The term Outsourcing is used when a company contracts with another person or company to do their business operations or functions. In today’s era, almost every other company outsources in one way or the other. Usually, the function that is to be outsourced is considered as non-core to the company who will be using outsourcing services. The functions or processes that were previously done or performed in –house are now contracted out of business to an outsourced organization or an external provider. Any two or may be more organizations may enter into a contract wherein exchange of payments and services takes place. Majority of the work is being outsourced to companies or providers outside the nation, which is a big concern and this is termed as offshore outsourcing services or also many times as off shoring. Both these are quite odd terms in the sense that if a company decides to do business with any other company, it does not necessarily mean that the parent company have to go offshore.
The word outsourcing has been in existence from the day work specialization is there but it is only that in the past 20 to 30 years that many companies have implemented or started to use this concept or model to perform various processes or functions to include, but not limited to data entry and processing, account receivables and accounts payable, billing, and telemarketing etc. The primary reason that the companies go for outsourced services is that these processes or functions can be performed more cost effectively and at the same time increases the efficiency when these same functions are performed by call centers or external providers who possess the necessary skills, tools, facilities, and well trained employees to carry out these tasks.
The whole process of hiring or employing any external company to handle/perform business activities for any other organization is termed as Business Process Outsourcing. Call Centers as they are often called are the companies that provide these outsourced services. Many a times they are also known as service providers. At present, the most common forms of these outsourced services are business process outsourcing services and information technology outsourcing services.
Those companies who are not so big and have limited resources and money usually go for both internal as well as service providers so as to bring timeliness in their business functions and speed up their work processes. These sort of companies tend to hire many service providers who takes care of and handles almost all the aspects of an existing or a new project and this include marketing, sales, product design, software coding as well as software testing.
A centralized office or a workplace which is utilized for receiving, producing, and transmitting a very large number of complaints, requests etc. via email or telephone is commonly known as a call center. A call center typically consists of workspace for employees with many workstations inclusive of computers that is a must for all the agents, a telecom headset with a telecom switch, and managers managing the work force. Most of them are operated independently but recently the trend of additional networked centers has also come up.
A majority of business primarily in the US and UK are utilizing call centers in order to interact with their customers and resolve their queries and address their issues and concerns. Call Center Services include telemarketing, customer helpdesk support, email support, chat support, debt collections, inbound support, outbound support, data processing, claims management etc. There are many companies, which service their internal functions also with the use of service providers.
Description: Call centers have been a boom in the past decade but as it is with every other booming industry, they do have their critics, majority of them argue about the work atmosphere, especially the odd timings and office environment.
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