When Gartner talks, CIO's listen.

Outsourced customer service operations can cost almost a third more than those retained in-house, according to a new study by Gartner.

The research firm found that outsourced operations are 30 percent more expensive than the top quartile of in-house customer service operations.

Alexa Bona, research director at Gartner, said businesses often fail to take hidden costs, such as in-house backup support to the outsourced function, into account.

"The outsourced service is often more efficient, but then outsourcers need to make a profit too," she said.

Gartner also said 80 percent of organizations that outsource their customer management operations purely to cut costs will fail to do so, while 60 percent of those who outsource parts of the customer-facing process will have to deal with customer defections and hidden costs that outweigh any potential savings offered by outsourcing.
"If all you are trying to do is save money, you are not going to be successful," Bona said.