In-House versus Outsourcing
When seeking innovation in IT technologies and services, companies will often have to make a decision as to whether or not they would like to outsource or hire new professionals in-house. As outsourcing becomes more and more common, many American employees fear that all domestic jobs will be lost to offshore companies. However, these fears are usually unfounded; as with any other foreign business arrangement, there will always be a need for talented American employees who can facilitate and oversee these offshore contracts.
Furthermore, while outsourcing can be an excellent way to accomplish much while paying relatively little, there will still always be jobs that cannot be outsourced, thus requiring companies to hire in-house employees. Here are some key points concerning when work should be outsourced, versus when it can be accomplished in-house.
- Custom Web Development – Whether or not IT and web services should be outsourced is a sticky subject in the business world. However, the bottom line is that offshore web development firms can provide superior work for low rates. Furthermore, frequent issues like project time, quality, and innovation are virtual non-issues when outsourcing offshore: Not only do these offshore companies provide stellar finished products, but they can also do so with a lightening-fast turn-around time.
- Productivity – Productivity is always key: Any company wants to ensure that it is maximizing its output without pouring money into new endeavors. Offshore outsourcing enables productivity quite efficiently, allowing companies to develop new services (such as a website or online presence) very quickly and very cheaply. This productivity allows your company to prosper and expand, which ultimately leads to a need for new talent in-house. Thus, it is not accurate to assert that outsourcing is the reason for wide job loss; in actuality, outsourcing can lead to more jobs for domestic workers.
- Financial Incentive – Outsourcing work offshore enables companies to save money, since offshore work costs significantly less than work done by domestic competitors. Thus, this enables companies to be able to pay their in-house talent even more, and spares funds to hire new in-house professionals down the line.
Ultimately, it is important to look at outsourcing as a way for companies to save money, which can later lead to new jobs in-house. Offshore outsourcing is often immediately viewed as the enemy; in reality, offshore outsourcing can enable companies to achieve more while spending less, which is beneficial to their in-house staff.
Source: Earth Times
TAGS:
CATEGORY: Global News, Outsourcing News
In-house or outsourcing?
Competition and a demanding customer are the reasons customer service must be taken extremely seriously. If you are not able to provide customers with efficient and professional customer service, they might turn to your competitors. How should one act – run an in-house customer service center or outsource it? If one wishes to avoid the problems that come with running an in-house call center, then it is wiser to outsource that service.
Why not outsource it to professionals – a high standard customer service with lower costs and at the flexibility to expand or reduce activity according to the demands and necessities of the company (e.g. holidays or campaign periods).
In order to understand the benefits of outsourced customer service, one should understand the basis of success – people, processes and technology. The skillful integration of these three elements will lead to success. Customer support can make or break your reputation in the market.
Recruiting, training and management
When managing an in-house call center, a company has to recruit people with customer service experience, knowledge and skills and provide them with additional training to about the products and processes of the company.
After the company has successfully gotten customer service up and running, it still has to keep the service running daily and deal with management headaches. That in turn prevents companies from concentrating on their core business because a lot of valuable time would be dedicated to running the call center.
When you outsource the service, your co-partner will be responsible for recruiting and training the new hires. Thus, there will be no expenses that come with recruiting and training. You will need to keep in touch with all the necessary changes, therefore, all additional training which is not directly related to the products and processes of the company that outsource the service will be taken care of by your co-partner.
Even 24/7 customer service
Outsourcing customer service enables
you to provide 24/7 customer service to your customers without any problems. That means you would be available to your customers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 24/7 customer service is unavoidable when your customers are in different time-zones. 24/7 customer service makes the customers trust the company whose products and services they use. It also helps better determine the customers’ needs.
Up-sell/cross-sell opportunities and CRM
Sales calls during lunch breaks might be history for you. Sales calls are by nature
intrusive, disturbing and may damage a strong customer relationship. When performing a sale through an inbound call, it enables increasing the company’s revenue remarkably. Generally, many companies do not use the possibility of selling during an inbound call.
Professional customer service agents with experience can skillfully prevent a customer cancellation of usage of services by offering additional benefits or products that better fit his or her needs. Professional service also enables making constant surveys of the customers’ needs and their satisfaction level, in order to take customers’ needs and the changes of those needs into consideration. This also helps predict those changes, allowing your company to be one step ahead of your competitors.
Service from professionals
When a newly started company creates its own in-house call center, it may not have the full picture of how complicated this could turn out to be – gaining experience and providing services in which the company is basically a beginner.
In other words, if you make the decision to outsource the call center service to professionals, you can be sure that you get a high quality service.
A company that is specialized in providing customer service will guarantee it through its extensive experience and the knowledge to appropriately handle different situations that may come up when communicating with customers.
Focusing on core business
The decision to outsource customer service to professionals enables you to concentrate on your company’s core business. You have the possibility to put all your energy, time and financial resources in developing your company’s core business. At the same time, your co-partner in customer services has taken the obligation of dealing with the customers (by telephone, e-mail, fax and mail) on its shoulders.
Investments in infrastructure
An in-house call center will also demand expenses on information-technology solutions – data communication solutions, software and hardware. That is not at all a small investment considering maintenance costs and periodical updates. All that technology needs trained personnel in order to keep it up and running without failures. Outsourcing will enable you to save money on these expenses as well. You would also have to provide customer service agents with enough working rooms, light and the necessary ventilation and air-conditioning.
Arvato services Estonia OЬ
Arvato services, a subsidiary of arvato AGAG, is the leading service provider for every aspect of effective solutions in the fields of Customer Communication, Supply Chain Management and Financial Services in European and non-European markets. Aarvato services offers one-stop shopping concepts to its customers for CRM-/SCM-Consulting, Customer Loyalty, Data Management, E-Commerce, Lettershop, Customer Service, Logistics and Finance, and is supported by IT-solutions. More than 35,000 arvato services employees serve the customers of their customers worldwide.
Arvato services Estonia OЬ has been on the Estonian market since January 2006. Our company has 298 employees at the moment. International telecommunications and IT companies – and one of the leading airline companies of Asia – have trusted us with communicating with their customers.
We offer international customer service from Tallinn to all EU countries and Russia in numerous languages – Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Mandarin Chinese, Italian, English, Russian, French, German and the Scandinavian languages.
Arvato services has international customer service experience and CRM know-how. Our managers are experienced and have long-term practice in the sphere of customer service. We follow the international COPC Service and Quality Standard, which has been specifically worked out for call centers and guarantees high-quality customer service while keeping costs low.
Source: BALTIC NEWS LTD
TAGS:
CATEGORY: Baltic States, Outsourcing News
