The growth of a company is directly related to the growth in its portfolio of active or recurring clients as well as the increase in revenue per client.
Another way in which business growth is fostered is through cutting operating and administrative costs.
Call Center Services help companies in two main ways
- Reducing operational costs by outsourcing your call center operation to a third party call center overseas, and;
- By improving the main KPIs in your call center operation
Each Call Center Operation has different KPIs that vary from company to company and the type of calls they generate or obtain.
However, working with an external call center practically guarantees both savings in the operation and in the improvement of the KPIs that are important for your operation.
The volume of calls from medium and large companies can be exaggerated in many cases. As if this were not enough, the vast majority of companies are NOT a call center, so their experience is in other areas.
In other words, as a company you are good at providing the service and product that defines you as such and perhaps your forte is not managing calls efficiently.
In this blog we will analyze call center services, the advantages and risks of outsourcing a call center operation and how this can positively impact your company.
What Are Call Center Services and Why Do You Need Them?
92% of Customer to Business interactions happen over the phone. Which means that most of your customers AND PROSPECTS will get ahold of you on a call.
Handling calls can be exhausting and limiting for many employees whos main activies are NOT to answer the phone.
Sometimes answering or making calls can deviate employees from being efficient in their work.
This is why many companies designate a whole department for inbound and outbound call handling.
The most common call center purposes are Customer Service, sales outreach, and collection. Perhaps the most common categories of call center operations.
However there is a wide range of activities around a call that can be performed by a call center agent.
The Definition and Types of Call Center Services
There are either inbound, which means YOU get a call and outbound, which means that you MAKE a call…
However not all calls are created equial…
Cold Calling Sales calls and Appointment Confirmation are both outbound type of calls but require a very different skillset from your call center agent.
Unfortunatelly the cost for talent in the U.S has skyrocketed. On average you can pay anywhere from $15 USD per hour for an entry level call center agent with NO experience.
And you can pay up to $65 USD per hour for experienced, high quality or specialized call center agents
Thats just considering the actual payroll and not including the actual cost of running a call center operation, which we’ll go over in a bit!
Salaries vary based on experienced and specialization and not on the campaign side.
You can certainly hire a call center service for:
- Inbound Call Center Services
- Customer Service/Support
- Receptionist
- Tech Support
- Billing
- Appointment Scheduling
- Inbound Sales
- Outbound Call Center Services
- Appointment Setting and Confirmation
- Collections
- Outbound Sales and Follow up
- Cold Calling Outreach
Although we’re talking about Call Center Services, why wouldn’t you want to keep the call center operation within your business instead?
The Challenges of Managing Call Center Services
In Mexico we say “Zapatero a su Zapato” which means “Shoemaker to his shoes”, basically saying to Focus on what you’re good at.
Wether you’re an insurance agency, a construction business, a real estate firm, a moving company, a tech startup or any other type of business…
Chances are that you got to the point where you are, which is getting a massive amount of inbound and outbound calls, by being good at what you are.
Setting up a call center operation just to handle your business calls will keep your time and resources from providing a better service, creating a better product and ultimately… keeping you from making more money.
It will actually drain your money, because as an entire new business venture, a call center can have a steep learning curve.
From the Recruiting and Hiring, training, technical setup, KPI tracking and the rediculously and exagerated cost for tools and sub services required to run a call center operation.
And you might way… “Might as well keep the agents working on my company and at least I don’t pay a third party call center that has the same expense but also makes a profit”
Thats where we come in, with our Managed call center in Mexico at a fraction of the cost of your average employee… Plus no headaches having to deal with the operation yourself.
The Benefits of Outsourcing Call Center Services to Mexico
Outsourcing a call center operation to a third party call center will ensure a team of experienced proffesional take care of all the little annoying things about running a call center operation.
Its not just about recruitment, training, tech setup and so on, its about everything and how it plays together.
Your business has some complexities that you dominate and understand perfectly. But perhaps you might fall short on call center experience.
This is where hiring a third party call center provider actually makes sense.
If you understand your operation so well you can work with a call center company to build a tailored team of agents that deliver the results that you’re expecting consistently.
Hiring a call center service will ensure that you outsource the most time-consuming and difficult parts of the call center operation to a specialized team.
Specially if you outsorce overseas to a country such as Mexico.
Call Centers in Mexico
Top Call Centers in Mexico offer experienced and well educated call center agents at a fraction of the cost.
For example, the most you will pay for an experienced or specialized call center agent in Mexico is $15 USD per hour and on average you can expect anywhere from $10 to $13 USD per hour
This includes not only the payroll and taxes but also the office space, law benefits, recruitment costs, office services and equipment as well as the admin supervision of your team.
You may be concerned with the english quality or perhaps the education level may not match your operation’s requirements.
Most of the call center agents in Mexico are people that were living in the US for several years and up to their whole lives.
In 2022 alone, 738,063 single adults were deported from the US to Mexico, 41% of them went directly into Tijuana, Mexico.
Most of these people speak fluent and native English and received up to high school education in the U.S.
U.S. based companies can take advantage of native english with some of the best sales and customer support skills at a fraction of the cost of having US Based call center agents.
How to Choose the Best Call Center Service Provider for Your Business
Certainly, hiring call center services for your business is a big commitment.
Things like agent training and learning curve, as well as high quality recruitment are things that can’t be overlooked.
Also, depending on the size of your business as well as your internal organization will determine the type of requirements you will need to look for before working with a call center provider, regardless of the country.
The Factors to Consider When Selecting a Call Center Service Provider
The key components of an effective call center provider and a successful operation are:
- Recruitment Expertise
- Technical Requirement
- Compliance Requirements and Certifications
- Industry Experience
Depending on the type of work and industry you’re in will determine wether or not your call center provider need to be compliant with any regulations.
Additionally, recruitment for call center positions is quite competitive. Specially with increasing salaries and flooding job markets. This has resulted in a tremendous Turnover ratio for call center campaigns.
Also having the right set of tools, such as reliable computer and office equipment, proffesional HR and administrative team, dedicated servers among other technologies to help you implement your operation.
The Questions to Ask When Evaluating a Call Center Service Provider
You want to make sure that the call center you work with is the best option for your company.
Depending on what you do and what your expectations are will determine the questions you need to ask when inquiring about call center services.
Here are some questions you can ask to better informed when making a desicion to move forward.
- How many agents do you have currently working?
- What benefits you provide to your agents?
- What’s your Call Center Agent Turnover?
- What’s your time to hire X amount of agents?
- What’s your Time to Live Campaign?
- What other clients and industries are you currently serving?
- What kind of certifications and compliance policies do you have implemented?
- What is your technical and IT scope/capacity?
- What’s your average Cost per Hour per Agent?
- Do you have a Data Analytics team?
Feel free to have this as a starting point. Brainstorm a list of the most important things you’re expecting from your privder and be sure to ask them on your first conversation.
The Best Practices to Follow When Working with a Call Center Service Provider
Generally, call centers could be considered a “Set and Forget” kind of provided as they’re main priority is to be able to bill 100% of the billable hours.
They will make sure to hire and maintain the agents they need in order to cover your operation.
A good call center should be autonomous enough to recruit, train and retain a stable workforce as well as keep an eye in the KPIs that are relevant to your operation.
A live report and weekly updates should be more than enough to feel confident in a call center’s result.
Advantages of Call Centers in Tijuana, Mexico
I have mentioned before the main benefits of working with call centers in mexico, the key aspects are:
- Low Hourly Rates
- The best English Level out of any other part of the world where English is not the primary language
- Experienced and highly educated workforce
- Culturally similar to the U.S.
- Right across the border from San Diego
- Tijuana has the Highest percentage of English Speaking population in Mexico
- Trusted by thousands of American companies for Call Center services
- Over 250 call centers to choose from in Tijuana Alone!
Among these benefits, call centers in Tijuana take advantage of high quality IT engineers among other proffesionals crucial for running a call center.
Cost Associated with a Call Center Operation
I won’t get too deep into this topic as this can be a post of its own, however it is important to understand all the different costs directly and indirectly associated to running a call center.
Perhaps the most know expense is the actual hourly cost from the agents on the phone, however there are several costs that can really increase the overall expense of your call center operation.
Recruitment costs
Recruitment is a difficult part of business as it is one that doesn’t directly produce money. Therefore recruitment is often viewed as an expense.
Finding candidates, filtering them, interviewing and eventually hiring.
In small cities, it is difficult to find qualified or specialized employees for any position. In big cities competition in the job market makes it more difficult and expensive to find the right candidates.
Onboarding and Training
All this recruitment hassle just to have a team of untrained, unproductive agents ready to get their paycheck at the end of the week.
Having to train your agents both for the product or service and the tools they will use.
This is where recruitments takes a big part on hiring people that require the least amount of training and will stay with you for the longest time possible.
You will have turnover, regardless… So keep in mind that you will have to adjust your budget and recruitment volume to fit both the new hire requirement and the monthly turnover.
The cost of Having Employees on-site
It is not just the payroll, as we mentioned earlier…
Its about actually having people in your office. They require supervision and attention as well as a dedicated office space and office equipment.
If your office is at a prime area of the city, you’re paying extra on the sequare foot. If you’re in the outskirts of the city, people might struggle to get there on public transportation.
Additionally, all people in your office drink more water and coffee, uses the bathroom, requires more energy to run and will also need office equipment.
Someone has to pay for it…
The Supporting Staff for your Call Center Operation
Not only do you need agents, but depending on the size of your call center operation, a whole army to manage all aspects of it.
IT specialists to manage the tools and keep a healthy network suitable for calling.
Marketing specialists that generates calling leads
Data analysts for KPI tracking and reporting
A supervisor responsible for maintainging team’s health, motivation, agent support, schedule management and feedback among other activities.
Overall an in-house call center operation will take a toll on training, HR and Recruitment, accounting and finances departments.
The Technology Stack for your Call Center Team
Last but not least, the tools for running a successfull call center operation vary widely.
From Automated Dialers, CRMs to telephony services, the tools to run a call center tend to be expense and specialized.
Not only will you be paying monthly per agent in most tools, you will also pay per inbound and outbound calling minutes as well as any API and automation that triggers from your agent’s workflow.
Every call center service is different so your cost may vary widely, however you have to understand that, as much as other departments, there is an additional cost to running it.
How to Measure the Performance and ROI of Call Center Services
Perhaps talking about costs might have you shaking a bit, so now lets talk about how to make all of this worth it.
All companies are different and differ on the most relevant KPIs for your operation in particular.
Defining the actual activities and every day goals for your call center team and costs associated with running your operation will ensure you know exactly what it takes for an agent to be profitable.
Ofcourse profitability is not the same for anyone
For Soft Sales or Cold Calling you might measure how many new prospects your agent generated
For Customer Service and Tech Support you might want to measure First Ticket Resolution.
Even though YOUR particular call center operation might have specific KPIs, there are some Key metrics that ANY business with a call center should be tracking.
The Key Metrics and KPIs to Track for Call Center Services
Here is a list of the most common and important call center metrics and KPIs that might give you a good idea of where your operation is
When Using a Power or Predictive Dialer:
- Total Calls Made: How many calls your dialer made per agent
- Calls Connected to an Agent: How many people your agent spoke to
- Contact Rate: The percentage of answered calls versus all calls
- Average Call Duration
- Total TIme on a Call
- Average Dispositioning Time: How many seconds does it take to Disposition a call that ended
- Call Outcome: Track how many calls were Answering machine, voicemail, hung ups, wrong numbers, failed calls, etc.
- First Ticket Resolution: the amount of calls necesarry to
Status Duration
- Total Available Time: The total time spent waiting for a call
- Total Not Available Time: Time spent avoiding calls
- Lunch and Break Times: Total times spent on agent breaks
Campaign Level Metrics
- Sales and Soft Sales
- Transfers
- Qualified prospects
- Confirmed Appointments
- New Customers/closed sales
- Scheduled Demos
- Customer Service
- Resolved Issues
- Customers worked
- Verified Documents Uploaded
- Emails Answered
Comparing all of these metrics will allow you to find relationships between the regular call center KPIs and your actual campaign goals.
The Tools and Methods to Use for Call Center Services Analytics
Every call center dialer or telephone system as well as every CRM has reporting tools to help you visualize the activity of your agents.
However when you’re using multiple tools and sources, tracking requires more creativity from your data analyst to be able to create a single report across all tools and metrics.
Using tools Google Data Stuio and Zoho Analytics as well as third party data anlysis platforms will work as a data centralization tool where all your reports will be held.
Additionally you can set up automated reports to be sent via email as well as a live dashboard that can be accessed from any part of the world and can be shared with relevant people.
Conclusion
In general, running a call center operation successfully requires more than some agents and a couple of leads. There many things that have to be considered in order to make a call center team profitable.
Hiring Call Center services can really be of help in setting up a campaign that runs efficiently from the start.
Outsourcing call center services to an expert company might look more expensive from an hourly rate standpoint but it can reduce all the headaches of actually setting up and running a team of call center agents.
Additionally, outsourcing a call center service means outsourcing the risk of bearing employee responsability and indirect expenses while focusing on getting the results you need.
Summary of Main Points
Outsourcing Call Center Service in Tijuana can reduce your overall cost by up to a third of the hourly rate for experienced agents in the US.
Working with a call center in Tijuana that understands recruitment and understands your business will ensure success at a fraction of the cost.
Additionally you can tap into one of the most experienced agent pool by hiring agents in Tijuana since all the talent required to run the operation comes at a fraction of the cost as well.
Set up a call with us to find out exactly what it would take for you to have successull call center services that actually make sense for your company.
