Should You Outsource Your Customer Service Call Centers?

Outsourcing the customer service call centers is something that all businesses have the option of. Outsourcing offers a number of benefits and leads to the use of virtual call centers. However, there are also some downsides to doing this and these are something to look into.

Advantage of Outsourcing the Call Centers

The main benefit of outsourcing the work is that there are no full time employees that need to be worried about. It is possible to hire freelancers who offer professional phone answering services or a company that can offer a 24 hour phone service. This means there are less worries about setting up a contract and going through a hiring process.

Outsourcing often means that the employees work from their own homes or the company that they are hired by, which means fewer costs for your company. There is no need to set up a location for the customer service call centers and no need to spend money on building leases and any other costs.

The hiring process can be a lengthy time, which is where there are benefits in outsourcing the job. When it comes to looking for a professional phone answering service, you can just look for a company that has already hired the personnel or look for freelancers. While you will still need to do some research into the skills and capabilities, it is much easier than finding out whether someone is willing to work for your company full time.

It is possible to set up a 24 hour phone service by outsourcing around the world or hiring freelancers or companies that work at different hours. 24 hours customers services are a great option, depending on the type of service that you offer, as problems never seem to occur during business hours. This will also help with a business that runs online and is offered to people all over the world.

Disadvantages of Outsourcing

For those with a local company, outsourcing the customer service call centers may not be the best idea. The problem is that there is no guarantee that the employees will be based locally – unless that is a specific that you look for. There is a big move in local or national call centers instead of outsourcing to other countries since this is something that customers prefer; they prefer to deal with people who understand what they are talking about.

Another disadvantage is finding out whether they are doing their job correctly, especially when it comes to freelancers. Keeping track of their skills is much harder and tracking the hours that they really work is difficult as they are not in a physical office. This is even harder when it comes to a 24 hours phone service as you will not be awake all the time to make sure that the outsourcers are working when you are hiring them for.

It is also harder to check the skills when it comes to a professional phone answering service; even when hiring a company this is harder. You will need to do a lot of research but will hardly ever see the people face to face; you will have to go off reviews online and the information that the freelancers provide, which could be inadequate or less than you would look at when hiring full time staff.

Outsourcing could help you save time and help you work in other areas of your business. However, there is the downside of spending more money. It is worth looking into all the pros and cons before deciding whether outsourcing your customer service call centers is worthwhile.