The Raging Battle – In house vs Outsourced Call Center

There is no prize to guess what a call center is. It is the support of the biggest organizations in the world. Customers who are trying to reach businesses typically end up calling to a call center agent.

It doesn’t matter what business you are in, the essentiality of a call center becomes inevitable.

The world of call centers came into existence during the late 90s when the internet invaded the business community. With the emergence of web-based businesses, the need for customer support gave birth to call centers, which in my opinion, was the biggest breakthrough in the outsourcing sector.

And since the first call center came into existence, till now, there is one debate that every time ignites and market experts hurl in to present their perspectives. If you are anywhere related to outsourcing/BPO/call center sector, you might have heard, read, or seen this debate.

In house vs outsourcing pros and cons

There is no straight or subtle answer to this. You can make a business reach an apex level even by handling all the tasks on your own and you can have par excellence with outsourcing.

So, why the debate?

Interestingly, business owners across the world are more inclined towards outsourced call centers than an in-house call center.

Contrarily, there is an increasing concern regarding the descending level in the quality of customer support services delivered by the offshore call centers.

So, what’s the right way to move forward? Any guesses?  Let’s take outsourced and in-house call centers one by one vis-à-vis their merits and demerits. Hope this will clear the doubts:

Outsourcing call center pros and cons

The best part of outsourcing is that it helps an organization despite the sector, lifecycle or the future it holds.

For instance, if your business is new, you will look to tap more customers. This means more sales, which in turn means more inquiries. For this, you require a strong support team that is affordable, well-trained, extensively experienced, and easily accessible.

Training new agents, keeping them updated with the latest tech, installing new tools, setting up the infrastructure, etc, will demand time, money, and effort from your end. Why would you do that when you want your whole attention to be on the core tasks of your business?

Similarly, if you own an established organization, you might have the requirement to expand your business to a new territory. For this, you need proficient telemarketers who can penetrate the targeted geography and grow your profit.

Here too, outsourcing not just saves your cost but also offers you direct access to an already trained and proficient team that can streamline your vision with competent efforts yielding the expected results in a timely manner.

And if you running an IT business, tech-support is the backbone of your company. Outsourced call centers have highly qualified professionals and an ultra-modern technology that ensures that your customers are being handled with precision and care.

From hospitality to healthcare, from e-commerce to travel, from banks to government enterprises, everywhere outsourced call center services are providing an ace-level service standard that just outshines in-house approach altogether.

Additionally, global companies that are entertaining audience across international borders need a support team that could offer superior assistance around-the-clock. Hiring extra resources for the same would again put the monetary load on the business owners.

On the other hand, outsourcing call centers would assure a 24*7*365 support to the customers at a global level. Outsourced call centers are known to hold up a massive workforce that not just eliminates the scaling issue faced by businesses but also offers frictionless service to corporations that are working day & night.

Summing up, we can say that the main benefits of outsourcing are:

Cost-effectiveness

Eradication of scaling issue

High efficiency due to focus on core competencies

A-Okay assistance to the customers

Direct access to a diligent staff

Mitigated business risks

All seems good, right?

Then why are people so adamant to disregard outsourcing as a not-so-good facet for business?

In fact, in recent times (from the last decade or so) there have been instances where customers have complained of lousy service deliverance. Along with this, a few scams came up where the outsourcing contact center have cheated businesses.

Moreover, the rising labor price in the developing nations like India, Philippines, Malaysia, etc is slowly diminishing the cost benefit that is the crux of outsourcing.

A lot of experts also think that the call center outsourcing makes business owner lose control of their tasks.

Let’s see how in-house call centers work.

In house call center pros and cons

What could be better than handling your business tasks on your own and succeeding in it?

However, doing so is a bit more complex than to be said.

When you are planning to set up and handle an in-house facility to offer assistance to your business, you have to take care of a few aspects:

You are hiring and training the agents in adherence with your call center requirements.

You are adopting and maintaining the latest technology to deliver uninterrupted support to your customers.

Your business is working 24*7*365 to avoid missing even a single customer inquiry, complaint or grievance.

Your call center is competent enough to solve the seasonal requirement that pops up.

These are some of the basic requirements that businesses look forward to meeting while managing call centers internally.

Clearly, you would require a lump sum of money to the above-stated tasks. Also, it would consume a lot of your and your team’s time that should be invested in the core competencies of your business.

Let’s say you have been successful in delivering an above-par service level to the customers. What about the cost-effectiveness? Are you sure your company is ready to sustain such a heavy expense?

And are you sure you can devote 100% of your undivided attention on the core tasks without affecting the performance of your company while handling an internal call center?

You can’t. No business owner can assure this. The risks of handling an in-house call center overshadow the little benefits that it offers.

How to overcome the limitations of outsourcing?

A business owner looks to outsource because…..?

To reduce the operational expense

To ensure first-string performance of the company

To handle scalability

To cut-down risk

To assure frictionless growth

But is it enough to decide that your business require outsourcing? Call center outsourcing is a business tactic, a strategy that is needed to lift the company’s profit level by offering value in the delivered services. So, before you opt to outsource your business functions, be clear about your objective.

Wrapping up

There is no doubt that sustaining an internal call center is every business owners’ dream, however, it isn’t easy. Outsourcing offers you the comfort and flexibility that is needed by your business to survive in this volatile environment.

As a business owner, you would want to bring your company on-the-top without any load on your finance – that’s what outsourcing does.

The debate will go on but outsourced call centers are a clear winner for me and for most of the company owners globally. Are you one of them? Tell your story below. Thanks!

Here, at Go4customer, we are proud to have established a one of a kind call center in India.