Outsource Help Desk

Call Center Outsourcing – Do I Really Need To?

Posted by admin on Jan 24th, 2010 | no comments home title

Are the decision makers considering the right parameters to evaluate the outsourcing of a call center? While most of them are going with the outsourcing trend. Very few really consider the parameters which would help them make a decision.

During my recent interaction with one of the customer support managers of an Automobile company, he said he wants to outsource the call center because it is cost effective. I requested from him certain information about his customer support requirements:

1) How big your customer base?

2) How many support concerns do you currently receive and through which medium?

3) What is the Level of concern?

4) How fast does he want to address the concern?

5) The preferred language of the customer?

6) Currently who handles these concerns? And lastly,

7) The budget for customer support?

The manager gathered the details and came out with facts which made him rethink the reasons for outsourcing the call center. It also helped him come out with certain prerequisites for call centers for outsourcing the help desk.

Similarly there are lot of cases wherein the concerned customer support head is not sure whether he needs a dedicated call center/ Help desk center and secondly whether he needs to do it in house or outsource it to a ITES company.

There are cases wherein company genuinely needs a help desk center but they still don’t have a dedicated call center / Help desk center. The manager needs to carefully review the entire process and get answers to above mentioned questions first prior to deciding on dedicated Help desk center and also to do it in house or outsource it to a third party company.

This is a tricky situation cause at one side you think about providing best customer support for which you would look for the best solution while on the other side you have to look at parameters related to the customer count, customer support format and the solution needed. But one had to get the balance right and go for a solution which is really needed rather than the trend commonly followed.