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Blog > The Disadvantages of Call Center Outsourcing
Posted on Oct 14, 2010 08:57:10 AM
In recent times, there has been an increasing trend towards call center outsourcing to foreign countries. Many businesses have chosen this option to lower their overheads and staffing costs. These call centers often provide crucial services for businesses, such as technological troubleshooting, customer services and sales. While it always pays to reduce costs, there are certain disadvantages that one should be aware of before making the decision to outsource.
Call Center Outsourcing: Disadvantages
Here are some of the disadvantages of call center outsourcing services:
- Language Issues: If the customer base is mainly English speaking, and the call center operations are outsourced to other countries, customers tend to become frustrated when their queries are not answered in fluent English or if the call center employees speak in an accent that is difficult to understand.
- Less Control over Operations: When you move your call center operations to some other country, you are putting these operations farther from your home base. This tends to put you in lesser control of these crucial operations, however cheap they may be. The efficiency of your operations and service standards becomes dependent upon the vendor company.
- Confidentiality Issues: If your company deals with sensitive and confidential information, outsourcing these services may increase the risk of breach in confidentiality. You must ensure that the operating processes of the vendor company are secure enough to eliminate this risk as it can have very far reaching effects on your company’s credibility.
- Elimination of Jobs: When companies outsource these call center operations to foreign countries because of cheaper services, they usually need to eliminate jobs of existing employees. Though the company might be saving on labor costs, it puts the livelihood of long term employees in jeopardy. More importantly, the elimination of jobs can harm the company’s public relations in its home country.
