Call Centre Services: Outsource to Improve Quality

When the economy is tough — which has been most of the time in recent years — customer behaviour often becomes more and more demanding. Feeling the increased economic pressure, customers, whether they are consumers or other businesses, look to ensure they get the maximum value for their spending. They want the lowest prices and the best possible service and are more willing to go through the inconvenience of moving to competitors to get it. But a business needs to return a profit, so how can it do that while satisfying customers? For many businesses, using external call centre services has helped them satisfy customers and keep profit margins reasonable.

The most obvious way call centre services help is by lowering costs. Like any outsourcing, using a call centre is not an additional function, but it’s replacing something that is already required within a business. Even if there isn’t a separate call centre or customer services department, that function is being performed by someone, somewhere, in the business. Using a specialist external provider can help realise significant savings, reducing both capital and business costs. Outsourcing savings start at around 10-15% compared to in-house costs with an onshore provider offering at least a similar, if not higher, service level.

“Managing customers’ needs properly requires a significant investment in real estate and infrastructure. Customer support agents need somewhere to work, and they need equipment to work on. Even a densely packed centre takes up a costly amount of space,” says Ralf Ellspermann, CEO of PITON-Global, a leading mid-sized outsourcing provider specialising in high-performance in- and outbound contact centre services.

Call centres face the same problem, of course, but the costs are usually lower. A typical call centre works with 20 to 50 clients, meaning that the capital expenditure costs are shared. They can also use their space more efficiently, helping reduce the costs an in-house service might incur for empty desks and staff absence.

Dedicated call centre services can also save on revenue costs. Staffing is usually the biggest line item in any businesses’ budget, and each member of staff comes with a hefty overhead to cover things like supervision and management, HR, and finance, as well as the costs of recruiting and training staff. A call centre, because of its scale and specialisation, can reduce these costs. Costs like management and HR can be shared between clients, meaning each has a lower individual cost. And the size of a call centre means more development opportunities for employees, preventing costly staff turnover.

Perhaps most importantly, call centre services can improve quality. Providing customer service is at the core of their business model, so they invest in this. The buildings and infrastructure that help keep costs low also have received investment to ensure they are able to provide the best possible service. Customer support agents work from well-equipped stations and use the latest call centre technology – hardware and software. Premier contact centre outsourcing providers such as PITON-Global in Manila, invest and employ AI, using it to make their operations as efficient as possible, guiding calls to the right agent while offering live assistance to human operators to ensure speedy resolutions to customer calls. And staff benefit from dedicated customer service training, following the latest trends and benefiting from wider development across the entire organisation.

Customer service outsourcing is an obvious choice. It frees up capacity within an organisation, allowing the leadership to focus more on their flagship products and less on ancillary services. It offers better services to customers. And it can additionally provide considerable savings, around 10-15% with a domestic provider and up to 40-50% if using premier offshore call centre services in world-leading destinations like the Philippines. “For business that haven’t outsourced, the question shouldn’t be ‘if’ but ‘when?’”, says Ellspermann.