Call Center Cost Savings – How to Stop Outsourcing for Overflow & After-hours

The rise of call center outsourcing for overflow and after-hours was a logical and understandable evolution. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, company call centers recognized two developments – 1) their staff were becoming overwhelmed during peak times and 2) the demand for 24/7 support was growing.

Outsourcing for overflow and after-hours to third-party providers was the rational and cost-effective solution at that time – but it isn’t anymore. 

With the advancement of AI and Generative AI, traditional call center outsourcing has become outdated, expensive, and ineffective. Voice AI, or voice assistants, can now automate unlimited calls 24/7, with a 60%+ containment rate. This makes outsourcing redundant at best, and a financial liability at worst.

This blog will dig into the key disadvantages of outsourcing calls, and show how interface.ai’s Generative AI Voice Assistant can completely eliminate it to generate substantial call center cost savings and improve support quality.

Outsourcing overflow & after-hours – The challenges and their smart AI solutions

Challenge 1: High costs and unfair pricing models

Call center outsourcing is notoriously expensive. Companies face high service fees, setup costs, and hidden charges that can quickly add up. On top of this, many outsourcing providers use a consumption-based pricing model that charges for every call, regardless of its nature or resolution. This means you can often be paying for spam calls, as well as unresolved queries.

Solution 1: Cost-effective and transparent performance-based pricing

To reduce call center costs, automation is the natural and most effective step. interface.ai offers a much more affordable solution than traditional outsourcing through its performance-based pricing model. This means that we only charge when a call is fully automated – when the Voice Assistant successfully manages a query and completes the necessary workflow.

Importantly, this model also means you never pay for spam or telemarketer calls. With interface.ai you only pay for results, not calls. This drives substantial call center cost savings that aren’t achieved with outsourcing, or with any other financial services AI provider. 

Challenge 2: Low support quality

The drawbacks of call center outsourcing isn’t just cost – it’s quality control too. Outsourced call centers often struggle with providing high-quality service because of high turnover and poor training. As a result, outsourced agents often become message takers rather than query resolvers. Worse still, this lack of training can result in the delivery of incorrect information – a critical issue, particularly for financial services where accurate customer service is essential. This all trickles down into lower customer satisfaction (CSAT).

Solution 2: Hyper-intelligent and accurate Generative AI support

Built on proprietary breakthrough technology, interface.ai’s Voice Assistant is the industry’s-first Generative AI solution that can deliver exceptionally accurate, reliable, and helpful support.

Powered by both graph-grounded and Generative AI, combined with domain-specific intelligence, interface.ai’s Voice Assistant can handle over 60% of calls with a 95% accuracy rate from day one. Great Lakes Credit Union experienced this – 60% of inbound calls are managed by interface.ai’s Voice Assistant during business hours, rising to 75% after business hours. This compares to less than 25% handling rate with their previous non-AI-powered IVR system.

These industry-leading call containment rates can also be attributed to interface.ai’s pioneering intelligent workflows. Dynamic GenAI responses can manage most informational queries. However, by combining this with workflows, interface.ai’s Voice Assistant can manage even more complex and action-oriented conversations. This increases containment rates and improves the user experience.

Challenge 3: Limited scalability

Traditional contact center outsourcing solutions typically struggle with scalability challenges. As call volumes fluctuate, it’s often not easy or cost-effective to expand or reduce outsourcing services. Scaling up requires renegotiating contracts and often comes with delays and additional costs, while scaling down often doesn’t lead to immediate savings. With such high call center attrition rates, outsourcing providers can also face resource limitations too.

Solution 3: Unlimited and flexible scalability with always-on automation

interface.ai’s Voice Assistant is capable of handling an unlimited number of simultaneous interactions, no matter the call volume. The platform is also designed for high availability to ensure that even during peak periods, there is no interruption in support or drop in quality.

It also adapts dynamically to changing demands so you can seamlessly scale up or down in response to fluctuating call volumes. Powered by intelligent AI, the platform dynamically adjusts resource allocation based on real-time demand, ensuring that you’re always adequately staffed.

Wrap-up

Outsourcing for overflow and after-hour support was once a practical solution for call centers grappling with peak volumes and 24/7 demands. Now, however, with the advent of AI, it is highly outdated. To reduce call center costs, eliminating outsourcing is the easiest and most effective approach.

The high costs, variable quality, and scalability issues of contact center outsourcing can be wholly resolved with Voice AI. interface.ai’s AI Voice Assistant Call generates immediate call center cost savings through its industry-leading automation rates and accuracy. Its domain-specific Generative AI intelligence also enhances support quality, providing customers and members with the fast and helpful support they need. After all, 62% of consumers prefer a customer service bot rather than wait for human agents to answer their requests.

To learn more about interface.ai’s AI Voice Assistant for financial services, why not try it out for yourself? Dial 888-320-3889 to speak with our virtual voice assistant, or click here.