Best Call Center Overview
Estimating the cost of a Call Center Overview is a process that often raises questions for stakeholders involved in an outsourcing process. There are some questions that resonate when facing this moment:
What is the best contracting method when I must outsource my business? How do we pay the supplier? Do we penalize it? Do we reward it?
What should I take into account when analyzing an RFP? What will they ask us? What does the hour they want to pay us for the Call Center Overview? Why do they ask us for X if they don’t give us Y?
These are common Call Center Overview both for those who must build a contract model that ensures adequate care for its users, at an adequate cost and for those who offer their services as providers and must be able to account for the contractual requirements.
To solve these doubts and help in the pricing process for BPOs, below I point out aspects that should be considered when analyzing an RFP and setting the contractual costs.
What factors to consider in an RFP (request for proposal)?
Contractual models
There are many contractual models in the contact center industry. But which one is the best? There is no categorical answer to that question, or as we like to say in this industry: there is no benchmark. That is why the idea to be developed has to do with making clear some guidelines that can help to choose the best for both parties and that the Client – Supplier relationship is win-win.
Generally, Outsourcing Companies and Suppliers have different pricing methods, which depend on one or more of the following aspects
- Geography: where the Call Center Overview will take place.
- Customer wish: what do I want to offer my Users.
- Type of Transaction or Billing Unit
- Contract period
Costs
A successful quote is one that works for both parties. It is not news that Outsourcing is a business, so whoever outsources should be able to save money and whoever submits to a tender should be able to earn it. In the middle, guaranteeing the attention requirements that Users require. In order to put together a good Call Center Overview / price with this business logic, some points must be taken into account as a basis when setting up and analyzing prices. We are going to call these points Costs and we are going to divide them into Fixed and Variable.
First of all, let’s define cost: economic expense incurred to produce some good. We divide them into:
Fixed Costs, defined as those that are generally not sensitive to small changes in the activity levels of a company, as an example:
- Facilities
- Call Center Overview
- Furniture
- Technology
- Insurance
- Senior Managers
Variable Costs, one that is modified according to the production variables, and we can cite as examples:
- Labor Cost to Headquarters
- Quality requirements
- Training Requirements
- Telecommunications costs
- Awards and Penalties
Labor is almost always the highest cost, but fixed costs are not insignificant. There are certain things that contracting customers can do to help providers reduce these costs, for example, by allowing providers to handle non-phone work primarily during off-peak hours, by Call Center Overview reliable forecasting data, and so on. And on the supplier side, you should always focus on efficiency and have it measured to be able to manage it at “cost per unit”.
In the end always, the quotes depend on the calculation base that is supported by the cost structures of the companies.
Once the base of calculations to form a price is understood, we can define what is the ideal contractual modality for our business.
»Learn more about how to relate costs and billing
How to define the ideal contractual modality for our business?
We will see below some Call Center Overview of these modalities and their respective pros and cons:
Fixed Personnel Contract / Extra Cost
The Contracting Client prefers to take a fixed Call Center Overview of personnel for established hours. For example: 5 people at 10 hours a day, 5 days a week.
PROS
- Predictable costs
- Easy to modify
- No volume variation
CONS
- Does not incentivize the provider to be more efficient.
- Highly variable service levels that change with volume.
- Tends to be expensive.
Cost per Minute Contract
In this case the Contracting Client pays per Call Center Overview / second, usually up to a maximum # of minutes / seconds per transaction.
PROS
- Total costs vary with volume.
- Call Center Overview lower rates are obtained for higher volumes.
- Easy to compare and understand.
- With a time limit per transaction, the provider is obliged to manage the efficiency of each transaction.
lower call avoidance, that is, to reduce duplicate calls, or to achieve a high Call Center Overview rate in the first contact.
- Do you need to explicitly define when a transaction starts and ends, for example for an inbound call it starts in ring? It Call Center Overview with the cut or in acw?
- Placing a maximum duration in the transaction can lead to erroneous behavior of the advisors.
Contract “Cost per Transaction”
The Contracting Client pays a fixed amount for each transaction, such as: by call, by e-mail, etc.
PROS
- Total costs vary with volume.
- Generally lower rates are obtained for higher volumes.
- Easy to compare and understand.
- Suppliers that manage their efficiency, increase their margins by reducing the time of the call or transaction.
CONS
- The provider is incentivized to have, paradoxically, a high recall rate or a low FCR (First Contact Resolution) as it will result in more Call Center Overview/revenue.
- The contracting client should spend more time monitoring and controlling the supplier to ensure that the “cuts” in time are not used to increase volume/revenue by decreasing quality/service.
Contract for “Applied System Time” or Handle Time
The contracting client in this case pays for the sum of times such as Conversation + Holdtime + ACWtime + Avail time
PROS
- Eliminates the negative impact of low occupancy on the supplier.
- Generally you get a lower price than the Call Center Overview per FTE (Full Time Equivalent) for non-telephone processes.
- If it is up to the supplier to develop staffing planning requirements, a minimum occupancy threshold will incentivize effective scheduling.
CONS
- If the contracting client is the one who develops the demand requirements at the interval level, inaccurate forecasts can cause penalties for the contracting client, so it becomes critical that the CC has correct forecasts.
Learn how to size a Contact Center
Contract for “Unit Sold”
In this type of contract, the client pays a fixed amount for each unit sold, for example: each case resolved, each sale made, each product delivered, etc.
PROS
- The provider is clear about the incentives.
- The price varies according to Call Center Overview success rate of the program.
- Theoretically, the objectives of the CC and the supplier would be aligned.
CONS
- Incentives to make inappropriate sales, mark cases closed when they are not, and so on.
- They put the hiring client at risk when he has a poor offer, bad tools, inadequate training, etc.
Another way to add variants to the different types of contracts is to combine it with a Risk / Reward (Incentive) plan. This model is almost always built on a traditional pricing model. Bonuses are paid for reaching specific performance targets beyond those specified in Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
PROS
- In theory the objectives are aligned between the contracting client and the supplier.
- Can be used to mitigate some of the contracting customer risks associated with other payment models.
- The payment tied to results can be a benefit for both parties (higher income for both, for example.)
CONS
- You must carefully balance Call Center Overview is incentivized, or it could lead to results that are not what you want.
- The supplier has a higher risk of “non-performance” (which could result in cost savings to the contracting client, but in exchange for low results of key KPIs).
»Understand the relationship between KPIs and Balanced Scorecard in Call Centers
Set the cost of a call center: win-win model
As we said: there is no “ideal” model. There is a model that works for both parties, in order to co-create a win-win relationship.
One opportunity presented by the Call Center Overview is that they incentivize improvements in supplier efficiency. When setting the cost of a call center or contact center, a win-win look ensures the sustainability of the business and encourages the future provider to have an aggressive pricing policy.
A client with a provider that is increasingly efficient can face new and more disruptive ways of working on the end user experience since they should stop worrying about hygienic issues (I attended to all clients? I solved it in the first attempt? .. .), so we seek to transform that Call Center Overview into greater CX.
About the Author: Diego Malat
Diego Malat, a professional with more than 15 years of experience in the outsourcing industry, currently works as Quality and WFM Manager at V / N Global Outsourcing.
His experience includes more than 4 years as a Consultant and Senior Auditor of the COPC® standards for LATAM where he developed countless conformity audits of the different PSIC and GMD) as well as led projects in different countries, to improve performance, on the contracting client side. and the supplier, leading both to achieve substantial improvements in the main operational and economic KPIs.
A reference in WFM and Quality Processes, as part of his job development, he implemented complete WFM and Quality areas in different international companies, accompanying the development and growth of work teams both in Argentina and as an expatriate in Peru.