Onshore Is Still the Winner with Customers according to CallCare!
The offshore contact centre industry has taken quite a bashing over the past few years. Repeated surveys and reports have shown that the British public remains highly critical of how offshore contact centres perform and skeptical about their ability to safeguard customer privacy.
Recent revelations about data theft from offshore centres have only made matters worse and, given the choice between using a UK contact centre and an offshore one, the vast majority of people will naturally choose one based in the UK. This has led quite a few companies to move their operations back to the mainland to avoid all the negative publicity.
While firms who can promise customers UK-only-based contact centres may benefit in terms of PR, the additional costs involved – as well as problems of staff availability, recruitment and retainment – makes it unfeasible for many firms to give up offshoring entirely. So how far would customers be willing to go in covering the extra costs involved? Will they pay more, wait longer or accept more automated services?
The company call-centres.com set out to answer these questions in a recent survey. Perhaps unsurprisingly, their results revealed that UK-based call centres were far more popular among the British public than foreign-based ones, with most respondents saying locally based services were either good or average. Call centres based overseas, on the other hand, were regularly described as poor or very poor.
Customers Willing to Pay More for Onshore
In a follow-up question, the survey asked respondents if they would be willing to use a foreign-based call centre if it meant paying 10% less for the service. Interestingly, three times as many people said they would still prefer to use an onshore service in such a case. This shows that people are willing to pay more if it results in better service for the customer. In fact, respondents were more likely to be influenced by other factors than cash incentives. For example, while automated services are an increasingly common feature of UK-based contact centres to help offset the higher costs, marginally more people said they would prefer dealing with a live overseas agent than going through an automated service back home.
While there will be some people who prefer to use automated services, contact centres must recognise that a large number of customers will always prefer the option of talking to a real person.
Live Agents Vs. Automated Services
The chance to talk to a live agent actually makes more difference to most customers than waiting times. Another question posed by the call-centres.com survey was whether customers would prefer to have their call answered immediately by an offshore centre or wait an additional 3 minutes to talk to a UK-based agent.
A full 71% of respondents said they would prefer to wait if it meant they could speak to a local agent at the end. This is an important point for firms to consider, despite the problem of high labour costs and limited staff availability that has affected the ability of British-based contact centres to deliver services promptly for customers.
Even with extra costs and additional waiting times factored in, most customers want to deal with UK-based live agents when they contact a call centre. According to call-centres.com’s survey, the main reason for this is not about protecting British jobs or even data security concerns but, instead, the lower quality service that is delivered by offshore contact centres.
Until companies are able to address this highly negative perception of offshore call centre performance, they may have to accept that cheaper offshore services may cost companies far more in terms of negative PR and customer dissatisfaction. Recognising the long-term value of forging good customer relations is a key reason why so many companies are moving contact centre operations back to the UK.
About CallCare
CallCare was established in 1998 as an emergency call answering service, operating in a small Cambridge office. Over the years CallCare has grown rapidly into London and Manchester, due to their service excellence and key support from loyal customers.
Their services range from overflow call handling, telephone answering, lone worker protection schemes and emergency call-out lines and offer a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week service.
