As a contact center, our primary function is to provide customer support functions to the businesses we serve. In addition to this, we are constantly mindful of the need to continually grow our existing business by reaching out to potential new clients. During the process of discussing their needs and devising a plan that will benefit them, one of the questions we hear quite often is “how is working with your contact center going to help our business without significantly adding to our costs?” This is a valid question and one that we take to heart when asked. Because it IS such a common question, we thought it would be a great idea to devote a blog post to answering that question. There are many benefits to outsourcing your customer service needs to a contact center.
CONTACT CENTER BENEFITS
- Cost Savings: As we mentioned above, we are often asked how hiring a contact center will impact their costs. Many organizations are under the impression that hiring a contact center is going to greatly increase their operating costs; actually, the opposite is true. When a business outsources to a contact center, such as Centris, they are contracting a team of well-trained agents who know how to handle a variety of customer service functions. In addition, the cost of hiring, training and equipping an in-house staff is completely eliminated as an operating expense when a business outsources to a contact center. At Centris, our near-shore contact centers, located in Mexico, offer additional savings of 50%-70% than U.S. based call centers.
- Technology: Another benefit of contact center outsourcing is the technology that the contact center brings to the table. Contact centers like Centris are equipped with the latest technology required to deliver service and results to their client. Technology also changes and evolves fairly consistently, so contact centers are at an advantage when it comes to integrating new technology into their daily operations. For businesses operating an in-house contact center, integrating new technology provides an additional expense as well as training to get agents up-to-speed on the new technology. When businesses outsource to a contact center, they reap the benefit of a staff of agents trained on the latest technology. Below is a list of contact center technology that contracting businesses receive when outsourcing to a contact center:
- Analytics
- Call Recording
- Live Chat
- Cloud Technology
- Compliance
- Customer Satisfaction
- Data Integration
- Omnichannel
- Performance management
- Remote employment
- Self-service
- Social media
- Suites over stand-alone tools
- Training: Another benefit of outsourcing to a contact center is that the contact center provides the training for their agents. When we onboard a new client at Centris, we work with the client to understand their contact center needs and then we train our agents to meet those needs. Our on-boarding period ranges from 3-6 weeks, depending on the client needs and number of tasks we are implementing. We consistently hear from our clients that this is, by far, the most efficient way to train a team of agents to serve their customers. Training agents is a costly endeavor, both in time and money. It can take months for a business to train an in-house team of agents. Meanwhile, productivity is lost while agents are getting up-to-speed on how to handle the customer service functions. Loss of productivity translates to loss of revenue. These losses are completely avoided when outsourced to a contact center.
From our perspective, these are the top three benefits to outsourcing to a contact center. However, there are other benefits as well:
- Contact centers provide the option of scaling up and down during busy seasons.
- As businesses may require more services from their contact center, contact centers can easily integrate more functions to serve the customer base.
- An outsourced contact center’s sole purpose is to serve the customer yielding a higher level of customer satisfaction.
- Secured, encrypted data gathering software that keeps sensitive customer information secure.
If you are considering outsourcing your customer service functions to a contact center, Centris can help. We will customize a plan that suits your specific needs. We offer a professional, highly-trained staff of bilingual agents who are committed to serving the needs of your customers. Contact us, and let us show you how working with Centris can benefit your business.
