The decision to outsource telemarketing services depends on a number of factors, the most important of which is whether the benefits accrued outweigh the costs incurred. It is the foremost duty of management to analyze the cost-benefit ratio before going in for outsourcing.
The primary benefits that come with outsourcing are the expenditure spared in recruiting and maintaining an entire telemarketing staff and the costs saved in procuring the equipment. The payroll costs are in part passed on as charges for the telemarketing services but the added benefits depend on how expensive the locally available labor is. If very low-cost labor is locally available to a company, outsourcing may not help save much on this count. As regards the equipment, the seasonal telemarketers are more likely to find outsourcing more efficient rather than the ones who need telemarketing services throughout the year.
However, once the initial costs are taken care of, outsourcing does contribute to saving costs for the company in the long run. Here are a few important reasons why you should go in for outsourcing:
Hiring of personnel
Labor costs are only a small part of the entire expenses that come along with hiring staff for the telemarketing services. The hiring and recruitment of the personnel can prove to be an expensive and cumbersome affair for the management. The money spent on the recruitment agencies and the time spent by management in interviewing the candidates is hardly worth the effort.
At times, the company may be forced to manage with a leaner staff than is actually required and compromise on the opportunity costs in not being able to make enough telemarketing calls due to shortage of staff. Outsourcing the services will not only ensure a well-staffed team to make the required number of telemarketing calls but also help tackle all the problems related to the recruitment of the personnel.
Professional training
Providing appropriate training to the personnel is perhaps, more important than hiring them because it is the kind of training that will determine the quality and success rate of telemarketing calls. Here again, businesses cannot afford to cut costs by compromising with a less professionally trained staff. The company and its products have to be represented by well-trained professionals.
But it is not at all an easy job to design and implement a high-level training program for telemarketing staff with up-to-date techniques by a company whose primary focus lies elsewhere. Professional telemarketing companies, on the other hand, can distribute their cost of training between various clients it offers services. As they specialize in telemarketing services, they can afford to spend time and money on providing intensive professional training to the telemarketing callers.
Compliance to telemarketing rules
With rapidly tightening rules and regulations, telemarketing calls have to comply with the updated restrictions put on these calls by various regional and federal governments. As the rules of various states keep changing from time to time, it gets very confusing for organizations to keep track of them.
In such a situation, it becomes tough for businesses to deal with these legal issues. For specialized telemarketing companies, however, it is a crucial part of their job to ascertain adherence to these rules.
Space for operations
The establishment of an in-house telemarketing facility would mean that the telemarketing staff and equipment would use up good part of the office space while in case of a telemarketing company the cost of space can again be spread among the various clients. A business might be compelled to go in for unnecessary space expansion to accommodate the telemarketing paraphernalia. Outsourcing can help avoid such extra expenditure.
Thus, outsourcing telemarketing services can save costs on a number of fronts and result in net savings for businesses after the initial costs are incurred in buying the services.
