Contact Centre

Deciding on whether to outsource your customer service needs to a contact centre in the UK or moving it offshore is the perennial question that many a company has to answer. A UK company that is seeking to use customer service outsourcing must weigh the positive benefits and the negative repercussions of using an inbound call centre located offshore.

There are a lot of advantages to using a contact centre in the UK.  If your company wants to roll out a new product or upgrade an existing one, then using a UK contact centre will be an asset. A UK contact centre will have a great wealth of experience and large pool of talent to draw on. They will be able to help your company target new clients as well as rejuvenate prior ones.

As well, you will not have to fear having your intellectual property stolen or compromised. Companies in Asia have gained a reputation for not fully complying with international copyright laws and intellectual property trademarks. This can hurt a company that has spent a lot of time, money and intellectual resources developing a product. A company needs to feel secure that its intellectual property rights are not being infringed upon and that the contact centre they have hired is respecting them. Much of the data that an inbound call centre is privy to is very confidential; it contains market information as well strategic plans and technological data.

The other advantage of using a UK contact centre is location. Having a contact centre located within the UK means that you will not have to travel for long periods and long distances to meet with your inbound call centre representatives. The convenience of taking a short flight in the UK as opposed to taking a lengthy flight to Asia, will not only save you time but money.

Although in today’s world, we can have meetings by phone, email, and video conferencing, there is the issue of differing time zones. Due to time difference between Asia and the United Kingdom, one will invariably have to conduct meetings with the contact centre counterparts very early in the morning. This can prove to be highly inconvenient and a not very efficient way to carry out meetings with the inbound call centre.

The issue of language barriers will also have to be weighed. While the English language is used for business in Asia, one will have to take into account that not all English is spoken the same way. An accent in India will vary entirely from than of an accent in Coventry. An inbound call centre staffed with Asians may not be able to understand local dialect and quirky phrases that are indicative of the region the customer is calling from.

While salary costs are cheaper for an Asian based contact centre agent, one has to balance it out with all the other issues that were initially raised. When evaluated on the basis of overall costs, labour costs are but one factor, one has to measure the overall return on investment.

When deciding whether to have your customer service outsourcing onshore or offshore, let us help you make the right choice. Fill out our form and you will receive up to five quotes for contact centre that will help your business grow.