Customer service is a critical factor in the success of a business. Good customer service builds up a brand’s reputation and creates loyal supporters. The foundation of customer support is continuous engagement with your customers on different channels. But what if you’re too busy to handle communication? The answer is customer support outsourcing.
What is Customer Support Outsourcing?
Customer support outsourcing means hiring a 3rd party service provider to handle and manage a company’s customer-facing communication channels. Commonly, the 3rd party service provider is a call centre that has well-trained agents to handle incoming business calls. These agents can also engage with the customers through chats, emails, and outbound calls.
How to Get Customer Support Outsourcing
Besides a busy workload, other reasons for getting customer support are the need for a 24/7 customer hotline, seasonal needs, or starting a new business. There are several steps you need to undertake to get the right customer support outsourcing you need.
First, establish are the business’ goals. It’s best to know if you only want to cut costs or if you want an expert to build up good customer support for your business. Second, think about your customer channels. This is to identify whether you need agents to answer calls, do outbound calls, or provide chat support.
The third step is choosing the right customer support partner. You may need multi-lingual agents. It’s also best to check the references or reviews of your 3rd party service provider. Fourth, orientation and training are needed to familiarize the outside vendor with what you want. Last, you need to set up metrics to know if you’re expectations are met.
Benefits of Customer Support Outsourcing
Once you get the right customer support outsourcing partner, you will surely reap the benefits of letting these pros handle the job for you.
Higher Skilled Workforce.
Customer support outsourcing means getting the best people when it comes to creating rapport and servicing your customers. The right team is well-trained and experienced in giving the best customer experience and satisfaction that your company can benefit from. As such, your brand’s reputation will rise for the better and your customer loyalty will increase.
Improved Resource Management.
Customer support outsourcing is both a management and support structure that can handle customer service issues whether big or small. Your managers don’t need to worry about these tasks anymore, so you can better use them in other important functions of your business.
Improved Efficiency.
For the record, studies showed that the average businesses who engage in customer support outsourcing are 50% more efficient than those who don’t. Customer support outsourcing creates a ripple effect on efficiency and productivity.
When your in-house team handles your customer service support, their attention stays on serving the customer. When something goes wrong, they’re easily distracted because they’re working closely with the other department.
The close bond somewhat hampers the need for change. Outsourced customer support not only focuses on communicating with your customers. They also see to it that issues are resolved by coordinating with the other department in a professional manner.
Optimized Costs.
Most of the time, customer support outsourcing commands a cheaper cost than having an in-house customer team. First, you don’t need to spend on hiring and training. Second, you can save on your overhead expenses. Third, if you’re outsourcing from a different country like India and the Philippines, labour is cheap.
