In-house Vs. Outsourced Telemarketing – Which is better?

Customer satisfaction is a top priority for all kind of companies (service-oriented or a product based) that want to leave an impression. A responsive, precise, and professional response to the customers’ query not only aids to cling and return a happy client but also offers confidence in the business. If the business is new or in expansion mode, it is often tough to offer prompt attention to customer calls. This is due to the limited number of employee available and humungous tasks meant to deliver. Call center outsourcing services in this scenario work wonders to aid businesses in keeping up and expanding their customer base. The trend of outsourcing call center is catching fast and the business sector has eventually acknowledged that outsourcers are much beneficial with respect to brand building and profitability. However, to take a critical decision like whether to opt for reliable outsourced call center or for an in-house support team, it’s imperative that you understand the pros and cons of both. Outsourced call center Merits: 1. Cost Effectiveness A business saves about 50% of resources when it opts for outsourcing call center for its operations. Nations such as India and Philippines are preferred markets as the cost of labor and setup price is comparatively low. 2. Focus on efficiency When you outsource your business operations, your focus can be back on core activities such as production, sales, and distribution. Employee feels overloaded when non-core activities come on their shoulder, which results in hampered productivity and loss of focus. 3. Less risk You engage in a mutual risk sharing agreement when you opt to outsource to a third-party BPO company. This surely offers security to the outsourcer firm and provides support in crisis situations. 4. Trained Staff Call center outsourcing services lessen the requirement to hire a proficient team or allocate money in training. Expert call centers have a dedicated team of experts who have the expertise to understand business goals and customer expectations. They truly speak as a voice of your brand. 5. Scalability During a hike in business volume, an outsourced call center will allow your business to scale up its customer service needs without any hassle and without any investment in talent and technology. Outsourced call center De-merits: 1. Language barrier Special consideration is needed to be taken while choosing an outsourcing partner to see if the language proficiency is in line with the target audience. If the professionals are not trained well-enough, miscommunication and brand dilution are inevitable. 2. Confidentiality Opting for a third-party might present you with circumstances where you have to share sensitive data with the outsourced company. This might expose the business to risks in certain situations. As a business owner, ensure to keep a constant check that your confidential data is being taken care by the outsourced company and specific data security standards are maintained. 3. Less focus and control Since the outsourced company usually works far from your firm, so personal supervision becomes quite tough. Also, the outsourced company has more than one client to serve, so it might become an issue to keep the concentration only for one client. In-house call center Merits: 1. Personal touch An in-house call center would be dealing exclusively with your brand only. So, the chances of dedicating adequate attention to each client may shoot up owing to this. Professionals can be trained to become brand representatives. 2. Security As no third-party involvement is there, so the risk of exposing client data is zero. Customers, too feel more confident when they think that they are communicating with direct representatives of your business. In-house call center De-merits: 1. Cost Since an in-house call center takes care of every aspect of the contact center, your business has to bear a huge price for all these along with a massive contingency fund in case of crisis. 2. Maintenance After the inception of the contact center, maintenance of technology is needed on a timely basis. To ensure there are no technical disruptions, infrastructure is maintained and staff strength remains intact, periodic checks are needed. 3. Compromised productivity and slow business continuity In case of any change in the internal or external environment, an in-house contact center carries the risk of business interruption. Quality of support delivered to the customers is deterred in this case. Secondly, when your business will be executing non-core tasks, lack of in-house efficiency is quite probable as the resources are required to take additional responsibility. Source: https://medium.com/@AnistonJennife3/in-house-vs-outsourced-call-center-advantages-and-disadvantages-755d307d4841