How appealing does the idea of outsourcing work sound? It’s a very attractive thought and one that can save you money, time, resources, and pressure. If you are considering outsourcing your customer service department to a third party, you’ll be joining over 50% of other businesses that do it.
Building and retaining a robust customer base is no easy task. Customer service outsourcing has to be done right because 17% of customers in the U.S abandon a company after one bad interaction.
What Is Customer Support Outsourcing?
To maintain the subtle reputation of your brand, it is imperative that you ensure the satisfaction of your customers. In the competitive 21st century world of business, the product life cycle no longer ends at the sale. After-services are essential to customer satisfaction and customer care representatives play a considerable role in this.
Other than that, the fact that most consumers are shopping online means that if they need to inquire about something in person, they must call the company. Most businesses operating online, which is essentially all businesses, must have customer services to answer customer queries and solve problems.
What Are the Benefits of Outsourcing Customer Services?
Even though cutting costs is always a primary motivation for most businesses, there is so much more to outsourcing customer services. Outsourcing is a better alternative to hiring a full-time in house customer support team.
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You won’t have to pay fixed salaries, transportation costs, overtime costs, and other benefits like healthcare. Besides, you can expect lower rates if you outsource your customer services to countries with lower cost of living. India is a good example.
To Increase Support Coverage
Outsourced customer support may be crucial to your business when you are too busy to talk to all your customers. For instance, eCommerce websites may be super busy during the holiday seasons.
Third-party customer service companies are always available, they can be hired at a moment’s notice and increase coverage immediately. This process is much easier compared to hiring new employees. Beyond that, for businesses that are expanding globally, having multilingual customer support means better services for all customers, regardless of where they are.
To Scale Your Business
A growing company goes through many changes. If your business goes through the transition at a rapid rate, you may not prioritize customer services. Customer support outsourcing is hands down one of the best things you can do for your business during such a time. The last thing you want is to lose the customers who are helping you grow.
To Streamline Repetitive Tasks
Different customers tend to fall into similar problems, and you may find yourself answering the same questions. When queries are not overly technical, an outsourced customer service is much better at handling it while you take care of other crucial business matters.
Customer Support Services to Outsource
There are different customer support services to cover different communication channels. These include call centers, email communication, online chats, and social media interactions. It’s up to you to decide which ones you want to keep in-house. It may be enough for outsourced contact centre services to handle the call while you manage other modes of communication.
What You Must Know Before Outsourcing Customer Services
There are certain factors you need to look for in external help. After all, they will be dealing directly with your customers. You want to ensure exemplary services that will keep customers satisfied and coming back.
Specialization
There is such a huge market for customer services that you’ll find various services on offer. Depending on your type of business, you may need a company that can deal with simple repetitive issues. You may also need one that can tackle sensitive and in-depth technical issues.
Find a team that will undoubtedly take care of your target market. If a customer service firm claims to cover a broad spectrum, unless they are a big company that can handle that, they may not be specialized in any of it.
Location
The geographical location will not only impact the price of the service but the quality of services as well. For instance, European and American firms will charge much higher compared to India or Pakistan, but the quality will be high as well. Most Eastern European countries are usually a better option.
Security Risks
Sensitive customer information must not fall into the wrong hands. That said, ensure you restrict access to certain information. Talk to your legal team about binding contracts, so the service provider understands that security is vital for you.
The Secrets to Seamless Customer Service Outsourcing
How do you handle a company that is so far away from you? External help can prove to be necessary, but it’s crucial for you to have a solid plan to achieve your goals. The first order of business should be to have internal managers that will connect with the external team and offer guidance.
Focus on Training
The second order of business is training the external staff to ensure they offer maximum productivity. Provide manuals, FAQs, and training videos if necessary. You need to establish your brand tone, so customers don’t detect changes. Test the employees using hypothetical scenarios and cover as many as you can before you send them to real customers.
Maintain Communication
You need to create a partnership with your external customer service team, so establish open communication with them. This will help you gauge what areas require more training. Online communication tools can work in your favor if you want to simplify communication when outsourcing customer services.
Monitor Quality
The quality of services your external team offers need to be of high-quality. Use quality assurance metrics to evaluate performance. Gauge their average answering speeds, customer satisfaction score, first call resolution, average handle time, and customer effort score. You will gain valuable insights, which will help you improve customer satisfaction and improve customer service productivity.
Embrace Customer Service Outsourcing Today
Customer service outsourcing is a brilliant idea. As long as you find the right firm for the job, you will not just scale your business, but lower expenses and improve your customer support coverage. Just keep in mind that an external service team requires not just training, but constant supervision as well.
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