In Part 1, we discussed Buyers working on outsourcing the call centers of their own companies. This post is about Buyers' approaches to vendor's outsourcing their call centers.
Public relations issues aside, the ultimate questions in call center outsourcing are about cost and quality of the service. I don't know any buyers who prefer a vendor's call center to be outsourced as opposed to a vendor handling the customer service internally.
In fact, I have even been involved in situations in which we were worried about customer service no longer being handled out of our local vendor office and just being transferred to another one of the vendor's call centers in a different area of the country.
A Buyer's main concern is that the quality is high and consistent. There is a degree of control lost when a third party is involved. Should any issues arise, Buyers want to hold the vendor responsible and be able to demand immediate resolutions. A third party would complicate matters.
Another concern during an RFP search is whether the vendor uses or plans to use an overseas call center. If a company doesn't feel that practice would be a good fit for them, the Buyers need to put that into the RFP (and eventually the contract). They also need to ask the right questions up front during the initial vendor search phase.
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