How to Hire the Best Call Center Companies

How can a call center agency benefit your business?

Call centers can benefit your business by providing ready-to-deploy customer support capacity and operational discipline, helping you resolve issues faster, communicate more consistently, and deliver better customer experiences that support retention and revenue.

According to Forrester, customers are 2.4x more likely to be loyal to a brand when it resolves their issues quickly and are 2.7x more likely to spend more on businesses that practice good communication.

However, customer expectations are also increasing.

52% of customers expect answers within one hour on a brand's digital channels. Additionally, Zendesk's CX Trends reveal that 74% of customers also expect 24/7 customer service, especially with the rise of AI.

Failing to meet these expectations can lead to high customer churn, with 86% of UK and US consumers willing to leave a brand they were loyal to after 3 bad experiences.

Call center providers prevent poor experiences by staffing and managing coverage across channels, enforcing SLAs and QA, and increasingly combining human support with self-service and automation to meet speed and availability expectations.

How much do their services cost?

The cost of call center services depends on provider location, service type and scope, call volume and complexity, SLAs, and engagement model.

Here are approximate rates per region:

• North America (United States and Canada): $25-$45 per hour
• Western Europe and Australia: $35-$45 per hour
• Eastern Europe and South Africa: $12-$15 per hour
• Latin America: $10-$15 per hour
• Asia (e.g., Philippines, India, Vietnam): $8-$14 per hour

Based on these hourly rates, these are the estimated call center service costs:

• Shared inbound call centers can cost $0.35-$0.55 per minute for lower markets, and $0.75-$1.25 per minute in premium locations.
• Dedicated inbound costs $8-$15 per hour on average, and North American call centers cost over $20 per hour.
• Outbound call centers in lower markets charge $8-$15 per hour, with more specialized teams in premium locations charging as high as $55 per hour.

In terms of engagement models, below are the average pricing packages:

• Pay-per-minute model charges based on actual talk time, and costs $0.35-$0.75 per minute.
• Pay-per-call offers a fixed rate, regardless of call duration, and costs $4-$15 per call on average.
• Commission-based pricing for lead generation, telemarketing, and sales activities is often tied to sales generated per hour, and ranges around 10%-20% of the sales.

Many call centers also offer a fixed monthly package, with the costs tailored to the unique business needs and project complexity.

How to choose the best provider for your business?

Consider following these steps to choose the best call center for your business:

1. Define your service needs and goals, including target audiences, channels, language, coverage, key performance indicators (KPIs), and team size.
2. Seek providers with proven experience in your industry, target market, and channels by evaluating their case studies and measurable outcomes.
3. Verify credibility by examining their client reviews and certifications. Look for long-term client relationships and ISO and PCI-DSS accreditations.
4. Send a request for proposal to your top 3-6 candidates and compare offerings. Prioritize those that offer the most value for money.
5. Set an introductory meeting with the provider team to learn more about their training and onboarding process, security and compliance measures, and quality control protocols.
6. Ask for a demo or trial and client references to further assess the provider's service quality and reliability.
7. Choose the call center with required language proficiency, cultural alignment, vertical expertise, strong quality control and security measures, and a positive industry reputation.

What questions should you ask before hiring?

Before hiring a call center company, ask these questions to confirm business fit:

Relevant Background

1. Can you provide case studies and client references in my sector and with similar volume and complexity?
2. Can you share interaction recordings, service demos, or QA scorecards?
3. Where are your agents located? What is your talent selection and training process like?

Services and Processes

1. How do you handle escalations and difficult interactions?
2. Do you use AI in your processes? How do you balance human and automated services?
3. How do you approach quality assurance, and what QA targets do you recommend?
4. What are your security and compliance controls? What proof can you provide?

Related to Your Project

1. What SLAs can you commit to, and what happens if you miss them?
2. How do you customize your services to my brand voice, customer segments, and policies?
3. What software do you use, and can they integrate with my existing systems?
4. What KPIs do you use to monitor service quality? What governance and reporting cadence can I expect?

How do call centers monitor success?

Call centers monitor success by measuring customer experience and operational performance, and compare these against the business's goals, past performance, and industry benchmarks.

These are the common KPIs that they track:

Customer experience

• Customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores identify how happy or satisfied a customer is with their experience through post-interaction surveys.
• First call resolution measures the percentage of calls that agents resolve within the first interaction.
• Customer effort score (CES) identifies how difficult or easy it was for a customer to resolve their issue, answer a question, or complete a specific task.

Operational performance

• Agent utilization tracks the average time an agent spends handling customer work.
• Average handle time (AHT) monitors the average duration of customer interactions, including talk time, time on hold, and after-call work.
• Call abandonment rate calculates the total number of customers who disconnect before reaching an agent.
• Total resolution time measures how long an agent takes on average to fully resolve a customer issue, which includes follow-ups and back-office work.

Sources

DesignRush sustains a directory of over 40,000 agencies categorized by service category, location, expertise, and reviews. We build our database in two ways:

• Our dedicated team of agency experts actively searches the web for top-performing companies. We then pull information from their websites, online presence, and client testimonials to verify their status and qualifications prior to listing.
• The agencies listed get notified of their profiles on the website and they can choose to claim it or not, which suggests their availability for more collaborations.

Agencies can also reach out to DesignRush and must go through the verification process prior to being listed.