Top Challenges To Be Aware Of When Outsourcing To A USA-Based Call Center Company

Outsourcing your customer support responsibilities to a contact center in the United States can be hugely beneficial to your business. While it massively improves your customer experience deliveries and helps to build strong customer relationships, it also allows you to streamline core business operations and increase the efficiency of your internal processes. In addition, engaging a USA-based call center will help you improve cost-efficiency by simultaneously lowering operational expenses and increasing outcomes. This will ensure maximum revenue generation, increasing the profitability of your business and delivering a great bottom line.

Moreover, business process outsourcing helps businesses make better use of their internal resources at every step of their operational processes. Reduced workload and focused effort mean that core staff members can increase their outputs and ensure better results for businesses. Hence, outsourcing your customer support to a contact center company in the US can offer plenty of value-added benefits. At the same time, you can also choose to opt for professional business process outsourcing services for several core operations. Although it may be ideal for your business to operate core processes in-house, outsourcing does have several advantages to offer.

Advantages of engaging business process outsourcing services for core business operations in the US

There are over a quarter of a million BPO services providers in the United States alone, delivering a wide range of professional services to businesses across industry verticals and from every corner of the country and the world over. Hence, as a business owner, you are unlikely to find a shortage of BPO companies delivering the services you need. On the contrary, it can prove to be quite confusing for you to identify the best BPO company to hire from all the available choices. As a result of the multiple choices, you will be able to demand customized contact center solutions for maximum outcomes.

However, many business owners and industry experts firmly believe that it is better to keep core business operations in-house. They believe that keeping core operations in-house will enable businesses to ensure professional oversight and deliver maximum outcomes. However, what many businesses fail to realize is that just like a USA-based call center can help them deliver professional customer support, BPO companies can also help them improve results through their professional services. For instance, you can hire and employ a team of accountants to manage your accounts and associated functions. But, hiring professional accountants means you have to bear high expenses, which can be easily reduced by outsourcing.

Opting Profession USA-Based Call Center

By opting for a professional BPO company, you will be able to utilize the expertise of professional accountants but at comparatively lower costs. BPO companies that provide accounts-related services as a part of their BPO solutions employ top industry professionals for the job. These professionals handle multiple accounts simultaneously for their firms, generating revenues from multiple clients at the same time. As a result, these BPO companies are able to offer their professional services at much lower costs despite paying heavy salaries to their employees. Eventually, this enables businesses to reduce their operational expenditure while simultaneously improving their outcomes due to expert professional efficiencies.

According to a report published by Deloitte in 2021, outsourcing core operations to industry-specific BPO companies has resulted in:

• Standardization & automation of core operations
• Acceleration of Digital Agenda
• Capabilities improvement & skill development
• Improvement in overall business planning
• Improved strategy development
• Increased business value
• Reduced operating expenses & increased cost-efficiency

Hence, outsourcing your customer support to a USA-based call center and your core business operations to industry-specific BPO companies can contribute heavily to increasing revenues and driving business growth. However, is professional BPO this gift that keeps on giving, or is there any negative impact to it too?

Common challenges faced by businesses when engaging a USA-based call center

While BPO companies in the United States can be great for their beneficial solutions for businesses, they also have a few potential risks that you must be aware of before you engage one for your company. Some of these common challenges include:

• Potential security breaches and data leaks

Businesses and BPO companies have to transfer information between themselves constantly, which often includes sensitive customer data and business-critical information. If the BPO company does not have the proper technology to ensure secure data transfer, it creates the opportunity for hackers and other suspicious parties to steal or leak customer information. Such data breaches can harm your company’s reputation and even ruin your business to the extent of a total shutdown. Hence, it is important for you to ensure that the USA-based call center and BPO company that you hire implements proper data encryption for complete data protection.

• Failure to follow industry regulations and compliances

The industry regulations and compliances that are necessary for you to follow also apply to the BPO company you choose to engage in and the solutions they offer. However, BPO companies sometimes fail to fully and effectively comply with industry-specific regulations or simply choose to ignore them. This can result in massive financial penalties and other industry sanctions for your business, causing you incredible losses. Hence, you must engage in BPO companies that adhere to industry regulations and comply with all necessary guidelines within their operations. This will help you avoid unnecessary and unforeseen circumstances with your customer support and other areas of your business.

• Unforeseen disruptions & potential ripple effects

Essentially, engaging a USA-based call center or BPO company for customer services and other business operations means handing over certain aspects of your business to a third-party service provider. As a result, you are likely to lose oversight of how these operations are being handled by the BPO company you hire. This can cause many problems, especially during unforeseen or unplanned disruptions, as it gives you very less time to react. At the same time, you also have little influence on customer support deliveries and cannot regulate quality according to necessity. Hence, it is important for you to choose a BPO company that provides bi-weekly or monthly reports of performance and allows you to modify operations according to your needs.

• Relationship challenges & miscommunication due to cultural differences

This is especially true for offshore outsourcing to BPO companies in Asian or African countries. Due to the massive cultural differences between people from the two countries, you might experience plenty of misunderstandings. Overcoming cultural barriers can be very challenging and is likely to require plenty of work. And in case you are unable to handle these differences well, there could be huge misunderstandings that will affect operations adversely. Eventually, these disruptions will damage relationships between your brand and the company you engage for professional business process outsourcing services. And if this damage spills over to other business-critical areas, it could severely ruin your customer services and brand reputation.

• Higher cost-to-utility ratio & reduced cost-efficiency

Outsourcing customer engagements to an onshore contact center in the US can significantly reduce the possible effects of cultural differences. However, it also increases your operating expenses as US-based contact centers usually charge more than their counterparts in Asia, Africa, or Europe. Higher costs with similar outcomes greatly reduce the cost-efficiency of outsourcing your customer engagement and other business functions. Hence, it is important for you to identify a BPO company in the US that can improve its efficiency. And deliver better outcomes to make the additional expenses worthwhile. This will also improve your ROIs and help you achieve better business productivity and profitability.

There are several other challenges you might have to face and overcome when engaging a USA-based call center company. Being aware of these challenges and preparing for them in advance will help get the best out of your investments.