Keeping Your Call Centre In-House Vs. Outsourcing

Deciding on the most effective way to operate a call centre for your organisation is rarely a straightforward decision. There are many factors to consider, with each option having its own key benefits and challenges. At Impact, we are always speaking to businesses facing this decision. Many will have reached a key growth stage in their business, which raises the question as to whether an in-house or outsourced call centre will best suit them. While outsourcing your call centre is an efficient and effective route for many, it does not suit every business. The best way forward depends on the specific challenges that you face. Many established, growing and well-resourced organisations can face significant challenges in operating a successful and effective call centre. Operating a successful call centre requires a specific skillset and setup that businesses may not have in place when they need it.

The growth in call centre AI technology and increases in call centre running costs pose further challenges to both in-house and outsourced call centres. However, the impact can be particularly acute for in-house call centres that are only serving their own brand/s and are therefore unable to efficiently distribute costs to match resources used.

However, there are several benefits of retaining an in-house call centre, such as in-house knowledge, excellent access to systems and a lower setup risk. For some organisations, the in-house route may better suit their operations and provide a stronger company culture fit. Which makes in-house call centres a suitable option for some of the UK’s leading brands.

We explore the key challenges and benefits of operating an in-house call centre and outline some of the reasons why established and well-resourced organisations may decide to outsource their call centre.

In-House Call Centre

Operating an in-house call centre can be a challenge for even the most established and well-resourced businesses. Key challenges include limited scalability, high running costs and resource management issues. Many of these challenges can be difficult to resolve, especially without the specialist call centre expertise that is gained from call centre outsourcing.

However, a number of businesses operate their own call centre successfully. These include some of the UK’s leading brands that operate at scale and serve a very high volume of customers every day. Businesses that choose to maintain an in-house call centre benefit from a number of significant benefits including in-house knowledge, having excellent access to key systems and a lower risk associated with the initial setup.

In-House Call Centre Challenges

Limited Scalability

Businesses may need to scale their call centre to match customer demand, which can be driven by a multitude of different events. In customer service, it could be that you have a product recall to organise, a seasonal peak in demand or an unexpected event that requires you to contact customers at scale. Whereas, in inbound sales, you might have launched a new TV, radio, print or digital advertising campaign that is driving significant peaks in demand. Whatever the cause of the drive in demand, your organisation will need to scale quickly.

As an in-house call centre, you will have a set number of call centre agents who are trained and ready to speak to customers. The number of agents that you employ will usually be matched to predicted normal customer demand, so when a peak in demand occurs you are unlikely to have available agents to manage excess customer interactions. While of course you can recruit further agents, this takes time and the employees that you recruit may require training. This is before factoring in product/service specific training that your new agents will require. In summary, you are unable to quickly access skilled and trained agents that can represent your business and interact with customers. This can result in poor customer experience, lower levels of customer satisfaction, and complaints. All of which is likely to be to the detriment of customer loyalty and sales, which can ultimately result in losing customers.

Scalability issues are not limited to agent staffing; they also extend into other areas such as systems and technology. When you need to scale quickly to meet contact demand as an in-house call centre, you may not have the available hardware and supporting systems to do this. From a cost perspective, having idle hardware and systems is expensive, but sourcing hardware may add further delay to scaling up. You may also use custom and specific systems in your business that a new agent may be unfamiliar with, which necessitates further training in addition to any skills-based and product/service-related training.

In addition to the above, what is often overlooked is that scaling up may also require further physical office space, which may not be readily available. As an in-house call centre, you may be located within your business’s wider office space and be competing with other departments for space. While the impact of this can be lessened with home working, this is not always possible or practical, especially as new agents will need to undergo training.

While the impact of some scalability issues can be offset by resource planning, this is not always possible, especially when the increase in customer demand is driven by unexpected events. In these cases, resource planning is unable to provide a solution to this significant challenge.

High Running Costs

Operating a call centre has always been expensive and they are sometimes – perhaps wrongly – viewed as a significant cost centre within a business, especially in the area of customer service. Setting up and operating a call centre can be an expensive outlay, even for established businesses. General business costs have increased significantly for several years now against a backdrop of inflation, and the labour-intensive nature of many call centres makes them particularly susceptible to these increases. As in-house call centres typically represent one or at most a few brands, they are also unable to share these costs efficiently and are instead required to absorb the whole cost themselves.

The most significant but by far not the only setup and running cost for call centres (both in-house and outsourced) is the cost of the contact/call centre agents that manage customer interactions. They play an integral role in the operation of every successful call centre, so recruiting skilled agents with the right culture fit is key. The cost of employing these agents alone is significant and starts with their recruitment. However, it extends into other areas such as training, which will be an outlay that must be met before they can start interacting with customers. This is before retention costs such as bonuses and employment perks/benefits are factored in. Many agent employment costs are also fixed regardless of usage, which means that in-house call centres can be significantly less cost-efficient.

Running costs for a typical call centre do not end at employing and training call centre agents. They also involve infrastructure, technology and IT systems. While some of these costs can be variable, many are not, as key infrastructure and systems will need to be put in place and maintained regardless of usage. Many of these costs also involve an upfront initial investment which must be covered by the call centre.  Off-the-shelf systems are often more affordable and accessible. However, if your business has complex requirements, it may require bespoke systems and infrastructure, which further raises the costs involved. Infrastructure and system maintenance and upgrades further increase the cost base and with the on-going advancement of call centre AI technology, upgrade requirements can be more frequent and extensive in scope.

In-house call centres are also subject to significant overhead costs associated with premises/offices, utilities, maintenance and office supplies. It is surprising just how much these costs can spiral, especially when you have a growing in-house call centre that is required to meet increasing customer demand in an efficient way. While some of these costs may be shared with the wider business, not all will be, and they are due regardless of the level to which they are utilised.

Resource Management

Resource management is another pressing challenge faced by all call centres, but particularly in-house call centres. Representing one or a handful of related brands is one of the significant factors driving resource management challenges, which we discussed extensively with regards to the impact on scalability and running costs. The key focus for many will be ensuring that the call centre remains effective and efficient. This becomes ever more critical as operations scale to meet increased demand. Resource management within a call centre context covers a range of areas, from human to financial to operations.

Human resources and the people that make up your call centre team are critical to its success. Even with the growth of AI technology, there is a key role for people to play. Call centre work can be demanding and high pressure, with issues to resolve, targets to meet and sales to secure. While for many, working within a call centre offers a great career with many opportunities, it does not suit everyone and as a result, team members may seek alternative careers elsewhere. Further to this, some of the call centre workforce may seek work in the sector for flexibility and have other commitments or changing circumstances. These can all drive a higher than typical level of employee turnover, which as an in-house call centre is challenging to manage. In response, do you over hire to build in excess agent capacity to offset employee turnover or do you under hire and risk insufficient staffing for everyday or peak demand and associated quality issues? Both options present challenges and over hiring can present a significant financial strain on an in-house call centre, as unlike its outsourced counterparts, it cannot divide up agents and their associated costs between several clients.

In addition to higher-than-average employee turnover, managing the scheduling of agents and rotas can be a challenge. This is especially so with more agents now looking for more flexible working options to suit their lifestyle. This can mean that you only have a certain number of agents available during a given time period, which can create issues when peaks in demand occur. Managing agent workload and ensuring that service standards are met requires accurate forecasting and proactive workforce management.

Financial resources pose yet another challenge. As outlined in the previous section, high running costs are a feature of many call centre operations, even with the increased adoption of call centre AI technology. The significant number of overheads and fixed costs involved in setting up and managing an in-house call centre can make having one cost prohibitive for many organisations – even those that are well established with significant resources. Even national and international brands can find balancing budgets a challenge.

In the operations area, on-going training and skills development become pressing issues and an in-house call centre can develop notable skills gaps that it needs to fill in order to deliver exceptional customer service and sales. Recruiting and retaining agents with technical and soft skills is a constant challenge, and in many cases agents that you recruit may not have all the soft skills that are required. This necessitates further soft skills training before technical and product/service training, which can place further strain on everyday operations. Furthermore, existing agents will require on-going training to keep up to date with product/service changes and in new systems and technology. As an in-house call centre, you may not have available resources to support training, which can require help and support from external providers, which adds further complexity and cost.

In-House Call Centre Benefits

In-House Knowledge

In-house knowledge remains key to success, especially within call centres. In-house call centres are in a unique position to capture, grow and share knowledge across all levels of their call centre. As the call centre is being operated in-house, there is a lower risk of knowledge loss when there are changes in the business. It is also easier to manage the successful transfer of knowledge between departments, agents and key employees as everyone within the team is easily accessible and subject to the same standards and processes, which promotes knowledge consistency and accuracy.

In most cases, the most valuable form of knowledge that is developed within an in-house call centre is brand and product/service knowledge. Call centre agents have the benefit of being directly immersed in the culture, values and processes of the company that they represent. When there are key changes and updates in the business that affect their customers, such as product/service or policy changes, they are likely to be aware of these quickly and can effectively communicate them to customers. The direct experience that agents gain from personally experiencing the culture and values of the business in action can help them to better understand how the business thinks and feels about key issues, which can contribute to an enhanced customer experience.

The most effective in-house call centres also foster a learning culture where continuous improvement and on-going development are valued. Effective initiatives that support mentoring of agents and team members by outstanding performers can ensure that best practice is shared and long-standing knowledge is communicated. The nature of an in-house structure also allows for faster communication within the call centre and the development of closer links with other departments across the business. There are fewer barriers to communication and greater opportunities for cross-functional knowledge sharing, especially when in-house call centres are located with the other departments in a business.

Excellent Access To Systems

Excellent systems are very much at the centre of every successful call centre operation and in-house call centres are well positioned to make the most of business systems as they are often directly integrated with many of them. Whether it is the business’s core IT system, its customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, they are highly likely to have a close integration and to be running on the same or a similar systems to other departments within the business.

Being able to directly access customer data including customer service case history, order history and customer profiles promotes informed and more intelligent decision making when agents interact with customers. There are also greater opportunities for personalisation when this in-house data is used effectively. This direct access also allows data to flow uninterrupted between the call centre and other business departments and vice versa, which helps to ensure that customer data is accurate and used efficiently. These data exchange also support close cross-department collaboration to resolve issues and communicate key changes as they arise.

Retaining systems in-house also allows for closer and direct control over data security and cyber security programmes. This can help to maintain higher security standards and reduce the risk of data breaches in some cases. However, it does also create a single point of failure, which in the event of a technology or security issue, could result in significant system downtime and disruption to call centre operations.

In-house call centres are often able to extensively customise and adapt their systems to suit their specific business needs. This helps to drive efficiency gains and savings. When all systems are retained in-house, less consideration will need to be given as to how each system integrates with different third-party systems and IT infrastructure.

Lower Risk

Setting up any call centre whether in-house or outsourced involves a certain level of risk and resources in terms of time and money. However, setting up an in-house call centre is considered to involve a lower level of risk as many of the systems and infrastructure that you will need to use will already be set up. This also removes or reduces the risk of setting up new systems and the associated integrations that allow data to easily flow between systems.

In addition to this, the business can benefit from a greater oversight over the agents, systems and processes that power the call centre and can make the required changes to maintain service standards. There may also be fewer management levels to communicate through, so feedback, changes and improvements can reach the right people within the team faster and start making a positive difference to the customer experience that the call centre delivers.

Outsourced Call Centre

Outsourced call centres offer a level of agility and efficiency that is not often matched by in-house call centres. Businesses that choose to outsource their call centre operations benefit from the fact that they are highly cost effective, offer exceptional scalability to help manage peaks in demand, provide easy access to specialist expertise and save your business time while delivering better results. At Impact, we offer all of these benefits and so much more to the organisations that outsource to us, which includes some of the UK’s leading brands.

While every organisation that chooses to outsource their call centre has their own individual reasons for doing so, there are a number of key drivers including securing significant time savings through efficiency gains, making cost savings and being able to use an existing call centre setup without incurring the high setup costs and operational delays that setting up an in-house call centre typically involves.

Outsourced Call Centre Benefits

Cost Effective

All types of call centres are expensive to operate and can involve a significant number of fixed costs. Outsourced call centres are unique in that they offer a professional call centre solution that businesses can utilise without having to incur expensive setup costs or on-going fixed costs related to agent employment, systems and business infrastructure that is integral to the operation of a call centre. By choosing to outsource your call centre, your business can benefit from just paying for the call centre resources that it uses. This is particularly beneficial to growing businesses that need to scale their operations as well as new businesses who may not have access to the significant resources required to setup an in-house call centre.

An outsourced call centre will provide the infrastructure required to operate your call centre, including office space, phone equipment, AI technology and computer equipment. Furthermore, they will be responsible for the acquisition, training and retention of call centre agents. This allows your business to benefit from their established processes and systems, while also freeing up valuable resources. The time and money that you save can be redeployed to your core business. It is surprising just how much of a difference that this can make to a business, as you can focus on your core operations while trusting call centre specialists to do what they do best – running an effective and efficient call centre.

At Impact, we deliver cost-effective call centre services for some of the UK’s leading brands through a winning combination of skilled agents, proven processes, intelligent systems and innovative AI technology. We deliver cost-effective services by using our expertise and experience to drive efficiency gains across call centre operations without compromising our commitment to delivering world-class service to our clients’ customers. The flexible bureau model that we offer helps to achieve the perfect balance between scalability and efficiency. It delivers the capacity to scale operations to clients with a pool of skilled and trained agents whilst ensuring that they are only required to pay for the resources that they are using. We are passionate about helping organisations deliver exceptional service while driving efficiency savings that maintain the cost effectiveness of call centre operations. Our call centre specialists are ready to help your business, contact us to discuss your requirements today.

Offer Exceptional Scalability

The volume of customer interactions that a call centre handles can increase or decrease significantly and these changes in demand can be unpredictable. Sometimes, they can be driven by unexpected events such as product recalls, customer service issues or service disruption. While some factors such as seasonality and planned advertising campaigns are easier to plan for, they still require a call centre to quickly scale up to meet a peak in demand or scale down when volumes of interactions are lower. Outsourced call centres are able to efficiently scale to meet a business’s current demand, so that exceptional service delivery is maintained. Delivering exceptional scalability is what call centre outsourcing delivers every day for businesses that decide to outsource.

Outsourced call centres deliver exceptional scalability to clients by employing a significant number of skilled agents, who have been extensively trained and equipped with excellent product/service knowledge for multiple businesses. They can be deployed to represent your business at short notice to help meet increases in contact/call centre demand. Many of these agents will also have different work patterns, to provide coverage for clients throughout the day and sometimes outside of standard business hours. This offers exceptional scalability and flexibility that helps businesses meet changing contact centre demand without the challenge of having to recruit extra agents and face delays in agent availability. Handling peaks in demand is so much easier when you have trained and skilled agents ready to be deployed to interact with customers. Businesses also benefit when they have lower levels of customer interactions, as their call centre resources can be scaled back. The agents who represent their business can be redeployed to represent another business that they are already trained to represent. Meanwhile, the business with lower demand benefits from only paying for the call centre resources they require.

At Impact Call Centre, we deliver exceptional scalability to our clients, whilst ensuring that our clients’ customers, enjoy exceptional service during every interaction. Some of the UK’s leading brands outsource their call centre to us with confidence, knowing that we have the people and processes in place to manage both expected and unexpected peaks in demand. Our call centre offers a bureau service to many clients, whereby we use a pool of skilled and trained call centre agents to handle interactions for multiple businesses. This allows businesses to benefit from exceptional scalability and access to additional agents where required to match demand but only pay for the call centre resources that they use. Our call centre has developed world-class training programmes to equip our agents with the soft skills and product/service knowledge required to manage customer interactions confidently across multiple businesses. These programmes are complemented by our culture of care, which supports agents, so they are equipped and empowered to deliver exceptional service every day. It is an efficient and cost-effective way to deliver great service at scale without incurring the cost of hiring call centre agents to represent your business on a full-time basis. If you are looking to scale your call centre operations in an efficient and cost-effective way, get in touch with us by calling 01794 230 230 or completing our contact form.

Access Specialist Expertise

Every successful call centre requires specialist expertise to maintain service standards, overcome challenges, improve efficiency and drive cost savings at scale. Being able to quickly and easily access specialist expertise for your day-to-day call centre operations, a specific campaign or a defined project is truly invaluable. It is all too easy for a business’s growth in sales and profitability to be held back if they lack the specialist expertise to drive their call centre operations forward. If you have an in-house call centre, it may be that it only handles inbound customer service and not sales. But what do you when you need to re-engage with lapsed customers, which requires agents with sales expertise? Or maybe your customer service call centre has reached a point at which it cannot handle an increased and growing volume of customer interactions and this is negatively impacting your customer experience and is to the detriment of customer satisfaction. While you can hire more call centre agents to join your in-house call centre, that requires significant resources, up-front investment and will take time, all of which can delay your growth plans and undermine your customer experience. By outsourcing your call centre, you can access the specialist expertise that your business requires quickly in an efficient and cost-effective way.

Outsourced call centres offer extensive expertise gained from supporting businesses across multiple sectors at all stages of their growth journeys. They have helped clients maintain service standards, overcome difficult challenges, improve efficiency and drive cost savings with a combination of their great people, proven processes and intelligent systems. They are able to draw on expertise and experience gained from supporting various different businesses and use this to help your business by operating a successful, efficient and effective call centre.

At Impact, we are proud to offer a wealth of expertise across all areas of call centre operations, which we have gained from supporting some of the UK’s leading brands, national businesses and charities. Businesses that outsource their call centre to us do so with confidence, safe in the knowledge that we work collaboratively and proactively with clients to ensure that we are well placed to delight their customers. Our specialist expertise spans the distinct disciplines of customer service and sales, which allows us to offer a complete call centre service covering customer services, inbound sales, outbound sales and even pick & pack fulfilment through our sister company, Merlin Fulfilment. Our specialist expertise in customer service and sales, provided by our heads of customer service and sales and their teams of specialists helps our clients grow their businesses in size, profitability and reputation. Why not get in touch with us to find out how we can help your business access specialist expertise?

Save Time And Improve Results

Running an effective and efficient call centre is very time consuming, even for established businesses with the resources to support the setup and maintenance of a successful call centre operation. A call centre is a key part of many successful businesses, and it is very much able to become an engine for growth, across both sales and customer service, but only if it is given the focus, resources and specialist resources that it requires to thrive. All businesses are subject to competing demands and various time pressures and with so much to focus on, it is very easy for focus to be diverted away from a key business area such as your call centre, which is often responsible for a significant proportion of customer acquisition, service and retention within your business. Losing focus on your call centre can impact your bottom line and be to the detriment of your growth. By outsourcing your call centre, you can save time and re-focus on your core operations while benefiting from the specialist knowledge and expertise of a professional outsourced call centre that is well placed to not only save you time but also improve the results that your call centre delivers.

An outsourced call centre will save you time by managing the operational aspects of your call centre including managing customer service and sales interactions, recruiting agents, training agents and setting up the technology and systems required to power your call centre. They will also provide insight into the strategic management of your call centre and be able to drive continuous improvement across all areas of your operations, which supports efficiency savings, quality initiatives and process improvement at scale. Businesses can draw on the extensive experience and specialist know how that their chosen call centre outsourcing partner has to deliver exceptional results and benefit from a successful call centre operation that drives their business forward.

At Impact, we are always raising the bar and driving continuous improvement across all areas of our UK based call centre to help our clients deliver exceptional service and business results. We collaborate closely with clients to deliver excellent outsourced customer service and outsourced sales services that draw on our extensive cross-sector expertise and experience that we have gained from supporting some of the UK’s leading brands and growing businesses. Our call centre services help our clients to save time by driving efficiency savings and achieve the best possible results.