Determine the best call center outsourcing strategies for your company
Many companies are realizing the benefits and cost-effectiveness of outsourcing some or all of their call center activities to call center or contact center outsourcing companies. With today’s competitive business environment, and with outsourcing companies specializing in professional inbound, outbound, and BPO services, the choice is looking more appealing than ever.
Here are the four major call center outsourcing strategies to consider:
Onshore call center outsourcing
Onshore outsourcing involves using outsource call centers that are located in the same country as your organization. Typically, agents that reside in the same country as your business will have the highest levels of cultural understanding, language skills, and general customer service levels. You will, however, pay a premium for this quality, as onshore outsourcing is typically the most expensive option.
Nearshore call center outsourcing
Nearshore call center outsourcing achieves a compromise between top quality and reduced cost. Nearshore call center outsourcing involves outsourcing your customer service operations to a resource operating in a foreign country within the same hemisphere as your customers. For businesses based in the US and Canada, nearshore outsourcing refers to call centers located in Central and South America. Nearshore outsourcing can cut costs without significantly reducing the cultural and language barriers between call center representatives and your customers.
Offshore call center outsourcing
Offshore call center outsourcing helps achieve significant cost reduction by partnering with an outsource call center in a different part of the world. For North American businesses, offshore outsourcing usually refers to call centers in Asia and the Pacific. If you are primarily concerned with costs, your call center outsourcing strategies should include using offshore-based call centers that have lower labor costs. This choice may result in having call center representatives needing to learn the brand and culture of the company and who are a bit less fluent in the language of the customers.
Virtual or home-based call center outsourcing
Virtual or remote call center outsourcing brings the value of domestic agents while also keeping costs down. Many companies evaluating their call center outsourcing strategies choose the domestic virtual call center option. This form of outsourcing routes customer service calls to individuals working from home. With home-based customer service, the agents cover the cost of needed equipment in exchange for the flexibility that comes with working from home. In this situation, you get the quality of domestic customer service representatives who know the culture of your customers, yet you receive their services at a much lower cost.
