This report was commissioned by Mr. Brown, operations manager of a large transport firm named Monin Transport. Its purpose is to analyze and advise on outsourcing process of the telephone based customer relations. The new manager director had put the task force together to look at cost cutting options, while the owners are looking to the MD for significant balance sheet improvements in the coming year. In order to meet those objectives, the most probable consider is to outsourcing the telephone based customer service, which provides a single point of contact for customers who may try to reach companies via e-mail, Web chat, fax, phone.
Outsourcing to a third-party call center enables company to focus on core activities, gaining cost advantage over the competition. However contracting will bring transaction and monitoring costs and loss of control. This report analyses these issues, emphasizes the situation which faced to Monin Transport, balances the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing process. MT (Monin Transport) is a family owned firm that had been courted as a possible acquisition by both national and multi-national firms interested in its agricultural supply work.
The company new managing director had put the task force together to look at cost cutting options. The operations manager became interested in outsourcing the telephone based customer relations. There are many aspects to building a call center, including selecting the location, telephone equipment, networking equipment, and software. Building a call center internally may be feasible only for very large well-developed enterprises, but for MT we consider outsourcing the center.
Call center is an essential part of MT’s business that deals frequently with customer queries. Therefore, it is crucial to contract with the right call center agents regarding them as customer service representatives and dispatchers. That call center should run efficiently and methodically that could decrease customer waiting time, improve customer access, and improve call routing. Outsourcing now has been one of the most important forms of change activity undertaken by organizations.
Outsourcing can be defined as a contractual relationship between an external vender and an enterprise in which the vendor assumes responsibility for one or more business functions of the enterprise (White;James,1996). Outsourcing has been concerned by the evolving literature with “make or buy” decision in relation to the behaviour of enterprises and transaction cost economics (Kakabadse,2000,p 670). As companies deal with such monumental issues as mergers, reorganizations, technological advancements and globalization, their need to maintain focus on core businesses.
As more companies focus on their core businesses, outsourcing is on the rise. As outsourcing becomes more widespread within organizations, however, many departments need to sharpen their negotiation skills when selecting and working with firms that provide a number of essential services (Mulligan, 2001, p12) . Telephone based customer service —call center provide a single point of contact for customers who may try to reach company via e-mail, fax, and phone.
Call center, often called contact center to reflect the multiple points of access, provide your staff with consistent information throughout an integrated system. This integration improves your customer’s interaction and satisfaction, and your operations gain efficiency. Creating a call center is a complex information system undertaking, which includes selecting the location, telephone equipment, networking equipment and software. Therefore, may companies consider outsourcing process (Mitchell, 2000,p29).
The hard system is a method that is used for dealing with situations which lie toward the ‘hard’ end of the hard-soft continuum of change situation. The HSMC divides three phases of organizational change. These include the description phase (determining objectives for change), the options phase (generating options for change) and the implementation phase (testing those options). Therefore, HSMC is quite useful for designing and managing change (Senior,2000).
