Businesses across the spectrum have now been looking for ways to move beyond the average customer service, but at a lower cost. They have been trying to rope in experts to meet these lofty aims because of which call center outsourcing is getting bigger by the day.
While businesses and prospects are hitting the mark in customer service outsourcing with customer relationship management (CRM) at their disposal, they now want to reduce costs and provide better services in a recessive economy. This might appear to be paradoxical but can be made possible by employing outsourcing services. These services give prime importance to the prospects by delivering problem resolutions and new offers in accordance to their consumer preferences.
Outsourcing attains new dimensions in 2009
The call center industry is all about efficiently handling specialized customer service duties. The segment would be non existent if companies could do this task themselves. But as operating margins continue to dwindle it is worthwhile for them to allocate this responsibility to expert vendors. Certain call center outsourcing trends that one can look out for in the year 2009 are:
Nearshoring or nearshore outsourcing: Businesses would be more disposed to partner with call centers in Eastern Europe to reap the advantages of proximity and low cost.
Short term projects or contracts: Arrangements or partnerships on a contractual or short term basis would become more prevalent this year.
Increase in specialized call centers: Specialization will rule the roost with call centers gaining expertise in specific segments of the industry.
Increased competition: Emphasis would be on providing better quality services at competitive prices. Service costs will fall.
Customer service outsourcing is largely dependent on CRM
Customer relationship management refers to methods that companies use to interact with customers wherein they accumulate consumer data from various touch points and use it to shape customer interactions and track customer information. While CRM is only a decade old system, it goes way ahead of the traditional selling models if implemented strategically to profile the target market. It can also help tracking and attend to problems in the pipeline before they get escalated.
Companies considering call center outsourcing should keep certain CRM directions in mind, namely, getting the customers to furnish new ideas, make the data collection process automatic at every turn and utilizing social networking outlets to provide rich content. The CRM should help interaction with customers reach a very personal level, ensuring higher customer satisfaction.
Let the statistics prove the benefits
Sometimes, numbers speak louder than words as in the case of statistics on the advantages of outsourcing. The return on investment (ROI) has to be taken into consideration when it comes to mapping the performance of the industry in general. A survey by Hewitt Associates undertaken in 2009 furnishes enough reasons, in terms of benefits, for companies to go in for customer service outsourcing
* Beneficial results: 82 percent of the companies surveyed declared that outsourcing has been perceptibly beneficial to them
* Met cost cutting objectives: 62 percent of the businesses who hired call centers to cut costs ended up meeting their financial objectives
* Higher disposition to outsourcing: 34 of respondents said they were now much more inclined to hire outsourced services that they were only a couple of years ago
To conclude, the coming together of call center outsourcing and CRM may take the relationship between businesses and consumers to an altogether new level. This partnership, in turn, might prove to be just the right potion to help your company race ahead of the competition in this slow economy.
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