customers when they need it. If your employees are working on day-to-day tasks alongside taking calls, it’s highly unlikely that they could achieve anywhere close to this level of speed when it comes to call handling times.

Being able to reach customer service agents quickly and avoiding long wait times is in the top three points of comparison used by customers when deciding who to spend their money with alongside price and quality of products and services.

Increased Flexibility

On average, call centers experience 35% less downtime than there would be if you were handling all calls in house. Outsourcing all your calls to a call centers means that your customers will be able to gain support and information outside of your regular office hours.

Many call centers employ agents who may be located in different time zones or work on shift patterns enabling them to be available to your customers on a more flexible basis.

Flexibility can also extend to the points when you most need your call centers agents. If you have a particularly busy time of the day, week, month or year, you can request extra help to deal with overflow calls.

how to outsource a call center

Discover what Call Center Services to Outsource

Call center services that you may consider outsourcing include:

Technical Support

88% of customers feel that the experience a company can provide is just as important as its products or services. This is particularly relevant when it comes to offering technical support.

Almost all businesses now require some level of technical support – whether for employees themselves or for customers. By outsourcing technical support you can reduce customer dissatisfaction by ensuring that the right person (with expert knowledge) can be reached whenever possible. Call center quality assurance is crucial for maintaining high service standards, whether you’re managing an in-house team or outsourcing your call center operations.

Technical support agents will be highly trained to efficiently deal with specific requests. For your employees to help to solve similar issues may take far longer and prove distracting from their day-to-day tasks.

Inbound and Outbound Calls

By outsourcing inbound calls, you’ll be requiring agents to deal with questions, complaints or feedback from customers. Examples of this could include Technical Support or Customer Service.

Outbound calls relate more specifically to contacting potential customers who may be interested in using the services of your company. You can outsource market research, cold calling and lead generation.

Both inbound and outbound calls made on your behalf can save you time and money by freeing up employees to perform other tasks and avoiding hiring and setting up additional staff.

Marketing

Many companies choose to implement cold calls into their Marketing strategy. Outsourcing this type of call to a call center working on your behalf can create new leads for your business, reaching more potential customers.

Any business owner wants to ensure that the service that their existing customers receive won’t be affected as they outreach to others – this can be achieved by outsourcing Marketing calls whilst your employees cater to the needs of your current customers.

Find a BPO Call Center Provider

When looking for the right BPO Call Center Provider it’s important to consider:

Define your BPO Strategy

Take the time to define your BPO strategy from the beginning. Avoid rushing into outsourcing your call center – even when you realise the amount of time and money you can potentially save in using an external company.

Always ensure that you work collaboratively with a call center provider to carefully define how you want the process to work. Any BPO strategy should consider how you will ensure that your customers are positively impacted by the decision to outsource your call center.

You may want to ask for expert advice to tie down contracts, Service Level Agreements and any other documentation. Use Key Performance Indicators as helpful guidelines to everyone involved.

Complete the Transition Process in BPO

Migrating duties and key responsibilities in BPO is one of the final stages in completing the transition process.

88% of companies agreed that open communication and dialogue is essential to make sure that the BPO provider has access to everything that they need to perform efficiently on your behalf.

As well as imparting information about your company and your needs, always be mindful to listen to any advice from the BPO provider themselves. It is highly likely that they will have experience in similar transitions and may be able to offer helpful insight as to what is and isn’t helpful.

With Evaluagent, you’ll have the tools to assess interactions across different communication channels. This will aid in coaching, training, and enhancing the motivation of your call center agents, whether in-house or as part of call center outsourcing. Our aim is to ensure they consistently provide exceptional customer experiences. Arrange a conversation with us to learn about the transformative potential of our free 14-day trial.