Running your call center in-house is not as easy as you think. Honesty is the best policy here. At the time when you created your own in-house call center, everything seemed to make sense.
You needed to have a handle on things; you wanted your customers dealing with people who knew your product inside and out.
However, somewhere along the line, things changed. Your costs increased. Your staff turnover became a problem. All of this led you to ask whether what you were doing was even worth the hassle.
And if this sounds like you, you're certainly not alone. Every year, countless companies find themselves in precisely the same position you are in now, asking whether outsourcing is the best thing for their company.
This blog highlights very real signs that you should consider letting go of the in-house call center.
When You Should Stop Running Your Call Center In-House?
When you think these signs appear, stop running your call center in-house.
- Your Costs Keep Climbing
Salary packages, benefits, real estate for offices, equipment, training programs, and software licenses. All these factors together do make an expensive endeavor of running your own call center in-house. However, the most painful aspect is when year after year your costs increase, and yet the return on investment is never satisfactory.
In case the cost per call increases, and every quarter the accounting department raises red flags, then you should be looking for an outsourcing company.
In any case, outsourcing can reduce your costs significantly, around 30–50%, without compromising the quality of services provided.
- Agent Turnover is Relentless
It’s not easy being an operator in a call center. Hours are long, calls are repetitive, and clients can be hard to handle. In the call center business, the typical turnover rate averages at about 30-45%, sometimes higher.
For every agent that walks out the door, your company pays the price through recruitment costs, orientation expenses, and lower-quality customer service until the new employee settles in. And if your agents are constantly turning over and your managers are struggling to manage the chaos, that’s sign number two.
- Scaling Up or Down Feels Like a Crisis Every Time
If you have an upcoming product launch, a seasonal surge, or a crisis requiring rapid communication. And adding staff seems like a nightmare, or rushing through the hiring process, training them quickly, then outsourcing is the way to go.
With outsourcing, you can have dozens or even hundreds of representatives ready to answer calls within a few days. No need to sign new leases or make a mad dash to hire more people.
- Your Technology is Falling Behind
Today’s modern call centers have sophisticated technology at their disposal, such as artificial intelligence-based call routing, real-time sentiment analysis, omnichannel capabilities, CRM integrations, and speech analytics.
However, these technologies are rather costly and difficult to implement. If your employees still work with old-school software and manually log each incoming call, or you cannot provide email and chat services in addition to the phone, then you lack a proper technological stack for that.
- Your Core Team is Getting Distracted
And this one may be a bit more subtle but no less significant. When you have your leadership team investing countless hours each week on other important tasks, that’s time being taken away from developing the product or growing the company.
When customer service has silently turned into one of your major sources of distraction, perhaps it’s worth considering: should we be wasting our best talent here?
- Customer Satisfaction Scores are Slipping
Long waiting periods. Inconsistency in responses. Unconfident agents. Should the results of your CSAT surveys keep going down, or should customers keep complaining about customer support, then this status quo does not work.
The customers do not care whether your team of support professionals works internally or externally. All that they want to get is fast and polite problem-solving. And if you fail at delivering this result, maybe someone else can help.
- You Need 24/7 Coverage But Can't Justify the Cost
A round-the-clock availability is expected by customers, especially when you deal with customers from different time zones or even countries. However, having a night shift is costly and complicated, and usually means setting up skeleton teams that cannot work effectively.
When you are providing restricted working hours only because there is no way for your business to be available during nighttime, you are missing the chance to make your customer experience as great as possible.
There are some outsourcing companies that provide round-the-clock services at a much lower cost than building them internally.
So, What Should You Do Next?
Running your call center in-house is not a good choice. However, if you identified two to three characteristics from the above list, then there might be a reason for a discussion.
Outsourcing is certainly not an easy choice because some factors need consideration before choosing the right provider; yet, simply doing things on your own just because you have always been doing things this way is not a wise decision either.
Begin with an audit to identify your actual costs per contact, CSAT, agent turnover, and how much leadership time is spent on managing agents. The numbers won't lie.
Successful companies are those that know when to ask for assistance rather than handle everything alone.