Contact centre outsourcers outperform in-house operations

Two industry players have come together to write the definitive study of the UK contact centre outsourcing industry. ContactBabel’s primary research and analytical knowledge and The Outsource Junction’s real-life consulting expertise have created the most wide-ranging and detailed report available about this complex and dynamic growth area.

The report includes:

• Industry size and forecasts to 2011
• Businesses’ attitudes towards outsourcing
• Outsourcing vs in-house performance statistics
• Salaries, HR and technology
• Outsourcers’ revenue, growth, profit margins
• Trends in pricing, procurement and OSP selection processes
• Growth drivers, sectors, types of work
• SWOT analysis of the outsourcing sector’s future
• Choosing an outsource partner: what to ask
• Top 30 UK contact centre and BPO outsourcers by revenue
• Detailed views of the Top 10 UK outsourcers (financials, location, clients, service portfolio, sector expertise, M&A, etc)
• Sector Focus: The UK Public Service Industry – the fastest-growing UK BPO sector

Some key findings from the report:

• Outsourcers have usually outperformed in-house contact centres, with average speed to answer being 26% lower, and non-talk time being 10% lower in outsourcing operations
• Between now and 2011, growth in the contact centre outsourcing sector will be more than double that of the in-house sector
• The outsourcing sector answers 27% of emails within an hour – three times more than the in-house sector manages
• Outsourcers that have diversified into full-service BPO will tend to have far higher profit margins than contact centre-only players. However, premium contact centre service providers (which have a much greater understanding and delivery of multi-channel interaction handling than is usual) are protecting their margins
• Traditional transaction- or resource-based outsourcing pricing is being replaced by a hybrid risk-reward model, based upon a detailed and transparent view of pricing and cost.