Call Center Outsourcing and Business: Best Friends Forever

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A research revealed that most of business owners spend more than 40 percent of the most productive time in handling simple tasks for instance -overlooking the administrative issues, recruitments, customer care suchlike.



What a pity that, business owners and decision makers are still dubious about the significance of outsourcing call center services. Call Center Services can play the role of best buddy in your professional life.

Be it taking some of work burden off your shoulder or ensuring quality procedures and result oriented processes for your company, they do it all with the honesty and integrity of a best friend.

Call center outsourcing is not a new phenomenon to the companies which have realized and sensed the value of it long back. It is been there always, though in more cryptic and hidden form. Businesses were afraid to reveal that they were outsourcing services due to the fact that customers would consider them incompetent. With the globalization and enhancement of businesses, the inclination towards call centers have increased and become mandatory.

Thanks to the new outlook and arrival of latest technologies, the operation mechanism of call centers has also changed. They are investing lot more in quality measures and technology to provide you ‘better than the best’ services of the lot.

Imagine that mentioned 40 percent of time wasted on time consuming yet business important activities transforming into more productive and business centric activities by you and your in-house team. You can generate revenues, earn more business relevant contacts and maximize productivity without spending on surplus charges such as training, recruitment and other set-up costs. You do not have to giveaway benefits like P.F, medical claims and gratuity to new employees too.

It is not like that you are suppose to outsource all of your business to call center services provider. You just transfer one or two segments of your business that would be otherwise very costly if established in-house in terms of infrastructure and training costs. For instance- developing a customer care center in the premises of your company can be arduous and expensive task.

Regardless of your stature and type in the market, outsourcing call center services are there for you and your business. You just need to find the right call center partner for you.

Call Center Technologies: Simplifying Call Center Operations

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Can call center operations be untouched with the Midas touch of modern technologies? Especially when they have become multi-specialty centers dealing with numerous projects at a given time, they need to be laced with contemporary customers. Call centers have become multichannel and multi tier organizations now. To complement their growing needs, increasing work pressure, volume of calls and help clients to stay ahead of the competition they need to deploy latest and cutting edge technologies.



With these technologies, call centers have been able to exceed the expectations of clients and customers without compromising on efficiency and quality. The modern advanced technologies of call centers include IVR (Interactive Voice Response). This is the one of its own kind of adaptation of integrated voice and data technologies.

IVR links caller with the desired information by recognizing the database records. This accelerate the whole process and improve the entire calling mechanism. Guided speech IVR integrate LIVE agents to voice response. In case, if a caller wants to talk to an agents and relies on human assistance only, can use the technology for real time support.

Along with this, call center outsource services providers have gained expertise in providing personalized services as well. Be it fax, email, voice mail or Web interaction, call centers are providing a whole new dimension to wireless access and PDAs as well.

CTI is another modern time technology that combines the benefits of telephone and computer. It enables communication modes like voice, email, fax and web to computer.

With the help of ACD (Automatic Call Distributor) contact centers have been able to route the calls to the terminals used by agents. Predictive Dialer has made the life @ call center easier and focused.

Customer relationship management (CRM) manages the database of customer and make work operations smoother and more streamlined.

Workforce management or WFM (also known as HRMS and ERP systems) regulate the data of larger workforce. Via three way call mechanism call centers are enable to verify the orders or requests as in third party verification.

Inbound call centers are using a comparatively new technique known as virtual queue to serve customers on first come basis.

Contact centers' voice mail enables you to manage or spread a message to number of people. Voice over Internet Protocol or IP telephony direct the call to the available agents without putting on hold or hanging up.

It is not difficult to comprehend that the helm of the Call Center Operations is the latest technology. These latest technologies are not only providing a consolidated backup to fulfill the work obligations efficiently and properly but also making operations easier.

Eleven on Top Buzzing Call Center Outsourcing Words

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Call center outsourcing is not new and also, you all may be aware of the potential and benefits of it. Yeah, I know but I know this too that jargons and lingo related to the term ‘outsourcing’ has enough potential to make your head spin and mouth wide open.

Let’s understand the vocabulary associated to Call Center Outsourcing to make things happen for you and give rest to the whirlwind of your mind.

1) Near- shore Outsourcing: It is an act where a company outsources its work to a neighbor country.

2) Onshore Outsourcing: It is like domestic outsourcing. If, a company based in U.S transfers it web development work to a U.S creative web agency it is called on-shore outsourcing.

3) Off-shore Outsourcing: Offshore outsourcing is a much talked about term. It is an act where work is outsourced to a destination where labor and manpower costs are much lower than onshore or near shore destinations. This is much practiced by companies regardless of their sizes and types.

4) Crowd-Sourcing: It is an act where an open call is made (usually online) to invite interested workers. Example: Bidding platforms.

5) Globalization: It is a term referring to nature of business and commodity which has known no boundaries of language, countries and time.

6) Virtual Call Center: It is a call center where agents are located in various locations but work in a unified way for a company.

7) Total Cost of Outsourcing/ Total Cost of Ownership (TCO): From the labor costs to service fees and from the managing and implementation charges that a call center has to bear for a project is included in this term.

8) Business Process Outsourcing (BPO): It is another term for call center. However, it is used in wider perspective. BPO is divided into two categories of service: 1) Back-office Outsourcing and 2) Front-office Outsourcing.

9) Service-Level Agreement (SLA): It a contract including the terms and conditions, services and costs on which service provider call center and company is agreed upon.

10) E-outsourcing: Instead of deploying in-house IT products or applications, if a company chooses to outsource it over the internet is called e-outsourcing.

11) Core Competency: A specific field in which a call center or organization has expertise.

Call Center Outsourcing: Altering the Way of Business

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Outsourcing has become an international discussion and has divided the entire world into two clans. One which favors it and other which loves to hate it but neither of them can deny the fact that call center outsourcing has altered the overall business of companies and turned it upside down in terms of resource utilization, modernization and productivity.

From Fortune 500 companies to small entrepreneurs are admitting and utilizing the benefits of call center services. A right call center can change the way you business and turn dipping sales into profit. Their advanced solutions, technologies and quality centered approach can be beneficial for any business. Leveraging the growth of company, a call center serves as a platform of new technology, applications and quality solutions. Call center outsourcing services can help a company management to control expenses like recruitment, hiring and setting up infrastructure. Besides this cost control and operational costs reduction, call center outsourcing services also enhances your business by providing services like qualified lead generation and running up selling and cross selling campaigns.

Your company staff gets to spend time on focusing how to lead the market instead of struggling to keep the pace maintained with competitor. Outsourcing call center services simplify life, both at office and home for you. Yes, you do not have to worry what if somebody calls up at night or how would your in-house staff member reply a call from China? You do not miss a call of interested buyer thanks to 24/7 services provided by call centers. The real time assistance and real time solutions make you a star in the eyes of customers. Multi-lingual agents truly make your business go global. Fulfilling their needs and resolving their problems or queries in timely manner tops all. After all, eventually this is what matters most to them.

They make the otherwise daunting tasks seem so simple and innocent. Thanks to their CRM software and applications managing the data and information of customers was never this easy. Also, telemarketing and inbound calling has become so cost managed, streamlined and inexpensive because of ACD (automatic call distribution), VOIP (voice over internet protocol) and IVR (interactive voice response). They are timely, cost effective and qualitative cum quantitative simultaneously.

When to Outsource Call Center Services

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Outsourcing call center services can be of beneficial to varied enterprises regardless of their set up and verticals. There are no pre- written rules or preordained guidelines that only a specific business can outsource or when should a business outsource. However, the advantages associated to outsourcing of call center services are immense. The mentioned number of situations through which your business may be going can present an ideal scenario to outsource call center services:

1) Building Growth: You have new product launch coming in or an even that can generate lots of interest in terms of call that your in-house team may find difficult to handle. Consult and hire an outsource vendor. It can eliminate your worries of recruiting new employees and overhead charges and investments to romp up infrastructure, equipments, applications upgrade, P.F, gratuity to name a few.

2) Money on Mind: When a business expands, so do the call volume. The software department of call center can lace you with new IP phone systems and Customer Relationship Management applications that can streamline your processes without increasing your costs of employing new workers and technology.

3) Small and Mighty: If you are one of the aspiring business leaders who started up small, Call Center Outsourcing services can be the best options. Call center service providers with extensive experience in varied domains can back up your operations. You can deploy the new technologies and resources of call centers for your business for further expansion without spending on recruitment and training costs.

4) Volumes do Matter: The calls flow experienced by your business is constant; you can use the fix plans or budget packages offered by most of call centers. If you do not, then also you can utilize the benefits of outsourced call center significantly. The spacious call center premises can very well accommodate your seasonal additional demands.

5) Shifting Business Globally: Business without boundaries can be really troublesome if you do not have right help and support to leverage your growth. The 24/7 technical support, calling assistance, multi-lingual call center agents, web enabled LIVE chat support can earn you better reputation and revenue by providing you better customer services and reach.

Uplifting Call Center Operations through Performance Management

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Performance management is the driving force behind any successful call center operations. A performance management program strongly stresses on proper and accurate communication of the objectives of call center outsourcing between employees and management.

To establish effective and best in service, Outsourced Call Center performance management system a rigorous implementation of four dimensional program is highly recommended.

1) Goals and objectives: This dimension strongly emphasize on the management and employee relations. Supervisor-employee meetings, realizing the weakness and capabilities of team, understanding the targets, setting realistic goals and tracking the performance come under this phase. Setting new goals, reviewing the existing ones – met or unmet, understanding the primary functions and resolution of any performance or administration related issue, if any, should be the agenda of the meeting. These meetings should not be for the sake of getting along as these meetings have the potential to lay out the success track for your organization.

2) Ongoing feedback: The second phase of performance management cycle is about managing a track report or status sheet of ongoing daily to daily supervision, training, reinforcing, actual performance and progress toward achieving the set goals and objectives. The feedback should be brief, up to date, maintained and consistent. This kind of tracking helps your employees to be active and aware while chasing goals.

3) Coaching: Training and learning is the keystone of every organization. Be it regarding organizational behavior or concerns product manuals or FAQs, one –on- one training always helps and motivates agents to exceed their capacities and attain the targets.

4) Performance based review: As the name suggests, this phase of the cycle is about results, rewards, rebukes and self analysis. This could be either project wise, monthly or on annual basis. A rating is assigned for every segment of performance expectation and actual performance. A supervisor, then decide and assign the new goals based on the performance level and evaluation of capabilities of an agent. Review should be up to the point and unbiased. They should provide a chance of self analysis to agents to review themselves and rectify any performance or behavior related mistakes. A performance review should be drafted in a way that could inspire and motivate them to do better.

My Personal Perspective on Call Center Working

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Please Note: If you are the one complaining about the work schedules or stress and cribbing that you are here for all the wrong reasons, this post can be an eye-opener.

In order to cope up with the stress and panic your call center job give you is to love it. You are doing your job. Just for once, try to be in love with what you do. Try to take proud in helping other people. Just close your eyes and listen to the voice coming from the other end of receiver and imagine his angst over products or services delivered.

You would be doing it anyway, right? So, would not it be right to do your job with a little passion and love. It may not be your dream job or the greatest job on earth; you might say but it can be a job you want to remember for the rest of your life or can provide you with experience for that dream job you are looking for.



As far as the question related to create a balance between your professional or personal time is concerned, its key, as well is in your hands. Have you observed what have you been doing lately when you are on off or leave for home? Let me guess. You pop into your room, slouch on a couch and switch on your TV and watch until you drop. So, are we really talking about ‘personal time’ here?

Working in a Outsourced Call Center can give you lesson of life time by enabling you a glimpse down the alleyways of human psyche and the art to stay calm even in the bitterest and worst of the situations. The stress to answer every single call can lead you to do your best and take your own best decision in the loads of pressure.

A call center job can be equally lucrative and beneficial; you just need to practice a positive mindset.

The Niche Operational Areas of Call Center Operations

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If the matter concerns talking about the core operational areas of call center, the going is tough. Not a single sphere of the industry is untouched by the magical charm of Call Center Outsourcing. In today’s challenging economic times, call center operations have proved their worth.

Call centers have added value and quality to ordinary services. Their customer services needs no introductory words or appreciation. Regardless of the volume of the calls they handle and odd working shift, they prove to be guiding posts of success for varied organizations.

Be it customer support or web development, research for an upcoming product launch or mystery shopping for your brand, call centers services have solution for all. Through their quality assurance guidelines and technology oriented working procedures, the skills of agents/call center professional emerge more relevantly for the benefit of project.

Most of organizations have tasted exemplary success through Call Center Operations. Today, most of them cannot even imagine navigating through the path of insecure market without their help.

Outsourced Call Center does not just take overflow of the work but also helps you to have ample time to sit back and concentrate on business relevant issues rather than worrying about installing a computer for your new recruit.

Call center outsourcing also reduces the occurrence of ‘opportunity costs’. The opportunity cost is applicable when an organization misses out on a profitable option over the other one. For instance, if one company wants to run its own call center in one of its premises, its loses out on one of the infrastructure resources and end up spending more on set up, recruitments and other training processes. With call centers, resources never end and their utilization become profit for all.

Tips to Do a Successful Outsourcing

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Reaching the decision of outsourcing your business need is simple but selecting a call center could be really intricate process for the decision makers. BPO industry has seen a novel spur in popular call center hubs like India, China and Philippines. Among the clusters of service providers and heavy duty claims, one needs to identify the real outsourcing problem solver.



The major factors of Call Center Outsourcing are reduced costs and time. Outsourced Call Center provide on shore quality standard service at offshore prices. From large enterprises to small time companies are hiring contact centers for their business services. Before actually hiring a call center, go through these tips and decide for yourself:



1) Your Needs: Call centers offer array of services like customer care, telemarketing, surveys, mystery shopping, web development and designing. You need to understand your business needs. Going to a call center which doesn’t specialize in your business specifications can cost you your money and time.

2) Professional Training: Look out for the skills and knowledge of call center employees. Compromise on this could cost you your business. Agents should be well versed in written and spoken English. They should have complete knowledge of products and market updates.

3) Rules Compliance: See if call center abides to the fundamental and labor laws set aside by respective government for outsourcing divisions.

4) Working Ambiance: A call center amenities should be spacious, climate controlled and healthy. It should deploy all the facilities, equipments, working segments, quality assurance department in-house and under one roof.

5) History: Check which clients and countries they have dealt with. Ask for references and testimonials of previous calls. Do not hesitate to call their clients for further clarifications.

6) Dedication: The main reason you outsource are less budget, little time and great quality. You should enquire if they keep deadlines and adhere to quality assurance strictly.

7) Technically Sound: A call center should be technically efficient and equipped well. It should have an experienced management team and fully fledged IT section.


Call Center Outsourcing can help you to streamline your business. With the range of services they can increase sales lead and conversion rates. They enhance the richness of customer experience and provide quick and prompt response. A careful analysis of qualifications and resources can make outsourcing more worthwhile experience.

Call Center Performance Management: 17 Fundamental Tried and Tested Formulas

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We, here in this article will talk about how a simple inbound call center evolves into a multi dimensional outsourcing service provider and so does its performance management problem as well. With advanced technology and brightest minds, call centers expand and upgrade themselves to the next level of services and quality. But we need to understand that as call centers, their services and outsourcing trend have changed; their performance management techniques need to be changed as well. To determine the standards and quality of working, we are presenting 18 performance measures in terms of services, quality of work, efficiency and profitability of their services and impact of their support on a business and its growth.

We are analyzing these mentioned performance measures in two aspects of work levels: one for ordinary call center and another contact for multi level support provider contact center.


Performance Management in terms of Service

The most important measures of performance are those associated with service. Some of these measures are the same for both a Outsourced Call Center and contact center, while some will need to change slightly to reflect the new types of transactions.

1. Blocks and Hurdles

Blocks and hurdles are indicated as time when customers are not able to get through the network due to insufficient facilities at work. The busy signal, dropped calls and other situations can be count as such. These obstruct the speed of performance and have adverse affect on quality of services. Also, it has negative effect on customer satisfaction.

Solution: Increase the server capacity. To estimate how many network facilities to be needed by you so that it does not get overloaded.

2. Abandon Ratio

The dropped calls do impact the retention and revenue generation of call centers. They understand that making your customer wait in queue to receive a call is not going to take you anywhere. Nonetheless, it cannot be eliminated properly. There are number of factors that affect this factor such as caller’s patience, the time of call and other alternatives of getting in touch like email or dropping a number to call back.

3. Self-Service

Now, when market is expanding and customer base of organizations are growing, their partner call centers are adopting new measures to attend them. Most of them are adapting self-service facilities that help customers to choose their operations and help menu by themselves.

In a contact center, the performance can be tracked by observing how many times help menu was accessed and how many times a live agent was called upon?

4. Service Level

Service level consists of determining the most average speed of processing a request. Some of Call Center Outsourcing Services and contact centers measure the response time taken by the customers as well.

5. Maximum Delay in Queue

Another measure of speed is to calculate the longest time a customer was made to wait. This is also referred as worst case.

Quality Measures



6. First Resolution Rate

The first call resolution is called one and done in call centers which is very critical and significant for the performance levels of a call center. The factors contributing in this performance measure are the team that handled the query, time of call and nature of query.

7. Rate of Transfer

The seamless nature of a process of a call center can be determined by the rate of transfer. How much part of the work was handled over or transferred to another team or person, also counts.

8. Communications Skills

How well versed customer support executives are and how they behave with customer can either bog down your reputation or soar it above the clouds. This quality measure can be monitored through observance, reviewing the performance and proper reporting channels.

9. Procedures Adherence

This helps to integrate value and customer satisfaction together. Your agents should be willing to stick to workflow and shifting of process. Also, they should feel obliged to call scripts because they are trademark of your call center and brand awareness tactic for your client.

Efficiency Performance Measures

10. Agent Occupancy

Agent occupancy is the time that an agent takes to attend the customer as compared to the times he is not taking the calls. This is an important measure to check and oversee how your agents are utilizing the working hours.

11. Staff Attrition

It is the time when your staff is not present to handle the flow of calls. It could be due to meeting times, break times or other non productive issues. It is an important measure as you can easily calculate that how many people you will need in a session so that no call would go missed.

12. Efficiency of Schedule

It is about just hitting the mark. Not less and not more, just the right number of people working for you. Understaffing or overstaffing both is extremely dangerous curves for an organization.

13. Adherence to Schedule

This performance measure is a calculation of number of working hours per schedule. It ascertains the productivity of a team and its agents.

14. System Availability

An agent is incapable of doing anything if his system is slow. The overall performance of an agent can be marred by a slow system. For instance, IVR is much used and coveted technique of every call center. It eases down the workload of agents by 50 percent, in case IVR is not functioning properly, an agent would have to devote time to understand the nature of the query and answering it accordingly.

Profitability Measures

15. Rate of Conversion

The success of call center depends on the growth of organization they work for. How many of leads have been translated into sales, is the measure of their real success and actual performance.

16. Up-Selling and Cross-Selling

How much value has you agents added to your clients. This value added services adds as an advantage along with generated revenue in the kitty of your client.

17. Costing as per one Call

This is a critical and bottom line measure to calculate the efficiency and workload stamina of a call center. How much effort, facility, money and labor you have put in one call and what you are getting back out of it can be a real eye opener shot for any call center which boasts about success.