
What is customer service outsourcing? What comes to mind when one considers outsourcing customer service? Perhaps an enormous office building of employees wearing headsets and repeating a scripted statement like thank you for calling ABC.
At first blush, your assumptions are valid; customer service has transformed in recent years, and outsourcing procedures have evolved accordingly. Today's outsourcing providers aim not only at faster scaling or decreased workload for you; their primary goal should also include improving the customer experience.
However, making an informed decision whether or not to outsource customer service can take a lot of work. After all, failure could mean losing far more than you gain by outsourcing. This guide will explain what outsourcing customer service entails and provide insight into various service providers available and any associated advantages/disadvantages of doing it if necessary. Furthermore, this guide offers practical strategies for implementing outsourcing if it becomes part of your plan for managing customer services.
What Does Customer Support Outsourcing Mean?
Outsourcing occurs when your company contracts a third party to perform support duties. Some of the top customer care firms utilize outside agents who quickly understand your product or brand to assist customers promptly.
Outsourced customer support teams ideally hire and train agents who understand the voice and tone of the brand they support to minimize silences during conversations while simultaneously guaranteeing ongoing dialogues with prospective clients throughout the sales cycle. Companies providing outsourced customer support often employ social media as part of their offering in addition to telephone, chat, and email customer care services. Let's embark on this adventure of discovering an ideal outsourcing customer support partner.
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What Makes Businesses Decide To Outsource Their Customer Support?
Customer service outsourcing has become common. Over 68% of American businesses (both large and small ones) outsource customer support to overseas countries. Businesses often outsource customer service for various reasons, from starting up new and having limited staff and budget to wanting a revamp of their support offering. Whatever the motivation, outsourcing customer service provides an incredibly versatile option that you can tailor specifically to fit your unique customer service requirements and goals.
Your company has the option to outsource all or just some aspects of its customer success operations - call center services, chat support services, technical support services, and peak time support are just a few examples - such as call centers, chat support services, technical support services, and peak time support services as well as customer PR.
Which Kinds Of Customer Service Outsourcing Are There?
When choosing to outsource your customer service, the first thing to consider is the abundance of options available. You should carefully weigh your options and decide which best meets your needs.
Support Via Multiple Channels Versus Omnichannel
Multichannel support provides customer service through multiple channels - for instance, phone calls, live chat sessions, and emails - to provide seamless customer care at every touchpoint across their journey with you. Omnichannel support encompasses this concept while still being tailored toward individual touch points within an account.
Multichannel outsourcing is ideal if your organization only needs to support limited channels with low volumes of client requests; however, omnichannel customer support enhances both satisfaction levels and overall experience for your clients.
Service Providers: Onshore Versus Offshore
Whether you want to use onshore or offshore call center services is crucial when outsourcing customer service. This usually depends on where your clients are situated. Language barriers, cultural differences, time zones, and technology infrastructure are a few things to consider when making this decision. Popular nations where you may outsource your customer service include India and the United States.
Dedicated Vs Shared Customer Service Representatives
Agents providing shared customer service work with multiple businesses simultaneously and are best suited for you if the situation requires minimal personalization and can be easily understood by them. However, you should hire an outside customer support provider when client interactions become complex and require an in-depth understanding of your products, services, and brand. They work exclusively for your company, customizing services to fit with what your clients require for optimal satisfaction - thus increasing customer retention rates and satisfaction with services provided to your customers.
Read More: Maximizing Efficiency: Four Essential Tips for Outsourcing Customer Service in Your Industry
What Are The Benefits And Drawbacks Of Outsourcing Customer Service?
Now that you know what outsourcing customer service involves, let's examine its benefits and drawbacks of outsourcing. This will assist you in determining if outsourcing customer service is consistent with your business strategy, vision, and objectives.
The Benefits:
Let's first examine some benefits of having a third party handle customer service for your company:
- Savings: Outsourcing customer services offers numerous attractive benefits, not least its cost-effectiveness. According to one global outsourcing report, most businesses view cost reduction as their number one goal when outsourcing customer services. Outsourcing customer service can save your company a tremendous amount of money by decreasing costs associated with hiring, onboarding, training, infrastructure upgrades, quality assurance assessments, fixed salaries, and benefits - IBM was even able to decrease customer contact costs by 97% by outsourcing. An outstanding business process outsourcing (BPO) contact center offshore offers the ideal setting to outsource customer service operations, with considerably lower living, labor, and operating expenses than their counterparts in your home country.
- Less Effort: A lot of pressure can be placed on customer service. Additionally, it's a labor-intensive task that requires constant effort to establish and preserve a deep connection with your clients. In-house customer service management may be too much for a business looking to increase on a shoestring budget. It could be hard for you to concentrate on your most important business tasks. In these situations, outsourcing your customer support can relieve a significant burden off of your plate and free up more time and funds for the essential components of your expansion plan.
- Adaptable Protection: Outsourcing customer service allows businesses to provide excellent support around the clock, including weekends and holidays, according to a recent personalized Service Benchmark Survey (76% provide outside regular business hours support while 34% offer 24/7 coverage. Therefore, outsourcing may be the perfect solution if they wish to remain available after hours due to the lack of staff members available for direct support of clients. Outsourcing can also prove particularly helpful if your company experiences an upsurge in customer service requests during peak periods, like the holidays. Outsourcing allows your company the freedom and control needed to adapt when busy periods arrive without incurring added costs for customer support while still being flexible when client demand drops off again.
- Improved Management Of Customer Service: Establishing an outsourced team from scratch is both complex and costly. Finding and hiring suitable personnel, providing necessary training programs, and creating efficient workflow processes may take several months before considering the operational costs of purchasing customer support software. An outstanding outsourced customer support provider will have all the tools and procedures to handle customer inquiries of varying complexity, making their customer support operations more effective while responding faster.
The Drawbacks:
Customer service outsourcing has its drawbacks. Before deciding to outsource, you should be aware of the following risks:
- Limited Understanding Of Your Clients And Product: No matter how excellent their offshore outsourcing partner may be, call center agents need help understanding and appreciating your brand and customers as much as you do. At your company's peril. These external parties cannot access all aspects of its inner workings. They cannot offer customers the depth, context, or nuance needed to create an exceptional customer journey experience. Recent survey results reveal that for about 36% of global and 40% of US customers, customer service agents' inability to resolve their problems remains their number one source of irritation. Unsurprisingly, you can only know whether agents adhering to your company's protocol comply if you keep tabs on every customer interaction - thereby defeating the purpose of outsourcing customer service.
- Absence Of Individual Attention: Establishing a business requires passion and commitment; you should make sure that everything you do and everything that bears your brand name is of the highest caliber. Unfortunately, outsourcing customer service skills cannot ensure that level of quality or passion because, in most cases, your outsourcing partner will take care of several clients concurrently, and your outsourcing company might not be their top priority. Although it is an option, hiring an outsourcing partner that offers your company a specialized team of excellent customer service representatives will be costly.
- Ineffective Communication And Information Silo: Outsourcing excellent customer service experience leaves you little influence over the team of agents assisting your clients and how effectively they communicate and work together. Sufficient collaboration among agents may compromise customer experience by leading to disparities and consistency among services provided to your clients. Customers will become even more frustrated and your brand less professional if they contact your outsourced service department repeatedly and receive different responses each time or have their request transferred multiple times.
- Data Security Issues: Many businesses handle sensitive customer data and are highly vulnerable to misuse, loss, or hacking-especially when a third-party agency is involved. Also, any manipulation of customer data can financially and reputationally damage your company. To protect sensitive data, outsourcing service providers typically have robust security measures and protocols in place. However, even if you choose to outsource your customer support, a data breach remains a serious concern. In addition, transferring data to your outsourcing partner presents a significant security risk due to the increased possibility of system hacking. Businesses may still need help managing customer loyalty even if they return their customer service functions in-house to reduce data security risks. Reverse ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tools are helpful because they allow businesses to move data from multiple external sources-like call center software-back to their internal systems for improved management and analysis. To avoid potential breaches or data leaks, businesses must ensure proper security measures when utilizing such tools.
Practices To Adhere To When Contracting Out Customer Support
Your brand's customer service interaction is crucial since it can make or break your company. Therefore, if you do decide outsourcing is the best course of action for your business after weighing the benefits and drawbacks, make sure you execute it well by keeping these best practices of outsourcing customer support in mind:
- Clearly Define Your Customer Service Objectives: Before outsourcing customer service operations for your organization, ensure you set specific goals. Goal setting must remain your responsibility; only you fully comprehend your company and customer service's role within your company's broader plan. Make it a point to communicate these objectives to your outsourcing partner, whether your objectives include cost-cutting, broadening services offered, speedier response times, or improving customer satisfaction improving customer base by customer service provider.
- Pick Your Partner Carefully When Outsourcing Customer Service: Customer service strategies vary significantly across businesses. Your success in providing service depends upon multiple variables, including brand strategy and goals, the industry you operate within, the types of requests received, and so forth. It is, therefore, crucial that you find someone with extensive knowledge of your target market and overall goals who fully understands them when outsourcing support.
- Organize Frequent Gatherings And Evaluate Conversations: Lacking regular communication between yourself and your outsourcing partner, your customer service department could quickly decline. Receiving updates about what's working well and emerging customer issues is imperative if swift resolution remains your goal. These conversations can also help you determine whether particular customer query trends are rising. If several of your customers request the same feature from your product, inform the product development team so they can include it in their feature pipeline and add it accordingly.
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Conclusion
Finding an outsourcing partner capable of handling customer support services for your company can dramatically affect its growth and success. By creating an alliance with an appropriate outsourcing provider, you can improve customer satisfaction, expedite support operations, and focus on core business functions more efficiently.
Now that you understand how to find an ideal partner, take action immediately. Scan possible outsourcing partners for possible matches before engaging them for conversations and comparing offerings against your individual needs. Remember that choosing an ideal partner requires more than simply ticking boxes on a list; it involves finding someone who understands your industry, is committed to exceptional customer service, and shares similar core values. Implement a proactive research, assessment, and management plan to forge long-lasting outsourcing relationships that contribute positively to your company's expansion and prosperity.