Customer Service
How does call centre outsourcing consulting reduce operational costs?
Call centres or contact centres are an integral part of the customer-facing operations of any business, whether streamlining front-office operations, assisting customers, offering technical support, or pursuing sales opportunities. As a result, businesses today no longer consider them a cost centre but a source of strategic advantage.
However, call centre operational cost reduction remains one of the primary goals as businesses try to navigate economic uncertainties and market disruptions. Whether it is through workforce optimisation, technological integration, or call centre outsourcing, businesses are focusing on reducing their call centre operational costs.
Breaking down call centre costs
Before focusing on operational cost reduction, it is crucial to understand the breakdown of call centre costs. Several factors, including labour, technological expenses, and related fees, can add to the cost of running a contact centre. Understanding these can be the first step in optimising contact centre costs.
- Labour costs, including salaries, recruitment and onboarding, training and development, and employee benefits, constitute the biggest expense when running a call centre.
- Technological costs include the digital tools, resources, equipment, and infrastructure necessary for contact centre operations.
- Call utilisation costs are another key contributor to call centre operational costs that depend on the call volume the centre handles, call distribution, type, and hours of operation.
- Management costs include expenses associated with operations and administrative management, workforce management, quality assurance, and more.
- Other miscellaneous fees and costs include the ongoing operational and maintenance costs for the equipment, infrastructure, and facilities.
Operational cost reduction best practices
Understanding the breakdown of your call centre costs and identifying the key areas to focus your efforts and resources on can help you overcome the challenge of cost optimisation in a call centre. Here are some operational cost reduction best practices to help you optimise costs without compromising on service quality and customer satisfaction:
- Have an efficient call routing strategy in place to ensure calls get through to the right agents for resource and workforce optimisation and minimise call utilisation costs.
- Embrace automation solutions to eliminate repetitive tasks and optimise the daily workflows of your agents. Augmenting these automation capabilities with AI or machine learning solutions can help you further optimise resource efficiency and minimise costs.
- Make self-service options available to customers reaching out to your contact centre. This way, customers can answer simpler queries on their own, and you do not have to engage agents for every call.
- Migrate to modern cloud solutions to get the same capabilities as the on-premises systems but with no upfront hardware costs and “pay-as-you-go” pricing models.
- Leverage analytics tools to assess call centre workflows, uncover areas of inefficiencies, and focus on the right KPIs to maximise the utility of the available workforce and save overhead costs.
- Invest in agent training – although it may not bring immediate cost savings, it will impact your operational costs in the long run, helping your call centre be more efficient.
These best practices can help you reduce call centre operational costs. However, managing all these in-house can be a burden on your team in terms of available resources and the need for investment. Outsourcing, on the other hand, can help you reap these benefits and minimise operational costs without compromising customer experience.
How can outsourcing reduce costs?
Working with call centre consulting firms to outsource contact centre operations can help you leverage outsourcing cost benefits. From access to the best resources to the utility of the latest technology, here is how outsourcing can help you reduce costs:
- As you outsource the call centre operations, you do not need to retain a big customer service team to offer round-the-clock support. You can offer quality support even with a small in-house team, and you will need to pay fewer employees.
- An extension of the point above, with call centre outsourcing, you will bear no costs associated with hiring, onboarding, training, or retention. Your outsourcing partner will take care of these expenses, which will lower your operational costs.
- With an outsourced contact centre, you will need less workspace and equipment for support operations. This can help you optimise infrastructure and maintenance costs.
- Call centre consulting firms can help you efficiently scale your customer support operations, depending on business needs. This means you can easily scale your call centre during seasonal rush or scale back in slow times without having to invest in hiring new people or carrying additional equipment inventory.
As a result, you can not only achieve workforce optimisation, allowing your team to focus on revenue-driving activities, but also offer 24/7 support with ease. As a result, you can offer a smoother experience to the customers while curbing churn rates and achieving operational cost reduction.
How can Infosys BPM help optimise call centre operational costs?
Call centre consulting firms have become an integral part of the customer support operations for businesses today. From hiring and training support agents to quality and performance management, call centre outsourcing has become a key strategy for reducing operational costs while maintaining performance efficiency. Infosys BPM contact centre consulting services help businesses assess the maturity of their customer care operations and optimise customer care operations while reducing operational costs for workforce optimisation.
