Call Center Outsourcing Can Produce Significant Outcomes
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD
As healthcare facilities evaluate their effectiveness and efficiencies, they scrutinize every area. One such consideration is the call center.
At some point they often consider the benefits of outsourcing their call center work to a specialist company that focuses entirely on providing call center and contact center services.
Consider these benefits of outsourcing call center work:
Cut Costs
The top consideration when considering outsourcing is to save money. Reducing expenses is number one on the list of outsourcing benefits.
The reason that they can do the same work for less than many organizations can do in house is that they enjoy an economy of scale.
This allows them to be both efficient and effective to a degree that most in house operations can’t touch.
Improve Quality
A common concern when considering call center outsourcing is the worry that quality will decrease. Though this could occur, it doesn’t need to be the case, and usually isn’t.
Call center outsourcers do one thing, so they must do it well. This is their focus. Quality is important to them. It’s therefore reasonable to expect increased quality and enhanced patient satisfaction as another of the benefits of outsourcing.
Free Up Space
Call centers use a lot of room. This is mostly for agents but also for support staff. In addition is space to house technology.
If you’re running out of room for your call center, outsourcing all or some of the work is a smart way to respond, without incurring a capital expense, which would happen if you expand your call center facility.
React to Labor Shortages
Call centers are also a labor-intensive endeavor. You need staff to run the call center. Qualified applicants are increasingly difficult to find in many areas of the country.
When you outsource your call center, you also outsource the labor component. The outsourcer handles staffing, and you don’t have to.
Allow for Better Focus
What is your healthcare organization’s key competencies? It probably isn’t running a call center. As such, the call center can distract from work that matters more.
Removing that distraction—or at least most of it—allows for better focus on what matters most to your organization.
The Benefits of Outsourcing
There are, of course, other benefits from outsourcing call center work, but these are some of the top ones.
When you outsource your call center to an outsourcing specialist, you can cut costs, improve quality, free up space, react to labor shortages, and allow for better focus.
Any one of these by itself may be enough to justify outsourcing. But expect outsourcing to address multiple pain points, perhaps all five.
Don’t dismiss call center outsourcing over a preconceived perception. Instead give it serious consideration.
Read more in Peter Lyle DeHaan’s Healthcare Call Center Essentials, available in hardcover, paperback, and e-book.
Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AnswerStat and Medical Call Center News covering the healthcare call center industry. Read his latest book, Sticky Customer Service.