Call Center Outsourcing in Crisis
Over the years, outsourcing call centers to overseas locations was an acceptable alternative to many businesses in the US. Today, around 40% of the call center agents are based in India and Philippines to serve US businesses. However, the recent office closures and lockdowns due to pandemic is causing a big challenge for the overseas call center model.
Outsourcing a call center to overseas locations like India and Philippines has its own challenges as well. Due to lockdown, overseas call centers need to operate remotely as well and the infrastructure for remote working is not available. Home Internet broadband is not reliable for audio calls and there are frequent power outages. More importantly, many call center agents in those countries do not have a dedicated laptop or a PC to take home. Same office PC is used by three shifts in one day.
I used to travel to India regularly to audit call centers in different cities back in 2007–2011. Infrastructure is one of the challenges for the service and being office-based is very important for the high quality Internet and minimising the effects of the power outages.
Working from home is not a viable option for Overseas Call Centers
Due to the pandemic, there are lockdowns or reduced services in many offices worldwide. However, working from home does not deliver the same results in those countries. Audio quality is not in acceptable levels, there are more Internet and power outages for home broadband users. More importantly, not all the call center agents have broadband, a dedicated laptop or a PC to take home. These call center services are in the volume business and the same PC terminal is being used in three different shifts. Finally, providing IT support to those PC users remotely is a big hurdle. This is a massive risk to the businesses who rely on the overseas outsource call centers for their operations. So, what is the alternative?
Utilise Local Talent in Shared Call Center Model
The solution is to utilise local talent in the US as Remote Modular Workforce. Businesses only pay for the number of minutes they utilised the freelance call center agent and agents can support multiple businesses. AI-based tools will be used not to replace the agents, but to train them easily for multiple skills and provide insights during the active call. The issue with the traditional inbound call center model is that the service is overstaffed to compensate the variations in customer call volumes. Inbound call centers can operate only up to 60% staff occupancy to achieve good service levels. Remote Modular Workforce eliminates this problem; if there is no call for one business or a skill, agent can handle calls from other skills she is qualified.
In NoTime, you can easily start outsourcing to your customer service to local and overseas talent, blend resources for your budget and working hours.
NoTime is the service that offers such platform. It helps businesses and freelance call center agents to meet and work together through its global cloud call center infrastructure. Businesses pay per minute and agents can get trained and support multiple businesses. NoTime globall call center is part of the service along with the telecom costs, call center dashboards, reporting and analytics tools. This model solves the traditional call center efficiency dilemma; Today dedicated call centers work with 50–60% efficiency. Since businesses don’t know how many calls they will get, call centers are over-staffed and cost more to the business. NoTime’s Remote Modular Workforce platform is the way forward to do business in an efficient way. It fits into customer service needs of any business regardless of their size or call volumes.
Work with Verified Overseas Freelance Customer Experts
In NoTime platform, you will also find the overseas talent for your needs. You can blend local and overseas talent to minimise your spending and to cover the out of hours. NoTime overseas talent is tested regularly for their Internet performance also they have the recorded audio samples so you can listen and verify their conversational skills.
You can learn more about how Remote Modular Workforce can be utilised for your business using the links below;
- Why Remote Modular Workforce?
- Benefits of Shared Call Center
- Getting Started in NoTime
- NoTime Infrastructure
- E-Learning
- Reporting and Analytics
- Free CRM and Ticketing
- Data Privacy and Quality Assurance
You can also learn more about how some industries utilise this new model from the links below;
NoTime helps businesses to scale easily and offer stellar customer service for better growth and retention; if you have any questions or suggestions please contact us!
