Outsource customer service or use an AI helpdesk?
By Joey van Vliet, founderUpdated 6 min read
The short answer
Outsource your customer service if you need long opening hours for conversations a person has to handle, and you can't staff that yourself. Hire people if customers mainly want advice or personal contact. If a large share of questions have a fixed answer, such as an order status or opening hours, an AI helpdesk can answer those. Complaints, exceptions and difficult conversations stay with a person.
About this guide: written by Your Tech Club. We don't name other companies and we don't quote amounts we can't back up. How we do it ourselves is set out separately under How Your Tech Club works. Want to see how we set up AI customer service? See AI customer service.
What does customer service involve?
Customer service is more than answering the phone. Questions come in by email, phone, chat, WhatsApp and social media, and someone has to read, sort, answer and follow up on them.
- Questions with a fixed answer: opening hours, delivery times, the status of an order.
- Questions that need something done in a system: changing an address, registering a return, moving an appointment.
- Questions that need judgement: a complaint, an exception to the terms, an angry customer.
- The work behind it: sorting, passing questions to the right colleague and keeping track of what was agreed.
How that split looks for you decides which option fits. Count it for a week: what share of the questions has a fixed answer?
Call centre, your own people or an AI helpdesk: what's the difference?
A call centre or customer service agency takes over contact with your customers, with its own staff who learn your product. Hiring your own people keeps the knowledge in-house. An AI helpdesk is software that answers questions from your own knowledge base and systems, and passes on what a person needs to handle.
- Getting started
- Call centre or agency
- The provider's staff learn your product and tone
- Hiring your own people
- New colleagues learn your product, systems and customers
- AI helpdesk
- Set up on your knowledge base and systems, and tested with real questions
- Availability
- Call centre or agency
- As agreed in the contract, often with long hours
- Hiring your own people
- Your team's working hours and rotas
- AI helpdesk
- Can also answer in the evening and at weekends, if you set it up that way
- At busy times
- Call centre or agency
- Depends on the provider's staffing
- Hiring your own people
- Extra people needed, or longer waiting times
- AI helpdesk
- Designed to absorb busy periods for fixed-answer questions; test how much up front
- Product knowledge
- Call centre or agency
- Sits with the provider, and leaves when you stop
- Hiring your own people
- Sits with your own team
- AI helpdesk
- Lives in your own knowledge base, which you keep up to date
- Visibility and control
- Call centre or agency
- Through agreements and reports
- Hiring your own people
- Direct
- AI helpdesk
- You decide which questions it answers; the rest goes to your team
- What stays with a person
- Call centre or agency
- Whatever the provider may not or cannot decide still comes back to you
- Hiring your own people
- Everything
- AI helpdesk
- Complaints, exceptions and conversations where emotion is the core
When is hiring your own people the best choice?
- Your customers mainly call for advice that differs from conversation to conversation.
- Your product is complex and a wrong answer costs you a customer.
- Personal contact is the reason customers choose you.
- There's no knowledge base or fixed set of answers yet. You build that up with people first.
When is outsourcing customer service or hiring a call centre the best choice?
- You want long opening hours with people on the line, and you can't staff that internally.
- You temporarily have much more contact, for example during a campaign or peak season.
- You want to help customers in languages your team doesn't speak, with people rather than AI.
- It's about outbound calls, such as calling customers back, where the conversation itself is the work.
When you outsource, agree which questions the provider may handle itself, how they access your systems and who maintains the knowledge base. Otherwise you only hear about a problem when a customer complains.
What does an AI helpdesk take over, and what not?
An AI helpdesk reads every question, works out the topic and urgency, and answers what has a fixed answer, with the source attached. The rest goes to the right colleague with the context already filled in. It only answers from your knowledge base and systems. If it doesn't know, it says so.
- AI employee: Read and sort the questionFrom email, chat, WhatsApp or the ticketing system.
- AI employee: Answer a fixed questionFrom your knowledge base or system, such as an order status.
- AI employee: Pass it on with contextCustomer details and earlier contact attached.
- Person: Complaint or exceptionYour team decides what happens.
- AI employee: Prepare a draftFor recognisable questions, a reply to review.
- Person: Send or adjustYou decide what goes out.
So an AI helpdesk doesn't replace your customer service. It takes away the questions with a fixed answer, so your team has time for the conversations that matter.
What does outsourcing customer service cost, and what does it cost now?
Customer service agencies charge in different ways: by the hour, per conversation or a fixed monthly amount. What it costs you depends on your volume of contacts, your opening hours and the languages. We don't quote an average, because it says little about your situation.
Start with what it costs now: how many hours a week your team spends on questions with a fixed answer.
How do you start?
- Count the questions for a week, by channel and by topic.
- Mark which have a fixed answer, and where that answer lives.
- Get your knowledge base in order: an AI helpdesk is only as good as the sources it uses.
- Start with one channel and one type of question, alongside your team, and only expand once the answers are right.
How Your Tech Club helps
This part is about us. The points above apply to any partner, including us: feel free to hold us to them.
We set up AI customer service on your own knowledge base and systems, such as Zendesk, Freshdesk, HubSpot or Shopify. For each type of question, we agree together what the AI answers itself and what goes to your team.
If you don't know where to start yet, it starts with the AI Opportunity Audit. In five working days we map where manual work is holding back your growth and what it costs. If a call centre or an extra colleague suits you better, the report says so.
- ISO 9001 and ISO 27001, certified by Kiwa
- 500 projects delivered
- 4.8 from 127 reviews
- 90% returning clients
- Office on Duivendrechtsekade in Amsterdam
- Founded by Joey van Vliet and Yassine Seghrouchni
Frequently asked questions
What does it cost to outsource customer service?
That depends on your volume of contacts, your opening hours, the channels and the languages. Agencies charge by the hour, per conversation or a fixed monthly amount. Ask for quotes based on your own numbers, and first work out what the work costs you now with our manual work calculator.
What's the difference between a call centre and an AI helpdesk?
In a call centre, people answer your customers on your behalf. An AI helpdesk is software that answers questions with a fixed answer itself, from your own sources, and passes the rest to your team. You can also combine the two.
Does a customer know they're talking to AI?
With us, yes. We make that clear at the start of the conversation. A customer who knows also asks their question differently.
What happens if the AI doesn't know the answer?
It says so and passes the question to your team, with the context attached. It's set up to answer only from your knowledge base and your systems.
Can an AI helpdesk answer in several languages?
Yes, from the same knowledge base. Up front we agree which languages you really serve and what happens when a conversation needs to go to a person.
Do I need a call centre for the phone?
Not necessarily. If callers mostly have a fixed question or want a call back, an AI phone assistant can answer. If you need people to hold conversations, a call centre or answering service fits better. Our guide on hiring a receptionist sets out the options side by side.
