Project risk assessment of an outsourced call centre project for a national health insurance scheme

Abstract

This work assesses the perception of risk associated with an outsourced call centre project for a National Health Insurance Scheme. The study employed the ISO 31000:2009 risk assessment framework with risk probability and risk consequence parameters to interview experts that participated in a call centre outsourcing project. The study identified the following as major or high-risk factors that may affect a typically outsourced call centre project: integration challenges between contact centre and the existing client's systems; inadequate project scope definition and scope creep; telecom providers not delivering effective services; poor coordination and communication among key project stakeholders; changes request by the client; estimating errors; and lack of process alignment between the contact centre and the client's back office. The study is relevant especially for countries interested in outsourcing their national health insurance customer relations to outsourced call centres to enable them to focus on their key services.