Do you maintain an internal call center? Is it performing as it should? What are the advantages of switching to an outside firm? How do you know when the time is right to make that switch? Understand if outsourcing your call center is right for your business.
Is it Time to Outsource Your Contact Center?
A Complete Guide by Insite
CONTENTS
3
The Evolution of Your Contact Center
3
What You Will Get From This Book
4
Reasons to Consider Outsourcing
6
Understand The True Health of Your Contact Center
8
Determine Your Next Course of Action
9
How to Find The Right Vendor
11
Successfully Integrate Your New Vendor
A Publication by Insite
© 2022 Insite Managed Solutions, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Confidential and Proprietary Information of Insite Managed Solutions, LLC.
THE EVOLUTION OF YOUR CONTACT CENTER The history of call centers began soon after telephones became standard fixtures in businesses. Larger companies dedicated an employee to answer the phone as customers called. Some even set up entire “phone rooms” to spread the task over several individual specialists equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to help customers and keep them happy. Later, outbound calling became fashionable as organizations relied on telemarketers to sell products and services over the phone. The goals of inbound service calls and outbound sales calls remain the same. But the form of these communications and how they were handled would be unrecognizable to anyone working in a 1950s "phone room." In the 1990s, businesses began outsourcing some of their internal processes. Customer service departments were one of these new outsource vendors' first groups handled externally. This trend accelerated a decade later as other forms of communication entered the mix. Partnering with a vendor specializing in contact center operations has become commonplace today. Perhaps your company has not gone this route. Do you maintain an internal call center? Is it performing as it should? What are the advantages to switching to an outside firm? How do you know when the time is right to make that switch?
WHAT YOU WILL GET FROM THIS EBOOK: • Reasons to consider if it’s time to outsource your contact center. • How to determine the true health of your contact center and understand if outsourcing is the best course of action. • A course of action for finding the right Partner.
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REASONS TO CONSIDER OUTSOURCING
One of the most challenging decisions for customer service leadership is whether to outsource their call center. Outsourcing can take some financial burden off companies -- depending on the partner they choose. So how do you know when it's time to consider outsourcing? Let’s explore two main reasons to outsource your contact center: cost and service level. One may be more important than the other at any given moment, but both are critical areas of concern when running a successful internal operation. 1| Costs Are Too High Though tracking dollars and cents is cut and dried, understanding how your costs stack up against industry benchmarks may not be as easy. Pay levels might look competitive compared to other internal contact centers, but are you comparing apples to apples? Are pay levels commensurate with your labor pool’s geographic area? Or is a nearby company competing for the same talent by paying $2/hour more? That higher wage may be the root cause of the increased attrition that’s running up costs in talent acquisition and training for your company. But if you compensate by offering a higher hourly wage, will your labor to revenue numbers become undesirable?
As you know, budget overages can creep in from all sorts of directions and equally effect your business.
COSTS TO CONSIDER
SUPERVISION
MANAGEMENT
HUMAN RESOURCES
TECHNOLOGY & TELEPHONY
EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT
OTHER FIXED & VARIABLE EXPENSES
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2| Poor Customer Service Levels Inadequate service levels ultimately affect the bottom line as well. Low CSAT corrodes brand loyalty over time. Internal call centers sometimes suffer from a lack of experience in management, training, industry expertise, scripting, quality, and other areas that results in low performance.
3| Internal Team Can’t Provide Services Needed To Improve Cx The right vendor will usually be more practiced and polished in ways that positively impact customer experience. Vendors offer other desirable features that your internal operation may not possess, such as: • You may need agents fluent in multiple languages. • Your customer service hours might be expanding to 24-hour availability. • Headcount figures may fluctuate widely based on promotions or changes in season. The proper vendor, whether onshore, nearshore, or offshore, can provide all these services. Plus, it will also offer omni-channel solutions that cover email, chat, SMS, and other digital means of communication your customers may be using.
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UNDERSTAND THE TRUE HEALTH OF YOUR CONTACT CENTER
Contact centers experience fluctuations in service and cost over time. So, when they remain in the red for an extended duration, how much time is too much time? We have now entered a gray area, but most of our clients decide to do something between six months and a year.
The question is, what do they do?
A smart initial step would be to conduct a scientific study that uncovers what’s really happening in your internal contact center, a current state evaluation.
When And How To Perform A Current State Evaluation
A current state evaluation is a health checkup of your internal call center’s operations and performance. Current state evaluations may take different forms. A few examples include: • A Cost Analysis
• A Business Case, Or • A Capability Model
A qualified contact center evaluation partner, like Insite, can offer a wide-ranging menu of options to select from and customize to suit your operational goals. These cover all aspects and departments of your call center. Once the evaluation is complete, informed decisions regarding your team may be reached based on facts. Though insights can be revealed through crunching data at a distance, a real boots-on-the-ground approach is necessary to ferret out accurate details of an operation’s current state. Every stone that can be turned within the call center operation should be turned over to determine the organization's health and job performance, including: • Key stakeholders should be interviewed. • Side-by-side observations should be conducted with agents. • KPIs and other metrics should be gathered. • Recruiting, training, Workforce Management, and Quality and Calibration should be scrutinized. • A close inspection of processes, technology, reporting, and future-state plans needs to be included.
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Although organizing and analyzing this information can start during discovery, it proceeds in earnest once data gathering is complete. Here is where the magic happens:
Strengths & Weaknesses Filter Out
Gaps Become Apparent
Costs Are Understood
Root Causes Reveal Themselves
A Clear Picture Comes Into Focus to Show Precisely What’s Going on & Why
A Visual Roadmap for Organizational Change Process maps give stakeholders an easy way to see the data after it has been analyzed. Map annotations show the exact locations of strengths and weaknesses. They also call out opportunities for improvement and reveal the places to make them. Ancillary data, photos, charts, and graphs can be tucked in along the process flow chart to underscore findings. All these assets come together to present an accurate and visible image of current-state operations.
Identifying Opportunities in Your Organization A list of improvement recommendations accompanies any solid current state evaluation. Discovered by leveraging data analysis and comparisons to best-in-class industry benchmarks, these improvement opportunities help decision-makers decide upon future-state directions. Armed with a complete trove of actionable intel and associated financial forecasts, executives can confidently decide whether to begin searching for an outsource vendor or improve their internal contact center.
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DETERMINE YOUR NEXT COURSE OF ACTION
Resolve Performance Issues Internally Not all internal call centers need outsourcing. A current state evaluation sometimes reveals performance issues that may be solved. A good report will outline where these problems occur, how to fix them, and the expected financial and performance results. If the report was prepared by a truly effective contact center improvement partner, that firm will stick by your side and implement the solutions with you. Sometimes the current state results show an effective solution would be to acquire better technology or farm out the easier, low-level roles and tasks while keeping more complex, high-value functions inhouse. These may include such things as management roles and second-tier service.
If you decide to improve your internal contact center, your team rolls into implementation mode next.
• They’ll apply recommended root-cause solutions to correct problems. • A current state evaluation that includes legitimate improvement opportunities now serves as a roadmap to success. • A change management initiative may be necessary. • Training might be required or new platforms.
Remember, whatever the course, data measurements should continue through this phase and extend into post-implementation to ensure new strategies deploy successfully.
Resolve Performance Issues Externally Leveraging a contact center improvement partner has other advantages, too. First, you have a qualified advocate with a vested interest in your success – especially if they guarantee that success. Secondly, they can fill in gaps with temporary staff augmentation and trainers where needed. They are fully equipped to continue measurements and to compare them to their library of benchmarks. They'll also spot potential problems before they happen. Finally, you'll receive educated advice on performance improvements, efficiency increases, cost savings, and coming innovations.
The result is a retooled internal operation that functions at best-in-class performance levels.
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HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT VENDOR
This current state evaluation also plays a valuable role in the quest for an outsource vendor if that path is chosen. Since the report lays out in great detail all the plusses and minuses of your contact center operation from end to end and compares it to leading industry benchmarks, it can be used to map out the desired performance characteristics and other traits an outsource vendor should include.
Create a Solid RFP Using the Current State Evaluation If you begin a search for a vendor, creation of a solid RFP will be your first step. The current state evaluation you just received will help enormously as you compile and articulate all the requirements into this document. Obviously, you'll want to include operational processes and performance levels that the report shows your internal call center has been executing positively. Conversely, you'll need to close the gaps in areas found lacking. A good partner firm with deep knowledge of contact centers can prove helpful here. A data-driven RFP automatically screens out undesired vendors and prequalifies applicants, saving time and effort. The current state evaluation also delivers both tactical and strategic insights to be written into the new vendor contract. Roles, responsibilities, and outcomes become unmistakably clear in an operating agreement written in a language that articulates precisely what success looks like. By leaving nothing to chance and decreasing ambiguity to a bare minimum, the prospect of accomplishing all your goals increases dramatically. Access New Technologies and Platforms Hiring a vendor also provides an opportunity to take advantage of human process, platform, and technology upgrades that may not exist in your internal operations. But how do you know which next-generation tools apply? Again, it's wise to engage a partner firm with their finger on the pulse of your particular sector of customer service or sales. They will share what's out there as well as what's on the horizon.
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Vendor Selection Process Begins
With a finalized RFP, your company is ready to start the selection process. The universe of vendors is quite large, and all have advantages and disadvantages. To name a few:
Niche firms that specialize in a specific industry silo.
Boutique vendors, small in headcount and spread across multiple industries.
U.S.-based vendors, nearshore and offshore.
In-office call centers, WFH call centers, and even AI call centers . Many are hybrid in terms of work geography.
Behemoth companies, that cater to every conceivable contact center configuration imaginable.
Narrow Down Your List and Weed Out Undesirables Be methodical and very careful as you weed out undesirables and narrow down to a short list of good fits. Additional research and capability models are a smart idea to vet contenders worthy of a long-term relationship and avoid any nasty surprises. Here's an example. A firm comes in with an appealing cost structure and claims a ready base of qualified agents from their local area. Can they pull this off and maintain the CSAT goals you need? Hopefully so. But suppose you research their market and find that a huge retail organization routinely fills hundreds of positions at an hourly rate $1.50 higher than your vendor pays. In that case, their guarantee probably doesn't hold water. And you might be right back in the same situation you experienced with your internal team. Additionally, there could be disruption concerns like weather, natural disaster, and government to be aware of. There are health issues to consider. Can the vendor flex staff levels up and down to match your demand? What percentage of their client base, and therefore your company's level of importance, would you represent to the vendor? What's their corporate culture like? What do their clients say? Careful research on potential vendors answers these questions. Once a potential list of candidates has been cut down to a very short list, current state evaluations of these firms should commence. These reports can be invaluable tools when optimizing and customizing the new vendor as you integrate them into your company. They also help enormously when a final choice has been made, and you're at the contracting stage.
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SUCCESSFULLY INTEGRATE YOUR NEW VENDOR
CONTRACT
STANDUP
MONITOR
IMPROVE
Draft a Binding Contract Drafting a binding vendor contract that covers everything you need is one of the most critical steps in this process. Be sure to enlist qualified expertise to help you craft it. Certainly, contract attorneys play a role here, but we also recommend leveraging the wisdom of your trusted contact center evaluation partners. They can help lock in the performance and cost levels you seek in the most beneficial ways. They will help craft an agreement that keeps you in control. They’ll help you avoid the omissions and wording nuances that can lead to nightmare scenarios down the road. And they can share industry pricing benchmarks to make sure negotiations remain fair. Things to Consider When Onboarding Your Vendor As the contract is being negotiated, thought should be given to vendor standup so that your team can begin the transition from your internal call center before the ink has dried. Identify which platforms, processes, and departments need to be changed or finetuned to integrate seamlessly into your success plan. The current state evaluation and capability model of the new vendor comes into play, as does the evaluation report about your internal department. The findings in these reports evolve into the basis for an integration plan. Monitor for Success Key players, processes, and systems have already been identified. Your integration team will now use this information as they proceed with standup. KPI and other measurements during this phase, and after operations fully begin, will provide a clear view of whether goals are achieved. Continuous Improvement Sub-components of an integration plan should include project, communication, and change management plans. Each plan spells out the details of each step, the timeline, and identifies the owners. These will help smooth and soothe problems such as revenue dips, culture collisions, job fears, low morale, lowered productivity, and other roadblocks. See our blog on Change Management for more details.
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BUILD FOR SUCCESS
This guide serves as a basic approach to help decide if outsourcing is right for your call center. It’s important to note that every case is different and that yours deserves a customized plan tailored to your needs and characteristics. You may decide to improve your current call center. Or you may choose to align with an outsourcing vendor. Both paths represent potential journeys to substantially increased success. If done correctly, up-front investments in either direction will likely mature into profitable returns.
If you have more questions along these lines, Insite is always happy to help. Consultations are complimentary.
GET INSITE. GET BETTER.
At Insite, we've been improving contact centers since 2007 using a host of proprietary and customizable solutions. Most engagements feature our 3x ROI guarantee*, which self-funds your partnership with us and makes the decision a no-brainer. If you'd like to hear an outside perspective of your current vendor situation, please contact us. Consultations are always complimentary.
* Insite provides a risk-free approach by guaranteeing either increased revenue and/or reduced operational cost equal to or greater than our fee. If not, you get a full refund. Complete confidence in our proprietary process and data analysis, in combination with our quick hits, long-term initiatives, and rapid results allows us to offer this money-back guarantee. Since our inception in 2007, we have never failed to self-fund all engagements. Certain products and services are excluded. Conditions apply. See us for details.
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New Employee Onboarding Handbook 2022
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