NewswireToday - /newswire/ - Stratford Upon Avon, Warwickshire, United Kingdom, 06/03/2009 - As the recession continues to bite, many companies are looking at how they can achieve the impossible; improve the level of service they offer for an ever increasing demanding customer base at the same time as reducing their costs.

In call centre outsourcing, shared service typically involves paying a call centre a fee pay per minute rather than adopting the traditional hourly paid business model. The in-house call centre operates at medium-level staffing levels and then overflows any calls past a certain point. This has the benefit of ensuring maximum productivity for the in-house centre whilst practically eliminating the abandon rate. With the downward pressure on costs, some centres are now experiencing abandon rates in excess of 20% at busy times of the week which in the long-run has been proven to have a negative impact on customer retention.

The applications for the shared service centre are many. For some companies, the use of shared service overflows makes perfect sense to deal with any activity which stimulates calls which are often not handled efficiently in-house. This could be for the response to media advertising or when there are heavy call volumes due to billing periods. Many of our clients use our shared service to handle calls resulting from DRTV, catalogues or press advertising. In the retail sector, shared service overflows are often heavily used during the run up to Christmas or whenever call volumes are higher which would explain why over 40 catalogues use Cyber City to handle the overflow from their call centres. Other call centres have even found that opening 24x7 is a very expensive exercise when they examine the cost per call. Staffing for 24 hour opening can often be a logistical nightmare for call centre managers and also be demoralising for staff. By focussing on core opening hours, the centre can ensure they can recruit and retain the best staff and keep the cost per call answered down to a minimum by paying per call minute rather than the overwhelming fixed costs of dedicated staff. The shared service also offers a perfect solution for disaster recovery. If your own centre is experiencing staffing or technical difficulties, the shared service overflow facility can ensure that it’s business as usual as far as the customer is concerned.

Shared service overflows do of course have their limitations and are typically more suitable for applications of a purely transactional nature but many of our clients have been surprised by the ability of the shared service agents to handle more complex interactions.

Agency / Source: Cyber City Teleservices

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