If you provide customer service to your clients, almost everyone prefers talking to a real person on the phone or online. This is why most companies require real people, instead of bots or auto-responders, to communicate with their clients. Choosing the right people and the right structure for communication and customer support can make or break a business. That’s why it’s so important to determine whether you’ll handle your communication in-house, or whether you’ll outsource this work.
If you are looking to grow your business or need to reduce costs, then outsourcing your contact centre is usually the right choice. However, there are situations when it makes more sense for a company to create their own in-house contact centre.
Outsourcing Your Communications
Gone are the days where one receptionist handles a few simple phone calls. Clients and customers have seemingly endless ways to reach you now – via phone, email, web chat and social media. Of course, they expect a quick and professional response on each platform.
Today’s businesses are increasingly turning towards complete, outsourced contact centres to handle the sheer volume of customer contacts and to ensure a level of uniformity and reliability across platforms. Sometimes it makes sense for a company to create an in-house contact centre, but more and more are choosing to outsource to companies that can customize a plan for them, providing them the support they need across social media, a service desk, a contact centre and more.
Why Choose Outsourced Contact Centres
Every company has different needs and different budgets, which impacts how they should structure their communications with the public. In general, there are two main reasons for choosing to outsource to a contact centre.
1. Growth
Outsourcing contact centres is usually a great choice for young or growing companies. Outsourcing while you are just getting off the ground can help you save money that can be better used elsewhere. And when you outsource to the right company, your team can learn from their experience and expertise. The right company can also offer advisory services (https://www.lineone.ca/advisory-services) in areas like strategic planning and infrastructure assessments.
Outsourced contact centres also offer much-need adaptability to growing companies. When you outsource, your new partner handles all the hiring, training and management of communications staff – saving you both time and money that you can focus on growth instead.
Outsourcing means you can also reduce the size of your contact centre easily, which is often great for seasonal companies, too. One of the biggest advantages of outsourced contact centres is that you can scale up and scale down at the drop of a hat.
That’s why, when you’re starting out, outsourcing is usually the right choice. Once you’re more established, you can reassess your needs and determine if or when it makes sense to hire in-house communications employees.
2. Cost Savings
Because contact centres are usually so cost effective, many companies will choose to stick with them, even once they are out of the growth phase. Full-time in-house employees are expensive. Outsourcing your contact centre means you can save money on training, benefits, taxes and more. As well, it also means you can save money on technology infrastructure. Assuming you outsource to a professional and reliable company, it often just makes more sense from a financial perspective to stick with them.
Why Not Choose Outsourced Contact Centres
Most of the reasons to choose in-house communications can be fixed by finding the right company to handle your needs. For example, many companies worry about language barriers when outsourcing their calls. But you can find contact centres in your country who speak your language, completely negating this problem. Ultimately, you can prevent a lot of issues by selecting your partner carefully.
That said, there are companies for which outsourcing often doesn’t make sense. If your product or service is highly specialized, it may be more difficult to find a company that can provide the level of service and expertise you need.
However, even in these scenarios, there may be options for you if you source the right company. For example, at Line One, we specialize in finance (national banks and regional credit unions), utilities and energy companies, government and public sectors, and post-secondary institutions – all industries that might have a hard time finding experts otherwise.
So keep in mind that you still may be able to find a good fit for your company, even if that means you need to spend some time finding it. Ultimately, each company will need to handle their communication strategy differently, and thankfully there are many ways to do this easily and well.