Call Centers have been an integral part to any companies operations for a while now. The increasing industrial competition has resulted in companies using new and optimized method to provide more and more convenience to their customer base. One of the biggest tools to increase customer experience is to provide them the top quality call center services. These services have long been the best way to serve the customers and make them aware of their importance for the company. The call centers have long been used to facilitate different needs of the customer. They've also eased out the conversation process between the customer and the company.
The call centers today are widely performed in two different fashions. One is to perform the services in house and the other is to outsource the process. When the call center process is outsourced, it helps in optimization of cost as well as releases the burden of performing these services from the company. But some of the companies who want to be accountable for each and every service they provide, choose to perform these services in house. Although in house performance of call center services provides you an opportunity to control the performance of these services and be responsible for the growth of your company, they also come with some challenges that prove to be hazardous for the company. Here are a few challenges that the in-house call centers might face in the fiscal year 2018-19:
1. Infrastructure cost overhead
A call center requires specialized infrastructure for optimum performance. The companies that choose to outsource these services do not have to worry about the infrastructure cost as the infrastructure is already present with the outsourcing service provider. But for a company performing in house call center operations, cost of infrastructure is a major culprit in sucking away the resources of a company. The infrastructure is one of the aspects that cannot be ignored and thus a lot of pressure is put on the call center because they have to compensate this overhead with their performance. Although the first time investment in the infrastructure is quite high, the maintenance of the infrastructure does not consume that much a cost. Thus a company looking to perform in-house call center services must ensure that its performance is good enough to compensate this overhead cost.
2. Lack of skilled workforce
Earlier considered to be a trivial task that does not require any skills or experience, call center services have come a long way. Today they are one of the most specialized tasks that require specialized work environment with skillful and experienced workforce.The competition in this domain is so high that it is nearly impossible to hire the quantity of skilled workforce that the company requires and thus the cost of hiring a skilled workforce increases exponentially with the demand of more agents. The company must look to optimize their hiring process so that the cost of hiring is minimized and does not put too much excess pressure on the resources available with the company.
3. Time taken for synchronization of workforce
Every workforce in order to operate with dexterity needs to be synchronized. This synchronization comes with time. Thus the company needs to be patient enough to let the poor performance during this period pass. Any changes in the workforce triggers the synchronization process once again. The fragility of workforce in this domain is very high. This is due to a high number of options available for the workforce in the market. This is one of the biggest problems that an in house call center faces. The call center needs to take care of the employee satisfaction. This will help them evade this process or at least minimize the effects of the process. The company needs to ensure that its call center employees are satisfied and are not willing to leave the company in order to explore better options in the industry.
4. Training Cost of the workforce
Even when after a lot of efforts a company is able to hire a skilled and experience workforce, their skills are required to be molded and honed to extract a performance that matches their potential. The workforce is trained for the specific tasks they perform. They are conditioned to face the challenges that might emerge during the operation of their tasks. This requires a lot of time as well as increases the overhead cost of the operations. The company must make sure to invest only in honing the skills of the workforce that they think will help them extract the best out of their workforce and stay away from spending any extra resources on the training process.
5. IT assistance cost
The world has witnessed an IT revolution in the past few decades.Today, IT services touch every domain of the industry. IT services reduce human effort and perform repetitive tasks with high speed. The competition has reached such a level that every company requires to utilize the state of the art IT technology. This helps them enhance their performance and stay relevant in the industry.
Call center services are no different. IT services specifically customized to cater to call center services are present all across the industry. The world has seen a major change in the way IT has transformed the industry. It is looking good to further revolutionize the industry with their services. These services enforce more overhead cost on the company. But they are also very useful in compensating all the other overhead costs if performed properly. Thus a company must wisely utilize IT services in order to create a difference and compensate all the other overhead costs.
6. Cost of failures
When a company chooses to outsource call center services, they have to pay just for the successful results. Thus they don’t have to worry about the failures that occur during the operation of the services. But when a company chooses to perform these services in-house, the failures also cost the company a good percentage of the resources expended on the operation. This cost proves to be hazardous for the company. They do not yield any return and just suck up the resources. This leaves the company with very little to play with for other operations of the company. Thus a company must ensure that the failure rate of its operations is minimum.
Conclusion
An in-house call center provides a company with the ability to have complete control over its call center services. But the challenges faced by an in-house call center manifold which motivates most of the companies to outsource these services. If a company wants to have complete control over its call center, they can opt for an in-house call center. But they must be very sure to optimize each and every task. They must push to be more efficient in order to compensate the overhead cost and generate great profits for itself.
