Contact Center Outsourcing – Does it Bring Value to Your Company?

When making decisions about customer care, business owners must carefully consider their business needs,  specially when they want to provide top-level customer care often face a dilemma: whether to dedicate their employees to this task or opt for outsourcing a contact center. Choosing a cost-effective solution is crucial in balancing customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.

On one hand, a highly experienced employee who acquires the maximum number of new customers on a daily basis and has an excellent understanding of the sales process would also perform well in customer service tasks at a call center. However, delegating valuable employees for service-related tasks can negatively impact sales performance and hinder company growth. Conversely, a situation arises when a company does not have a sufficient number of employees to dedicate to such tasks and wonders if it is capable of recruiting, training, and managing a larger team. In such cases, implementing an effective customer relationship management (CRM) system can help streamline customer interactions, optimize resource allocation, and enhance overall customer satisfaction.

To address this dilemma, companies can opt for a contact center solution by outsourcing their customer service and telemarketing tasks to a specialized team of experienced call center agents. By partnering with a reputable organization in the market, businesses can control costs and allocate their most valuable resources to profitable areas without risking stagnation. This contact center solution ensures professionalism, reliability, and allows clients to focus on their core business domains, such as sales and marketing, with peace of mind.

Outsourcing Contact Center or Call Center Outsourcing? What are the differences?

The differences between a call center and a contact center may not be apparent at first glance, but upon closer examination, it becomes clear how many more tasks can be accomplished in a contact center.

Call centers used to be the main standard for customer service, limited to the telephone channel (inbound and outbound calls). The competencies of employees were heavily focused on empathy, patience, and verbal communication. The technology used allowed for relatively limited automation (IVR, speech recognition).

With technological advancements, the development of the internet and social media, customer service methods have also evolved, significantly expanding the range of possibilities. The call center outsourcing industry began transforming into contact center outsourcing.

Telemarketing and call center outsourcing with just one communication channel were not able to efficiently handle these changes. Only companies that embraced new technologies and implemented communication with customers not only via phone but also through VOIP calls, email messages, social media channels, chatbots, and live chats could keep up with the market. These channels made customer interactions more intense, significantly increased the amount of customer information, and made contact with the company much more accessible for customers. The competence of employees expanded towards written communication and social media etiquette. The contact center became a true hub for customer contacts. Despite the difference in the definition of these terms, they are often used interchangeably and default to the same meaning.

When to Decide on Contact Center Outsourcing?

There can be many reasons why companies choose to use contact center outsourcing services. It may seem that anyone can talk on the phone, respond to emails, and handle overall customer communication. However, the advantage of call and contact center services is highly noticeable. Contact Center employees are well-trained in telephone conversations and comprehensive customer communication. Contact centers also provide support through other communication channels. They maintain continuity in their development and adapt to the changing market needs regarding indirect customer work.

By opting for outsourcing, we can be sure that not only qualified agents but also coordinators, trainers, and quality assurance departments are overseeing customer contact. Call center service providers ensure the necessary IT infrastructure and tools, such as IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems, ticketing systems, CRM systems, and even process automation through chatbots and voicebots.

What to Consider When Choosing a Contact Center Outsourcing?

Many contact or call center outsourcing companies ask themselves how to choose the right one among them. Selecting an external call center is an important decision that comes with great responsibility. It is worth thoroughly familiarizing yourself with the capabilities offered by a prospective partner. Important criteria for evaluation include market experience, company size, solutions used, service quality, and data processing security.

If you are looking to expand your business in foreign markets, consider outsourcing your call center to a multilingual contact center. They understand the importance of selecting the right offshore partner, and they meet the criteria for evaluation, including market experience, company size, service quality, and data processing security. Their customizable solutions can be tailored to your specific needs, including language support and operating hours. Moreover, their competitive pricing ensures cost-effectiveness while enhancing your company’s prestige and customer perception.

An increasingly popular practice before entering into cooperation is completing an information security questionnaire, which indicates how the contact center secures the flow of information, what protection tools it uses, and what security policies it applies in its organization.

Attention should be paid to the possibility of customizing the offer to the client’s needs, such as in how many languages do we want to support customers and during what hours? Should it operate year-round or seasonally?

Outsourcing costs are an integral part of the selection process and often a decisive factor. When considering the price, it should be related to the desired outcome. Outsourcing is often a way to reduce costs while investing in the company’s prestige and its perception by customers.

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Every outsourcing company specializing in contact centers should have these solutions and technical support:

• IT infrastructure enabling stable operation, project scalability, and implementation of custom solutions.
• IVR (Interactive Voice Response), which allows callers to select conversation topics and direct them to the appropriate advisor. IVR also enables integration with other systems and self-service functions, such as checking payment balances.
• The system to handle calls, equipped with call recording and real-time queue monitoring capabilities, adjusted to the call volume, efficiently manages both inbound calls and outbound services, ensuring smooth communication and optimal customer experience.
• Ticket system, which allows full management of customer inquiries, thread sorting, history verification, and process automation.
• CRM system.
• Qualified agents, coordinators, trainers, and quality controllers.
• Analytical and reporting tools.

Business Continuity Plan to ensure operational continuity in the event of a disaster

An important aspect is whether the chosen provider can ensure service continuity or quickly transfer services to other locations. It is worth discussing with the provider and learning about the solutions used in other projects they handle.

When it comes to outages, various situations can occur. For example, if there is a system downtime for the ticketing system, it is worth finding out if the provider can register inquiries in another application and then import them into the system used on a daily basis.

Here are a few examples of questions to ask the provider regarding ensuring operational continuity:

• What happens in the event of a prolonged power outage or scheduled maintenance that may affect project continuity?
• Does the provider have experience and solutions for remote work for its agents?
• Does the provider have more than one office and the ability to transfer the project, even partially, to maintain service continuity?

Asking these types of questions deepens the client’s knowledge about security and project stability.

Quick scalability in case of sudden need for project expansion

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the demand for remote customer service centers. The quarantine period, in particular, required the closure of physical customer service offices, and customer interactions shifted to online and phone channels. The increase in traffic in this space posed a challenge to scale remote work for many industries and maintain satisfactory customer service response times.

Imagine a situation where instead of handling 500 calls per day, you suddenly need to be prepared to handle 2000 calls. The technology used by the contact center becomes crucial in such moments. Recruitment and whether the call center has the human and technological resources ready for such growth are also of great importance.

Outcome-based business cooperation model

Flexibility in the billing approach is as important as scalability in project implementation. Depending on the scope of services we want to use, the contact center should be ready to collaborate with third-party vendors on various settlement models such as flat fee, hourly rate, success fee, as well as based on potential bonuses and performance-dependent settlements.

How long has it been on the market, which industries has it collaborated with, what types of projects?

Experience is an important consideration when deciding on cooperation with outsourcing partner. Combined with the length and portfolio of currently ongoing projects, it gives an idea of whether we are choosing a reliable partner with an established position in the market. The long existence of the contact center in the market can demonstrate the trust it receives from clients and the high quality of services provided, but it should not be the sole criterion for selection.

It is worth familiarizing oneself with the types of projects the potential business partner has undertaken or is currently undertaking, whether the industry and type of projects are similar or identical to the business for which we are seeking support. Asking for references is also a good way to get acquainted with the opinions of current clients. Often, the contact center with which we want to cooperate also provides the opportunity to review specific case studies that may be similar to our operations and help in selecting a service package.

How long does the initiation of cooperation take?

When can we be ready? How quickly can we implement telemarketing services into our company? These are often the first questions asked and determine further discussions. Of course, the answer to this question is complex and dependent on the scale of the implementation project, the technology used, and the scope of services. Well-prepared and experienced contact centers, through effective analysis, will be able to accurately and reliably assess the time required for implementation.

Can it collaborate with your internal contact center effectively based on shared KPIs?

Using an external provider does not necessarily mean excluding customer service processes within the company. A common model of cooperation is the combination of internal and external team work or outsourcing only selected processes for handling. In this context, it is important for the external provider to be flexible in adapting to the work model, management and reporting, as well as integrating the systems on which the teams work.

Will it ensure integration of its systems with your systems?

System integration plays an increasingly important role in cooperation between businesses. It significantly facilitates communication and replaces manual data updates with automatic synchronization. Often, work is performed on multiple systems, but even when only two systems are involved in exchanging data, it is important to note that the need to export data from one system and import it into another system prevents real-time availability.

Even if the manual process is appropriately fast, it adds the risk of errors. Integration speeds up work by enabling systems to communicate with each other, and data integration occurs in real-time.

A good example of a situation that requires system integration is booking trips for a travel agency, where sales occur in multiple locations simultaneously. The number of available spots for a given trip is limited, and it is difficult to imagine a situation where information about a purchase request made through a customer service hotline is not immediately updated in the system.

Another example is lead generation, the process of acquiring contact information from potential customers. In this process, the response time to a customer’s inquiry, for example, on a website, is often crucial. Therefore, the information about the customer’s request should immediately appear in the service system used by the agents.

In this area, it is also important whether the chosen partner has the necessary IT infrastructure to efficiently perform system integration, as well as provide experience, ready solutions, tech support and their own know-how.

What technologies and additional services can an external contact center offer?

The standard services often associated with call centers include typical telemarketing and customer support activities, such as making outbound calls and receiving calls from customers. However, that’s not all. In fact, it’s just a small fraction of the offerings provided by professional contact centers. The range of products and services is extensive and includes:

• Telemarketing
• Customer support through helpline
• CATI surveys
• NPS surveys
• Back office support
• Business process outsourcing (BPO)
• Quality control
• Live chat
• Chatbot
• Voicebot
• Video chat
• Social media support
• SMS and email campaigns
• Callback services
• E-commerce support
• Lead generation
• Customer retention

Learn more: Communication tools used in call center outsourcing.

In which industries does contact center outsourcing work?

Regardless of the industry, customer contact is a part of everyday business. The scale of contact may vary, but there is a wide range of potential partners where telemarketing services prove to be effective. The most popular industries include:

• E-commerce
• Telesales
• Telecommunications
• Retail and commercial businesses
• Finance
• Insurance
• Tourism
• Debt collection departments
• Healthcare
• Airlines
• Government helplines

Call Center Outsourcing services is becoming increasingly popular, and there are already over 100,000 companies operating in the global market.

The remote contact center market continues to grow, and during the pandemic, it became a vital part of the business world. According to a research report by Research and Markets from 2021, the market is projected to reach $496 billion by 2027. For comparison, the market was valued at $339.4 billion in 2020.

Outsourcing call and contact centers to external providers – why is it beneficial?

Using call and contact center outsourcing should be seen as an investment in the company’s growth and customer satisfaction. Engaging with qualified consultants significantly impacts customer satisfaction, prestige, and the overall perception of the company.

The benefits of outsourcing extend beyond cost savings. By leveraging the expertise and resources of external providers, businesses can tap into specialized skills, advanced technologies, and scalable solutions. This allows them to enhance operational efficiency, improve service quality, and gain a competitive edge in the market.

External providers take a holistic approach to customer experience in the companies they serve. They understand customer needs and are ready to provide the best call center solutions to ensure high-quality service. Due to their experience, outsourcing companies can propose virtual call center solutions that perfectly align with the needs of the client and their customers.

How do we handle customer service at CCIG Group?

With over two decades of rich experience, CCIG Group has collaborated with various industries, providing comprehensive solutions that encompass both inbound and outbound services. From project preparation, overseen by our specialized implementation department, to recruitment and team selection based on client preferences, we ensure a tailored approach. We conduct initial and preparatory training to equip the team with the necessary knowledge for the project, and under the guidance of qualified managers, we successfully launch and manage the project.

We have modern infrastructure and adapt to different collaboration models. CCIG supports every aspect of the implemented project. We assist in preparing the consultant profile and ensure the acquisition of suitable individuals for the team. Our training department, in collaboration with project coordinators, prepares call scripts, manuals, and a knowledge base. Even before the start, we set goals and select tools for monitoring and improving results.

The quality assurance department prepares an evaluation card to assess the agent’s work, and finally, we plan reports or a set of reports for analysis during the project. With this approach, we successfully execute projects and grow in the industry, expanding our client base.

Are you looking for a contact center to handle incoming and outgoing campaigns? Check out all CCIG Group outsourcing services.