Overview

It s never easy to hire an outsourcer. Especially when what you are asking the outsourcer to handle is that most precious asset, the customer relationship. It s hard enough to ensure that your own employees are doing the job right; how do you make sure that someone from outside is?

Apparently, that fear is more widespread than I thought. A recent study by Input, a market research firm in Mountain View, California, found a disparity in the call center market. Users who were surveyed about their centers reported higher satisfaction levels with in-house call centers than with outsourced call center services.

Another report, from IDC, said that the worldwide call center services market totaled $23 billion in revenues in 1998, and projected it to double to $58.6 billion by 2003. (This is based on dividing the overall call center service marketing into these segments: consulting, systems integration and outsourcing.) Outsourcing is the largest segment, with $17 billion in 1998, or 74% of the total market, headed for $42 billion in 2003.

Call centers will continue to grow at a strong pace (the Input study forecasts that the call center operations market will grow 21% annually, to $18 billion in 2002). But that growth does not come without a price. Input reports that users are worried about things like staff competence, flexibility and the caliber of operations at their outsourced centers.

Before accepting that at face value, let s remember that the outsourcing sector is a very large component of a huge...