Although offering a call answering service is an essential part of any business, managing it can be a costly undertaking that can cause a notable dent in the sales revenue. It is estimated that call center services can eat up to 3% of the sales a company makes. For a growing business, or any other business for that matter, this cost can be reduced by outsourcing call center services to another business. But besides the cost benefits, outsourcing these services can help your business in other ways as well; here is a look at some of them.
1. Scalability
For most companies, there is a greater demand for call center services during the peak seasons. So, it does not make much sense to make capital investments in order to handle such demands when the resources will go unused for the rest of the year. However, with outsourced telephone answering services, the company can spend only as much as it needs on these services and nothing more; regardless of how much it needs them. At www.connect-communications.co.uk, both large and small businesses can get affordable on-demand telephone services as well as other incidental services like diary management and call overflow services.
2. Better Focus on Core Competencies
A call center can prove to be more demanding than most businesses expect, and this can reduce the amount of focus the business should have on other business services. So, instead of putting so much of their time into managing the staff and resources necessary to run a great telephone answering service, these companies can outsource these services and focus on operations such as product development and marketing.
3. Around-the-Clock Support
Some customers will usually need assistance outside your normal business hours. For most businesses, in-house telephone answering services become unavailable at the end of the business day. Therefore, customers who want these services in order to get important information might turn to rival businesses when they do not get a response to their calls. This is a problem that can be avoided by using outsourced call center services; a human can answer client requests at all times of the day regardless of the hour.
4. Lower Costs Per Call
Generally speaking, the cost per call when using an outsourced telephone service is much lower than the cost of handling that call internally. The costs are so much higher for companies that have to set up these services from scratch, as they have to recruit staff and use money to purchase the infrastructure they need to set up an internal telephone answering service.
Retaining good call support staff also takes some financial effort. Although the internal telephone answering services might seem financially viable during the peak seasons, the costs of running them might not fall by much during the off-peak seasons. Therefore, on average, the costs of in-house call center services tend to be much higher in comparison to outsourced services. This is why it makes sense to use an outsourced company. Many businesses fail to factor in all the costs involved in running it in-house and instead focus on the reduced labor costs of hiring the necessary staff. However, the resources necessary to keep such an operation going is also important, as well as the costs necessary to maintain and manage it.
5. No Capital Investment
In order to have a great telephone answering service, businesses need to buy the very best technologies. Otherwise, the services it will offer will be less than ideal, and it could cost them a lot of business. There have to be systems that can handle chats, scheduling, monitoring, VoIP, and sometimes even video calls among other services.
Not all companies will require these technologies, but for those that do, getting the very best of them is key, as well as having a staff that can use them properly. This can represent quite a cost investment; and this could prove quite expensive. For small businesses that have to make compromises to purchase these systems, paying for telephone outsourcing services would make greater sense financially since the money could go towards ensuring that other important business operations are well funded for enhanced revenue collection benefits.
Certain businesses may have ill feelings towards outsourced telephone answering services, or think that they can save money by investing in their own call center operations. But the reality on the ground is quite different. These services can be very expensive. Additionally, running an efficient call center requires great staff and expensive technologies that most businesses would rather avoid and instead pay for an outsourced company to do the task.
