What Answering Service Model Do You Need?

Since the beginning of the telephone answering service, it has undergone to a lot of challenges and transformations. Its most noticeable change is on the structural factor of the service delivery. With the rise of other businesses competing against each other, each of them has adapted and transformed, in an attempt to deliver value to the customers, at the same time protecting their bottom line.


For the past few decades, different operational models of the Answering service have emerged, giving more edge to the value of service that they cater to their clients. Presently, the Call Center answering services have four (4) main operational models. These models have been developed to meet the needs of each client who is in need of the telephone answering service.

These models still exists and is still implemented according to what each client needs;

1. Onsite Model
This type of operational model is just primary call centers handled by the parent company itself. It is located just within the company and they expand their manpower resources and assign them to do the task of answering calls that comes to the company. The call center is managed by the company itself and the people hired to do the job were either made to work directly to the call center or were expected to manage customer service and billing roles for the company while managing inbound calls. This model has no major cost savings, since the company has to allocate another area within their company for the call center, at the same time, hire and train new people for the job. The main purpose of establishing this kind of call center was to improve flexibility and responsiveness when it comes to handling customer requests. The call center and the business were one entity.
2. Offshore Model
This operational model evolved when businesses started to look for expenditure optimization initiatives. The call center is now located geographically from a different region from the parent company. The idea might seem odd and impossible, but this was all realized due to the countless innovations in technology. The Call Center Answering Services were made to look seamless to the end customers. Many benefits were yielded by the offshore model. Besides the significant cost savings it brought to its parent company, the offshore hub creates a 24 hour customer service response team. The main hub works an extended shift (8am-8pm) with afterhours traffic routing to the offshore provider. The offshore provider could attend to the numerous numbers of calls. The disadvantage of this model is when a client’s process is changed. It takes some time for call center agents to speed up with the new processes and products due to the geographical difference. Language barrier was also one disadvantage. With the different regions, the culture and language also changes, thus, some call center agents have the difficulty to provide quality customer service due to difference in culture and language.
3. Near Shore Model
Because of the rising disadvantages brought upon by the off shore model, the call center answering services has innovated another operational model. The Near shore model is where the call center is located at a geographically separate location but still at the same time zone. This model ensured that the quality of customer service was better handled by call center agents, since they are able to communicate using the same regional dialect (the same accent), and almost each CSR has the same cultural background with the caller. But, the responsiveness to client changes and requirements were also higher in this model. The cost savings of this mode; is not that significant compared to the off shore model.
4. Hub & Spoke Model
This is one of the recently developed operational models. There will be multiple spokes consisting of a few agents (in most cases home based agents) which are centrally controlled by a hub. This type of set up offers several advantages. First, it is very easy for the parent company to right size the call center since they can easily expand or reduce its size. It has built-in flexibility to disaster, since the diverse locations of the spokes offer a certain degree of redundancy n the operations. Also, it is capable of offering 24/7 support to its clients due to the diverse locations, but the same time, not letting the employees work at inhumane hours. From client’s perspective, a hub is the point of contact, without the knowledge that there are existing spoke in the call center operations.

All these models offer more advantages than disadvantages from the previous models. This is a fact that remains tangible nowadays, but despite it all, these models co-exist to meet the specific needs and purpose of each client.

It should be taken into mind that clients should analyze first the characteristics of their company and what are the needs of their business, before deciding what answering service operational model they would be investing on.

About the Author

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Publish on 07/25/2012

Shiela - freelance copywriter specializing in topics about the general services and qualities of a call center Philippines houses. Her expertise in the topic stems from having had worked for a few call centers and a BPO company offering a variety of services.

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