Outsource vs. In-House Call Centers: How to Choose the Right Option for Your Business

In the contemporary cut-throat business competition, having a call center gives a competitive advantage. Whether in-house or outsourced, telecom empowers driven business owners and plays a centric role in generating leads, handling clients, promoting business, and fostering loyalty.

One can evaluate the significance of call centers in business engagements by the fact that the global contact center market size amounted to almost 340 billion USD in 2020.

The industry is forecasted to grow steadily and reach a value of 496 billion USD by 2027. But keeping an in-house call center is not a one-size-fits-all proposition.

So the question arises among call center outsourcing and in-house call centers – what one should choose to ensure higher business engagement?

Read between the lines to get a complete overview of in-house and outsourced call centers and find out what best fits different business organizations!

When to Opt for an Outsourced Call Center?

As technology is changing call center operations, each option comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Talking about outsourced call centers, the ultimate advantage of call center outsourcing is that it helps your company scale up and down services without the need for any dedicated team. Outsourcing a call center makes more sense when you don’t have enough call volume to engage an entire calling team.

When the call volume is low, creating a dedicated or hiring a full-time employee cannot justify the cost of setting up a team.

Furthermore, outsourcing call centers proves to be a smart choice when you are looking forward to growing your business and want to focus on other aspects of customer experience.

Outsourcing call centers can be a major helping hand for upscaling business without investing in expensive infrastructure or full-time staff.

It makes more sense to go for call center outsourcing when your customer queries are centered around a few aspects like the delivery status of a product or its return and exchange policy. Additionally, call center outsourcing helps you cut on some extra expenses when you have limited employees and resources.

The biggest perk of outbound call centers is that they can help you deal with customers from multiple languages or countries for that matter. The best part of outsourcing call center services is that you can adapt your business models depending on seasonal trends without investing a lot of money.

Besides that, you must also check out how AI powered call centers works and what are its benefits.

Pros and Cons of Outsourced Call Center

Let’s examine the pros and cons of call center outsourcing!

Pros

Outsourcing call center services can lead to cost reduction as they are cheaper and can help you save a lot of money in resources and paying full-time call agents.
Outsourcing providers have a pool of experienced staff. So the outsourced call agents are well-equipped with comprehensive customer service training.
A call center is relatively different, and your company may lack the competency to manage one. However, outsourcing providers have well-managed staff and resources to boost productivity.
Call center outsourcing implies risk mitigation, which provides some sense of relief and the outsourcer shares the risk with you.
Upgrading and downgrading are problematic in in-house call centers as they require a lot of money and resources. However, an outsourcer provides scalability, which makes upscaling or downscaling relatively flexible.

Cons

The majority of outsourced call centers have inherently poor customer service because they are not extensively trained as compared to an in-house call center team.
Outsourced call agents have inadequate brand awareness because they are not familiar with your products.
Outsourcing call center services can compromise data sensitivity as you have to disclose some critical information to equip the calling agents with relevant information, which puts your business at threat of data theft.
Outsourcing call centers leads to a lack of control because you need to relinquish some control over the quality of customer interactions. While you can set service-level agreements (SLAs), you may not have direct oversight of day-to-day operations.

When to Go for In-House Call Center?

Call centers are indeed the front end of any company as they establish direct communication with the customers. If you have a vast team and bulk of call volumes, an inbound call center can work best to deal with the call requests.

An in-house call center is a better fit when there are dozens of products and the customer call requests are on a wide array of subjects.

The inbound call centers become important when your company has a lot of single calls that take a long time to resolve. For instance, if you are selling a product, it’s better to have a dedicated in-house call center because you will be getting multiple calls regarding technical issues.

The biggest reason to opt for an inbound call center is that it helps you get useful insights about customer behavior, calling, and resolution patterns.

You can understand your audience in a better way with an in-house call center and depending on the calls you receive you can upgrade your customer service.

Overall, call analytics can become an important tool in shaping your product features and optimizing business resources.

Pros and Cons of an In-House Call Center

Here’s a quick sneak peek into the advantages and limitations of an in-house call center to help you determine its efficiency!

Pros

In an inbound call center, the call agents are part of your team with a better understanding of your products, which ultimately promotes customer experience.
It prevents leaking critical information. In-house call agents uphold business secrecy according to your call center security standards as the information revolves within your business.
You can upgrade your services depending on customer feedback and give a personal touch to each client to maximize attention.
Support quick and easy implementation of policy changes.
Helps you get long-term insights into customer behavior and needs, which helps in increasing customer engagement.
Gives easy access to resources and data due to the integration of the call center with the organization’s resources.

Cons

Setting up an in-house call center can be expensive, and you’ll be required to invest in costly infrastructure.
If you establish an in-house call center, your IT workers will need management and training.
In-house call centers can lead to unavailability if your business does not operate 24×7.
Remember that the coverage gap due to unavailability is inevitable.
Requires additional elements like human resources, time, and budgeting.

Final Face-Off – How to Choose the Right Option?

Various factors like cost, control, scalability, and cultural alignment control the choice between outsourcing and maintaining an in-house call center.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer, and the right choice for your business may change over time as your business grows and your needs evolve.

For the time being, if you have a start-up or small business, it’s best to choose the outsourcing call center. However, in-house call centers are the best to meet the needs of a big company with a vast array of products.

The final decision to opt between the two should be made considering the business goals and the level of customer service you aim to provide.

John M. Flood

John is a crypto enthusiast, Fintech writer, and stock trader. His writings provide guides to perform your best in the crypto world and stock planet. He is a B-Tech graduate from Stanford University and also holds a certification in creative writing. John also has 5 years of experience in exploring and understanding better about the FinTech industry. Over time, he gained experience and expertise by implementing his customized strategies to play in the crypto market.

Outsource vs. In-House Call Centers: How to Choose the Right Option for Your Business?

When to Opt for an Outsourced Call Center?

Pros and Cons of Outsourced Call Center

When to Go for In-House Call Center?

Pros and Cons of an In-House Call Center

Final Face-Off – How to Choose the Right Option?