Today, outsourcing is almost a natural part of doing business in Australia. Although outsourcing has been around for a long time, even though it was renamed, it has only become commonplace in recent decades. Companies now entrust specialized third-party vendors with functions that were once considered inseparable from their core. One of the most common manifestations of the practice is call center outsourcing, where a third party takes on the critical role of things like customer service and processing, often becoming the front line of a business.

“There are several factors behind the rise of outsourcing. But a primary driver for many companies is the need to meet the competitive demands of customers for lower prices and better service, while meeting a company’s need to make a profit. Call center outsourcing is a solution that, if done right, can do both,” said Ralf Ellspermann, CEO of PITON-Globalan award-winning call center outsourcing provider.

“A good contact center partner should easily exceed the level of service achieved by an in-house team, as the focus is on customer service,” says Ellspermann. This means that every part of their contact center operations is set up to achieve this goal. Call center outsourcing is usually delivered from custom facilities, ensuring not only a good working environment for the staff, but also with the vital infrastructure.

Call centers also have better staff. Due to their specialization and size, most call centers are several times larger than internal teams and can attract the best people. They can also provide better training and development so that call center outsourcing is staffed with experienced, high quality personnel. And the size also means they can be flexible to customer needs. “Contact centers can typically scale faster and handle peaks in demand more easily than an in-house team,” says Ellspermann.

Surprisingly, this improved service has a lower cost. The savings start at approximately 10-15% lower than internal costs when using an onshore provider with the same specification as internal standards. These savings come from the benefits of call center outsourcing providers operating at scale. The cost of buildings and facilities can be shared between customers, support services such as HR and finance tend to be leaner as they focus on one area, and the scale means they can often use their resources more efficiently, for example by using chairs at night to serve global clients instead of leaving desks empty outside office hours.

A final benefit that many companies may not expect from call center outsourcing is that they gain additional capacity because they no longer directly manage a support service. With customer service delivered through call center outsourcing, organizational leadership and support can be more intensely focused on the core product. Simply put, they become better companies because their resources are focused on what sets them apart.

Savings is the main attraction of outsourcing for many companies. And the savings can be high, choosing an offshore option – destinations like the Philippines are popular with Australian companies, with a convenient time zone and large call center outsourcing sector, powered by the exceptional English language skills of Filipinos – can be as much as 40-50 cost % less than an in-house operation. “However, if you look purely at the savings, you miss out on the other benefits that call center outsourcing can bring. As many companies can attest, savings, improved operational efficiencies, improved customer experience and extra focus it provides make outsourcing a great decision,” says Ellspermann.