OUTSOURCING AND OFFSHORING

Outsourcing

There are a number of reasons for transferring the running of the contact centre operations to another organization, such as:

• it allows the client organization to concentrate on its core competencies;
• the outsourcer may have skills the client does not have and therefore can carry out the operations more effectively and more cheaply;
• by separating the contact centre operations from the parent organization the true cost of providing the service is made clear.

Outsourcing an operation does not mean that clients absolve themselves from the operations of the outsourcer. Before transfer there is considerable discussion undertaken and key performance measures and actions are specified in detail. The clients may also influence human resource practices in numerous ways, including determining the skill set used in recruitment, selection and training, for example the direct provision of product training by the client to ensure that advisers strongly identify with the brand.

On occasions advisers may identify more with the client organization than their direct employer, the outsourcer, which may create loyalty issues and also challenges when advisers are transferred to work for other clients. Contact 24, an outsourcer, had to reintroduce its induction programme in order to raise internal identification. This training increased awareness of the Contact 24 vision from 41 to 51 per cent, and knowledge of business objectives from 46 to 52 per cent.

Another challenge for the outsourcer is that the skills possessed by employees are relatively stable but the contracts won and lost may influence the balance between the skills supply and demand. Sometimes transfer between clients is relatively simple because the generic contact centre skills can just be topped up with a few days’ training. On other occasions contracts may be arranged at very short notice and, ‘This can cause problems in matching supply with demand because CSR skills and knowledge can be very client-specific’.

Frequently, the driver for outsourcing is cost and this may have implications for investment in advisers. Outsourcers tend to have the lowest salaries and least training, and more than a quarter report that they have multiple issues regarding skills gaps.

Offshoring

The financial imperative that brought many call centres to low cost, economically deprived areas of Ireland, Wales, Scotland and the North of England may also be a driving force that encourages them to leave. For example, there can be a 20–40 per cent saving on operating costs for those organizations relocating overseas. Indeed, for some organizations offshoring is an operational imperative .

The potential for job displacement is considerable and there have been significant relocations offshore from the United States and the UK. In recognition of these pressures the Tosca D6 Project Symposium concluded that there was a critical need to increase the skills of call centre staff to prevent jobs being relocated outside the European Union. Indeed, CallNorthWest acknowledged that the UK is competing with low-cost nations for call centre business: ‘As a national and regional economy the North West cannot compete on labour costs but where it will need to compete long term is the quality and skills of its workforce.’

To ensure a vibrant and competitive home-based call centre economy requires call centres and the various agencies to work in unison to create a supportive environment. This needs the creation of ‘a supportive world class infrastructure’ allied to customer relationship management.

There is a consistent message being communicated about the importance of education, skills and qualifications. The Department of Trade and Industry emphasized:

Through skills, training, qualifications and advice, contact centres must be helped from focusing purely on call handling, towards the more complete and valuable action of customer contact management. 

The government has a key role to play in promoting further debate and research, influencing and bringing parties together, and providing the right commercial and legislative framework to allow the industry to flourish in the longer term. . . the focus should now be on creating a commercial landscape to allow the industry to develop in the long term, through improving skills, and supporting best practice.

Following an analysis of this increasingly competitive market, Van Zoest argued that:

it is clear that the future of the British call centre industry lies in high value jobs, such as those in sales and maintaining customer relations. Whereas UK call centres cannot compete on low wages, they can compete on quality and skills. If the industry wants to keep its competitive advantage in the long run, call centres will have to invest in skills, training and qualifications, thus creating opportunities for personal growth, more value-added positions and be er service to customers.