Outsourcing is a process by which companies partner with third party specialist organisations, who undertake the processing of a function on their behalf.
Outsourcing is undertaken for two major reasons;
The reduction of costs and overheads.
The provision of a specialist service which the outsourcer can provide outside a company's core competency.
The outsourcing can relate to all or part of a function. Some contact centres may handle customer service for a particular region and may outsource other regions. Calls maybe overflowed to an outsourcer at a given level of calls.
Dependent upon a call centre's working window, it may outsouce calls out of hours - 18:00 to 08:00hrs. This is a reason why outsourcing is often undertaken abroad, to 'follow the sun'.
Outsourcing is not restricted to contact centres but occurs industry-wide.