5 Ways Businesses Can Save Money Using a Call Center
Customer service doesn’t come cheap. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to make it more affordable.
Many companies looking for affordable and scalable customer care solutions turn to call center models to streamline operations, improve expertise and reduce costs.
But how exactly does using a call center save your business money? We’ll show you five key ways in this article—but first, let’s get a clear understanding of what exactly a call center can offer and cost.
Understanding Call Center Operations and Costs
Call centers can vary significantly, but in general, a call center centralizes inbound (and perhaps outbound) customer calls and communications, and provides customer service and support with an emphasis on customer satisfaction.
Call centers might provide any or all of the following services:
- Inbound / Outbound Calling
- Answering Services
- Customer Care
- Loyalty Programs
- Cross-selling / Upselling
- Telemarketing or Market Research
- Omnichannel / Multichannel Support
- Multilingual Customer Service
- Data Analysis
- and more!
As a result, call center operations can be logistically complicated. There’s a variety of models to choose from, but the most significant choice is between managing your customer service in-house—handling everything from operations to hiring to processes and software internally—or outsourcing. To save on time, money and resources, many companies use outsourced call centers, which is what we’ll primarily focus on in this article.
When you outsource your call center, all of the operational and logistical challenges will be handled for you. Most call centers offer affordable flat-rate fees, per-agent fees or usage-based fees (i.e. per-minute or per-hour). These fees incorporate all overhead costs, as well as agent salaries and benefits, providing you with more affordable call center expenses while also alleviating the operational burden.
The 5 Ways Call Centers Can Save Businesses Money (and one way they can earn you more)
There are five key ways outsourcing your call center can save your business money:
- reducing overhead costs
- maximizing efficiency
- leveraging economies of scale
- ensuring expanded service coverage
- access to new technology
We’ll get into each of these below.
1. Reducing Overhead Costs
The most obvious way call centers save businesses money—and one of the biggest savings—is through reduced overhead costs. When you’re hosting your call center or customer service in-house, you’re also covering all the overhead expenses, whereas when you’re outsourcing, those expenses are spread amongst the various clients of the call center and you’re not on the hook for them.
Consider some of the many overhead costs that you won’t be responsible for when outsourcing a call center:
| In-House Costs | Outsourced Costs |
|---|---|
| Office space and / or office equipment and furniture | Per-agent hourly rates |
| Technological equipment for employees such as phones, headsets, and laptops | Setup fees (at some call centers) |
| Software or technology licenses for each employee | |
| Cloud-based software or on-premise call center technology | |
| Utilities and call-related telecom costs | |
| Security, compliance, auditing or maintenance fees and costs | |
| Infrastructure and IT costs (including employees and management) | |
| Data analysis tools and expertise | |
| HR costs (employees, recruitment, hiring and so on) | |
| Employee salaries and benefits, including “non-productive” agent time such as breaks, PTO, meetings, and so on |
Not only does outsourcing significantly reduce costs by reducing overhead expenses, it also makes it much more affordable to get up and running and to scale as needed. In addition, it also provides more predictable month-to-month costs, allowing you to budget and scale accordingly.
2. Maximizing Efficiency Through Expertise
A less noticeable cost-savings when working with a call center is through the expertise you gain access to. With increased expertise comes maximized efficiency—meaning your team is more productive, and can accomplish more with less time, input and resources needed, saving you money, or at least, making your investment more effective.
When you outsource your call center—especially a high-quality and experienced team like ROI CX Solutions—you get access to a fully-trained team of agents and customer experience experts with decades of experience managing and improving customer service. This includes roles from leadership and management to quality assurance leaders, team leads, HR staff, agents, multilingual agents and more. It’s unlikely for most companies to have access to that level and breadth of expertise in-house, which is why outsourcing is such a desirable option.
In addition, more expertise also leads to better strategy and more efficient processes and outcomes, which maximizes your return.
3. Leveraging Economies of Scale
There’s also the economies of scale to consider.
With an outsourced call center, you have access to much larger teams and much more flexibility and scalability.
Need to scale up your team for a big product launch? Adding more agents to your roster is simple, as the call center will have a large team working across many clients.
Need to scale back after the holiday season? You can do so easily, without all the behind-the-scenes work of hiring-and-firing needed with in-house staff.
Growing quickly and not sure how many agents you’ll need? You can start small and continue to add new agents to your team easily, so that your team always grows with you.
In short, working with a call center allows you to leverage scalable teams, increased headcount and large numbers of agents without continuously paying for all of those agents when you don’t need them. Many call centers—especially if you’re working with a nearshoring or offshoring model—have access to large labor pools that give them additional scalability.
4. Ensuring Round-The-Clock Customer Service
Working with a call center also saves money when it comes to providing excellent quality and care for your customers—most notably when it comes to after hours or 24/7 service.
Offering 24/7 service is easier and more affordable when you’re working with an outsourcing partner, especially if you’re offshoring or nearshoring. Not only do disparate time zones give you more flexibility for schedules, but it also makes scheduling after-hours or overnight shifts more affordable.
The same rule applies to other customer service functions that are difficult to hire for in-house, or even domestically, such as multilingual service. In the US, bilingual agents tend to command premium rates, whereas in other countries, being bilingual is the norm, and therefore more affordable. As a result, working with an outsourced call center saves businesses significantly on labor costs related to round-the-clock service, bilingual support and so on.
5. Providing Access to Latest Technology without Huge Investments
Finally, working with a call center provides access to the latest technology—right from the start of your partnership—without requiring large upfront investments.
Setting up your own call center typically requires extremely large startup costs, related to hiring, software, installation, equipment and more. Call centers typically charge setup fees, but they’re significantly more affordable than call center setup costs are.
Consider all of the technology required to set up and operate a modern call center:
- telephony systems
- physical equipment such as computers and phones
- customer databases or CRMs
- VoIP softphone
- IVR systems and auto-dialers
- call queue management and routing systems
- call recording and QA software
- data analysis and management
- live chat software
- omnichannel management and communication tools
- workforce management software
This isn’t an exhaustive list—yet all of this software and technology can cost thousands to license, implement, set up and integrate with other tools. When you work with a call center provider, you get access to all of this technology, already set up and integrated. You only need to integrate it with your internal systems and customer records—which a good call center partner can help with—and you’re up and running.
Not only is there financial investment to consider, but also consider the time, resourcing, and expertise needed to set up, manage, maintain and integrate all of these tools. Companies who work with a call center get all of this included in their monthly rates, which translates to significant costs and time savings.
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Bonus: Cross-Selling / Upselling
As a bonus, outsourcing your call center doesn’t just save your business money—it can also make money for your business.
One key way this happens is through improving conversions and sales, often through cross-selling and upselling capabilities. A call center can manage both inbound and outbound calls—and in each of those, there’s the opportunity for cross-selling and upselling, when appropriate.
With an outsourced call center and an experienced team, you can make the most out of every phone call. In fact, at ROI CX Solutions, our clients see an average of 40% additional gross sales per call through our upselling and cross-selling techniques. As a result, you’re not just saving money or maximizing your investment with a call center—you’re also actively investing in techniques and services that can improve customer loyalty, grow sales and benefit your bottom line directly.
Case Studies: Successful Cost Savings Through Call Centers
Our clients at ROI CX Solutions have achieved significant cost-savings—and profit increases—through outsourcing their call center operations to our team.
For example, one of our clients, a global payments company in the financial industry, needed to scale their team affordably as they expanded into new territories while also increasing monetization of their current audience.
Through a variety of services, tactics and methods, our team at ROI CX Solutions was able to:
- affordably scale our client’s team to capture new and existing audiences
- achieve a 45% lead conversion rate
- capture 48% of customer-budgeted financial expenses
- generate over $22 billion in new annual revenue
Hear it from our client themselves:
“We are proud to partner with ROI CX Solutions and have been impressed with their industry expertise and agility in developing innovative solutions to drive our business growth. Their top-notch supplier enablement services have played a critical role in our success, helping us achieve significant results in terms of lead conversion, capturing budgeted expenses, and generating new revenue. We look forward to continuing our long-term partnership with ROI CX Solutions and entrusting them with additional responsibilities to further improve our services.”
– Financial Client of ROI CX Solutions
Making the Move: Transitioning to a Call Center Model
When you’re ready to make the transition from managing things in-house to moving to a call center model, what are your first steps?
The first—and most important—aspect of transitioning to a call center is determining exactly what you’re looking for and what you want to achieve. Clearly define your needs, goals, objectives and desired services so that you can find the right partner.
Then, you can begin researching and carefully vetting call center partners and sending out RFPs for consideration. Keep in mind that, as with any outsourcing partner, not all call centers are created equally, and cost isn’t the only factor to consider.
You should look for:
- testimonials or positive reviews from current and past clients
- case studies demonstrating the ability to get results
- certifications demonstrating quality and compliance
- experienced and well-trained agents
- expertise in customer service and CX
- best-in-class technology
- communication styles that fit with your company culture
Once you’ve found the right partner for you, they’ll help you develop a plan to fully transition.
Conclusion
So, is working with a call center right for your team? You should consider working with an outsourced call center partner if you’re looking to:
- reduce overhead costs and make management and operations more streamlined
- increase affordability of your customer service and call center costs
- scale up or down your call center functions, or have increased flexibility throughout the year
- improve service levels and customer service quality without spending a lot of increased time or resources on your call center
- add on additional services such as multilingual support, 24/7 service or multi-channel support
- get access to additional expertise to improve your service and customer experience
- make use of advanced technology for more efficient and effective processes and streamlined customer experiences
When you’re ready to make your customer service operations more effective and affordable, work with a call center you can trust—connect with an expert from ROI CX Solutions. With decades of experience behind our team and leadership, we’ll help you achieve the results you need, with affordability and scalability that fits your goals and budget.
