Like many of you, I have enjoyed many a great meal at a hotel restaurant – and I doubt that the majority of these tremendous experiences have been at a hotel that doesn’t outsource its food-and-beverage operations. For many hospitality organizations, as outlined in this article, outsourcing offers a multitude of benefits. This model allows you to better meet customer expectations, while not expending resources and capital to train, recruit and retain employees.
The same holds true for contact center operations. I’m frequently asked for a comparison of how partnering with an organization like VXI Global Solutions compares to having in-house operations. I often find that when performing a “like for like” comparison, clients I’ve worked with often miss the ‘hidden costs’ associated with running their own operation.
First, consider what’s included in your agent hourly rate:
- Managers/supervisors
- Quality assurance
- Infrastructure (e.g., workstations, IT support, telephony, facilities)
- HR support (e.g., recruiting, payroll, benefits management)
When all things are considered, outsourcing can cost 50% less than captive. And these findings often do not take into account two other important considerations that you should factor into the equation:
Staff churn: One of the biggest costs not considered is staff turnover. Finding, training and then retaining qualified staff has an enormous impact on the bottom line, and correspondingly, on service quality. Contact center turnover is at an all-time high. According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, these employees are generally between the ages of 20-24, and stay with an organization only 1.1 years on average.
Channel migration: Deloitte’s latest contact center survey predicts that while customers contacts will remain steady (or even increase), the mix of channels and complexity of customer needs will increase.
To adapt to this increasingly complex landscape while providing stellar service, you’ll need tools and processes in place to make interactions significantly more seamless and less complex.
For more than 20 years, VXI has been a BPO leader – with more than 30,000 people across 42 locations worldwide, we are confident that we can save you substantial cost through outsourcing, relative to your captive option. We also have an inhouse IT and R&D development arm, Symbio, that creates the technology to further fuel your success.
I welcome any questions you might have about how VXI can help you achieve maximum results from your customer experience investments.
