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A Quick Guide to Comparing Call Center Costs
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If you're already running an in-house call center, you know that managing multifaceted ratios and contact volume is a delicate balance. Keeping your program cost-effective while consistently delivering a service experience that meets your customers’ expectations is complex. If you’ve been tasked with investigating the cost of outsourcing, the math becomes even more complicated.
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Comparing in-house and outsourced solutions means you need to break down the numbers in a way that gives you a true apples-to-apples comparison. Let’s take a look at the top five factors you should be considering.
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Productive vs. Non-Productive Agent Time1
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When you staff and train an in-house team, you’re paying for every minute of the time they’re at work, whether they are actively engaged in work or not. In addition to handling calls, emails, or chats, an agent’s day can include:• Breaks• Coaching activities• Time spent in “ready” waiting
during lulls in arrival patterns. Each minute affects your bottom line.
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In sharp contrast, with an outsourced contact center transactional solution, you only pay for productive agent time – not for breaks, waiting, or other times when the agent is not engaged in your work.Typically, you can estimate an 85% productivity rate with a call center partner. So calculate 100% of your agent’s work hour for an in-house team, and cut those hourly costs by about 15% for an outsourced team.
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Program Management2.
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Staffing an in-house call center means you have to staff for front line supervisors or coaches as well as program managers for the team. In doing so, you’ve just added yet another line to your call center budget.
In contrast, when you outsource your call center, program management costs (including those frontline supervisors) should be loaded in the agent rate. When you’re comparing and contrasting, make sure you have a clear view of what your outsourced per minute or head count rate does include.
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Business Analytics & Reporting3.
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You need more than metrics. You need reporting that informs your decisions and illuminates trends and issues. So you’ve got a few more budget lines for your in-house call center here: reporting technology & tools and information services personnel.
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On the other hand, when you consider outsourcing your call center, you’ll receive the advantage of this specialized expertise without the burden of head count. And that expertise is allocated in exactly the right proportion to your needs in contrast to an in-house solution where you’ll bear 100% of the cost.
In addition, responsibility for staying current with tools and technology falls to your outsourced partner. So the days of having to justify that upgrade or new license to your CFO are over in an outsourced scenario.
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HR: The People Piece4.
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When considering your in-house call center overhead costs, don’t forget the foundational expense of recruiting, payroll and taxes, and benefits management. Additionally, these costs can fluctuate depending on your turnover rate. And of course, the HR staff themselves need to be factored into your calculations.
As with all the above factors, HR expenses are by default included in your outsourced per minute or fixed rate.
And don’t forget, in an outsourced situation, your partner is assuming 100% of the risk associated with HR functions and outcomes.
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Other Factors5.
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With an outsourced solution, a good partner should also provide these additional benefits to your bottom line:• Best in-class call center technology • Workforce management expertise and
systems that contribute to efficiency while delivering on KPIs especially in complex staffing/unpredictable volume scenarios
• Shared pool options for lower volume hours of operation
• Risk mitigation in the management of both human and technology resources
