Call Center Pricing: How Much Does Outsourcing Cost?
Outsourcing your call center comes with a lot of benefits. But, does it come with a lot of costs too? This call center pricing guide can help you figure out what it might cost and how you should budget.
Gain an accurate glimpse into the world of customer service pricing, so you know what to expect when you hire your own outsourced contact center.
Call Center Pricing Breakdown
It’s important to note that every call center charges for its services individually. The location, seat number, certification, and expertise of your call center can significantly change the price.
Usually, call center pricing is customized to your business. So, the quote you receive is a lot more accurate.
Before we give you actual numbers, it’s important to understand how a call center prices its services.
One-Off Costs
When you first start working with a new call center, you’re probably going to encounter on-off fees. While it’s much more common to have one-off fees at the setup, depending on your requests, these may repeat occasionally.
Common on-off fees call centers charge can be:
- Setup Fee: When you start your relationship with a new call center, you’ll usually encounter a setup fee. This covers the software and hardware the call center needs to acquire before they begin working for you.
- Training Fee: How many agents you need can vary depending on season. And just like any job, there’s always turnover at a call center. Training fees cover the education of new hires. Although, it’s important to note that good call centers won’t charge you a training fee for general turnover. They’ll only charge you this fee is you request more agents than usual.
Ongoing Rates
Ongoing rates are the most important rates when you get your pricing breakdown. This is what you’ll be charged regularly.
Generally, there are two types of ongoing rates:
- Hourly: You’ll be charged based on the exact time.
- Fixed: You’ll be charged a set amount, which usually ties to a KPI. Whether that’s time, sales, or something else depends on your agreement with the call center.
What the Call Center Pricing Covers
Once you know what kind of fees you should expect, you should also know what this fee typically covers. Of course, every call center offers different things. And your customized offer needs to reflect your preferences too.
That’s why your contract with the call center should be your first resource if you want to know what your pricing covers.
However, these are generally what you should expect an outsourced call center to provide.
- Advanced telephony platform
- All telephony minutes
- Realtime and daily recap Reporting
- QA Processes
- Client support
- Middle management
- Monitoring Capabilities
- Workstation (computer, headsets…)
- Workforce management
- Voice, chat, email support
- Dedicated agents
What You Shouldn’t Pay for at an Outsourced Call Center
If your outsourced call center charges you fairly, you should never pay for:
- Management: Unless you want your own dedicated managers for smaller teams, you shouldn’t pay for supervisors or managers.
- Client support: A call center should always have a representative you can reach that’s dedicated to your relationship.
- Turnover costs: While a training fee is standard when you start out and when you specifically requests more agent support, but natural turnover and training costs should never be your burden.
Average Call Center Prices
Now, for the part that you truly came here for. The call center pricing guide.
We should note once again that every call center prices their services differently, so take these numbers as guidance only.
The type of call center and its location are the two most important factors in this guide.
There are two types of call centers:
- Inbound: Where customers call in for support, and cross-sell or upsell opportunities both arise.
- Outbound: Where call centers reach out to customers directly.
And for the location, we make a difference between:
- USA-based
- Nearshore: Mexico and Eastern Europe
- Offshore: Asia (india, Pakistan, Philippine)
Inbound Call Center Pricing
USA-based
Dedicated US-based call centers usually charge $26-$30/hour for their basic services.
However, if you’re looking for specific skills, such as tier 2 tech, licensed insurance agents, or registered nurses, you should expect to pay $30-50/hour at least.
Some call centers charge by the minute based on occupancy. This will generally come out to $0.59-0.75/minute with an average occupancy of 75% (which means associates in a billable state 45 minutes out of every hour). If you take $0.59 * 45 minutes = $26.55. That is how you get the per hour charge.
Nearshore
Nearshore inbound marketing services range anywhere from $14-$20/hour depending on the country you are looking to outsource to.
Offshore
Offshore contact centers a bit harder to gauge because all countries have different averages.
You can pay as low as $6-9/hour for centers in India or Pakistan, but the going rate is usually $10-12/hour.
While this may be a lot cheaper than US-based call center pricing, but remember, you’re sacrificing quality, language, and cultural familiarity for price. These are things that may alienate your customers, seeing as call centers are a representation of your business.
Outbound Call Center Pricing
USA-based
Pricing for inbound and outbound call center services in the States is very similar due to efficiency for multi-skilled agents.
USA rates are anywhere from $26-$28/hour for standard outbound programs. This includes sales, follow up, appointment generation, and service calls.
Any advanced skill programs can run from $30-$50/hour.
Nearshore
Call centers in Eastern Europe and Latin America are in the $9-$16/hour range.
Offshore
In general, you’ll find agencies in India and the Philippines normally charge from $5-$12/hour/agent.
Use a Call Center Pricing Calculator
While this guide can give you an accurate depiction of the global pricing ranges for both inbound and outbound call centers, it’s important to note that every call center’s different.
And every call center will price their services differently based on your business. So, the safest way to know how much a call center will charge is to reach out to them for a quote.
Here, at Expivia, we pride ourselves on the quality USA-based call center services we provide.
We’re always happy to partner with new businesses, so feel free to reach out ot us for a quote!
