Smart companies always do whatever they can to both eliminate costs in their customer service program, and improve quality at the same time. Yet doing this in-house isn’t easy. That’s why many organizations turn to the help of world-class outsourced call center partners.
But how much does outsourcing your customer service program actually cost?
In this handy guide, Advantage Communications takes a look at some of the factors that impact outsourced call center pricing and why customer service outsourcing is cheaper than building a program in-house.
What impacts outsourced call center costs?
It’s difficult to say how much outsourcing your customer service requirements to a contact center will cost, as there’s a wide number of variables that affect the cost of call center outsourcing. We’ve listed a few key factors here:
Nearshore or offshore call center: Offshore call centers are typically cheaper from the outset than nearshore call centers. However, nearshore call centers are often more cost-effective since they deliver your organization improved ROI. Take your time when outsourcing your customer service program to a contact center, and choose a company that is able to meet your specific needs and requirements.
Shared or dedicated call centers: Shared call centers typically have customer service agents who answer customer calls for a range of clients, while dedicated call centers will only have agents who are trained to work on your specific brand. As a result, shared call centers are typically cheaper, but dedicated call centers tend to deliver the best results. Of course, if it suits your business then a mix of both could help you deliver superior customer service with the ability to scale up easily when required.
The services you require: The services you require will likely have a big impact on the price of customer service outsourcing. Some customer service programs may just require answering phone calls and reading from a script, while others may require omnichannel support, product upselling or outbound calls. This may dictate whether you need to partner with a call center or a contact center - read our blog here to learn the difference.
Call volume: Call volume is the number of phone calls that your call center receives from customers. The higher your call volume, the higher the number of agents your customer service strategy will require to meet this demand. Higher call volumes require more agents and more technology and infrastructure to deal with successfully, while reducing friction for your customer.
Why is customer service outsourcing cheaper than in-house?
Building a customer service program is complex, and involves investment in highly-skilled customer service agents, experience in building successful customer experience across multiple channels and further investment in advanced contact center technologies such as artificial intelligence, operational intelligence and live call coaching.
It’s simply not feasible for most organizations to invest so much money into their customer service program when they also have other areas of the business that need to be focused on.
Contact center outsourcing makes this far more seamless and cost-effective, since they already have the processes, expertise, and technologies in place to seamlessly integrate into your organization’s program.
Outsourcing your customer service and customer experience program to a high-quality call center is more cost-effective for a number of reasons, here are a few examples:
- You won’t have to invest in expensive infrastructure and ongoing software costs.
- You will only have to pay for your actual program, not all of the time that agents spend at their desk as you would with in-house employees.
- You can save money on training your in-house employees to achieve better customer service outcomes.
- You won’t have to spend money on expensive hiring processes, or deal with the consequences of hiring ineffective employees.
Advantage Communications has a range of pricing models for your company’s specific requirements
To ensure our clients are able to improve their customer service strategy and build better customer experiences, all while achieving cost-efficiency and complete customer service program customizations, Advantage Communications has a range of pricing models to suit your unique requirements.
To ensure your organization has an outsourced customer service program that works for your unique needs, we have created four pricing models.
Dedicated contact center pricing model: Looking for a full-scale extension of your brand? With our dedicated contact center pricing model we will hire and train a team of highly-skilled agents to exclusively work on your brand and customer service program.
Per-minute contact center pricing model: For some organizations where seasonal demand or customer service fluctuations are a huge factor in cost-efficiency, a flexible customer service solution may be more cost-effective. Our per-minute pricing model combines dedicated account management with the freedom to scale up and down seamlessly, as required.
Hybrid contact center pricing model: A tailored mix between our Dedicated and Per-Minute pricing models. This model of pricing five your organization all the benefits of a full-scale dedicated contact center solution, with the additional help of “shared queue” agents who supplement your program by answering overflow calls - meaning customer calls never have to go unanswered.
Custom contact center pricing model: Perhaps the above three pricing models don’t work for your specific requirements? No problem, Advantage Communications is able to customize customer service solutions and programs for your company’s specific needs.
Want to learn more about how our customer service solutions are prices, and how we can help your brand build a superior customer experience? Contact us today for more information. Our team of highly-knowledgeable and experienced customer service specialists would love to help.
