How do you know which customer support service is best for your company? Well, we’re here to give you all the information you need on the differences between them. When choosing between insourcing and outsourcing your customer service, there is much to consider. Your decision mostly depends on what your company needs are at the moment, but also what you might need in the future. Here are the core differences according to FM Outsource.
Outsourcing
First things first, what is outsourcing? Outsourcing to a call center is when you use a company existing outside of your core organization and often overseas to manage your customer service. It’s referred to as outsourcing because it moves away from traditional in-house methods to help customers connect more easily with businesses.
If your business experiences changes in call volume throughout the day, outsourcing can be convenient. Having a center that has experience working with different campaigns can allow the call center to rapidly change with the needs of the customers.
An outsourced call center is an effective way to expand your customer services and provide more coverage, allowing you to help more customers with faster response times.
It is an ideal solution for businesses that want to delegate costs and operational responsibilities while benefiting from excellent service that doesn’t interfere with their customer experience. This can save money on labor, infrastructure, and overhead costs.
Insourcing
Unlike outsourcing, insourcing your customer service involves running everything in-house. It’s easier to keep an eye on business if you run your customer service in-house, which is appealing to a lot of companies. Insourcing provides a more hands-on approach, empowering you to take better control over completing tasks quickly and precisely.
Many companies prefer insourcing as it provides more of a personal touch. With complete control over all your call center activities, your business can dictate call support and scheduling, assigning your staff to the area they are best suited for.
The ability to have better control over tasks allowing them to be completed precisely and promptly is appealing to a lot of companies. When you outsource your customer service, it can be inconvenient to trace the quality of work.
Your employees are likely to be more knowledgeable of company values and goals and trained in line with your business strategy than offshore, outsourced customer service agents. Your teams can even customize their services to highlight your business since it is the only company they are dedicated to.
Training
When insourcing customer service, training and managing your staff is much easier, there are fewer challenges to overcome when training an employee in-house, as they are closer to the main offices and are more associated with the brand.
Often, language barriers can make training difficult when outsourcing to an overseas call center; training can take longer, and there may be instances of confusion between parties. Both systems are able to train to the same level of comprehension, but time and quality should be taken into consideration.
Whilst it is easier to train in-house staff, you can still achieve excellent results with outsourcing so long as you find the right company to outsource to. Many of them will provide comprehensive customer service training and highly-experienced employees.
Scalability
One of the important things to note about outsourcing is the room for scalability. Your customer service requirements can often change with the ebbs and flows of your company. Call centers can be hard to manage as your business goes through changes throughout the year, and it can be a struggle to cope with shifting customer demands and changing needs.
Perhaps you are busier during the holiday months, slower the rest of the year, or maybe over Christmas, you experience peak periods. You’ll need a call center that can easily adapt to these changes.
If your company is more stable and doesn’t experience too many changes throughout the year, insourcing your call center may be better. It’s hard to predict how your business might change over time, but if you’re confident that your customer service team won’t become overwhelmed during peak times and want a smaller, close-knit team, this is the way to go.
Customer Service
Insourcing can provide a productive personalized customer service system. However, it can become overwhelming. If you outsource your customer service, it allows you to free up time to focus on your core business. Once your call center is set up and taken care of, it requires less maintenance, and employees are free to work on other areas of the business that need their attention.
Your customer service can be useful by using either an insourced or outsourced center; it just depends on how much time you can put in. Insourcing requires more time and effort because you build your customer support from scratch. It requires more effort to prepare and set up, but a lot of companies prefer this for a more personal touch. Although outsourcing also takes time, the setup is already done for you, so it can be quicker.
These are all differences that should be considered when building a call center for your company. Both are effective at serving different purposes, so researching and understanding your company’s needs is crucial when deciding on which to use.
Efficiency and Productivity
Insourcing makes it easier to keep track of your customer service. Insourcing is efficient and productive, but there is a learning curve. If you’re just starting out and your company doesn’t have much experience with customer support, it can get off to a slow start. If you have the time and resources, as time passes, you’ll notice a positive uptake in performance.
However, when customer service is outsourced, it boosts productivity and drives greater organizational efficiency as you have employees whose sole purpose is to provide exceptional customer support.
Outsourced call centers are highly trained in providing the best customer care with expert organization. As they have experience in this, they have a tried and true system, which means maximum productivity and efficiency.
