A pivotal element of your customer relationship (CRM) strategy may be to introduce direct interaction with your customer base through a call centre, or to enhance your current call centre services.
How to approach this involves determining your immediate and future call centre requirements, your organisational ability to develop this, and then assessing one of two routes. The first is to build your own call centre within your organisation; the second is to outsource your call centre requirements to a company that provides this as a professional service.
There are pros and cons to both solutions which need to be taken into account in relation to each specific organisation`s requirements and capabilities.
Building your own call centre within your organisation means building up, or hiring in, call centre knowledge and skills to understand the role the call centre will play in your organisation as well as to scope, define and design the call centre according to projected levels of activity and service.
This includes purchasing and integrating the right technologies to support the call centre processes and hiring the people needed to resource this new business unit.
Going through this process can be a catalyst for changes, in both cultural and operational practices, towards being more customer-focused. This also means that knowledge and skills in call centre management are developed and owned within the company, providing the ability to migrate this know-how into other areas of the business.
Having the call centre on-site can also provide greater control and security, and fewer communication issues. The call centre can become a major showpiece to the customer - a tangible demonstration of customer focus and service.
The drawbacks of this option are that it is resource-intensive in the time, money and skills required to set this up. A call centre is a unique place with a special culture which demands a specific set of management skills. This is essentially a different business, and building your own call centre may constitute a movement away from your organisation`s core business.
A partnership
Outsourcing your call centre requirements means partnering with a company that provides professional call centre services. This may seem like you are relinquishing control of your customer relationships, but the call centre outsourcing approach addresses this to ensure that there is not a perceived "extra step" in the line of communication between your company and your customers. Agents dedicated to your business, and highly trained, make the "distance" between you and your team of agents seamless to the customer.
Outsourcing means a faster set-up time with low cost of entry and exit. Call centre outsourcing service providers have to stay on the leading-edge of their business, therefore providing access to market leading expertise in call centre technology, practices and management, leading ultimately to superior service levels. Call centre outsourcing service providers will also be able to implement additional technologies purely because of the economies of scale of a large operation - including Web-enabling technologies such as "page push" and "call me", and unified messaging.
Outsourcing means less disruption internally and less operational headaches. It also removes the task of recruiting, retaining and motivating call centre staff.
When you outsource this function, you are able to set up service level agreements with your service provider that documents mutually agreed upon levels of service. Having this in place is imperative to the relationship, and also means that you can measure your service provider`s performance with penalties in place for under-performance.
However, there are drawbacks to outsourcing. Outsourcing your call centre requirements means more complicated communication pathways as "your" agents sit at a different location from your sales, marketing or support teams. There are cultural and integration issues as a result, and this requires a high level of training and induction.
Outsourcing means less process internally and could mean less positive impetus for cultural change. It also implies reduced in-house knowledge development.
There are many more factors in the insource vs outsource debate which will be mentioned in future columns. Suffice to say that the debate starts with a clear understanding of your organisation`s needs and a realistic view of its capabilities.
(Insource vs outsource pros and cons sourced from Ken Wheeler, business development manager, Merchants SA.)
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