Customer service has evolved into a specialized area due to changes in consumer expectations and behaviors and rapid technological progress. Outsourced customer support effectively allows businesses of all sizes to reduce expenses while improving efficiency.
Questions may include, "We are saving money, but does our cost-cutting meet its intended purpose of providing customers with superior services?" Business owners are frequently faced with the dilemma of whether or not to transfer customer service calls.
What Is Outsourcing Customer Service?
Outsourcing customer service refers to a practice where businesses hire an outside party instead of employing their employees in-house to manage customer service processes and oversee customer interactions. External firms serve as the first point of contact for customers with inquiries or customer complaints about your product or service.
Businesses may outsource part or all of their support operations, such as departmental assistance and peak-time coverage. As mentioned above, there are various options available to you regarding communications, such as shared and dedicated, onshore/offshore services and multichannel or omnichannel offerings.
The Advantages of Outsourcing Customer Service
To assist in making an informed decision, here's a list of benefits associated with outsourcing customer service to third-party agencies. Read on to understand how outsourcing customer service could add value to business.
1. Cost Reduction
One of the primary drivers behind outsourcing services for businesses is cost reduction. Outsourcing can reduce hiring, onboarding and training expenses as well as space and infrastructure requirements; not to mention, by not hiring internal teams, you no longer pay their salaries and employee benefits, saving thousands each year through outsourcing! Outsourcing to countries where minimum wages are lower is another effective strategy to save money.
2. Reduced Workload
Customer service can be an arduous job. Maintaining relationships with customers and upholding service standards are two crucial tasks. Outsourcing customer support teams allows your team to focus on what matters most for the business - thus decreasing workload while freeing up resources to focus on other important elements of growth strategy.
3. Flexibility
Choose flexible services with options that allow you to tailor the kind and timing of the service provided. It can be challenging for smaller teams to provide round-the-clock support during busy periods or holidays, which makes customer support outsourcing worthwhile in these instances. You can select any channel - email, social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, phone calls, etc.- to meet customer support requirements.
4. Efficient Customer Service Management
Building a team of highly-skilled professionals for customer service management can be challenging, which takes both time and effort. Outsourcing can give you access to specialists specializing in handling this area for far less expense - increasing efficiency while saving costs!
5. Faster Response Times
Call centers strive to reduce response times. Call centers can achieve this by employing additional staff members, increasing support hours, or employing cutting-edge technologies.
6. Technology & Automation
To be successful at customer service, one must establish their presence across all communication channels - this can only be accomplished with omnichannel integration. Customers expect service across mobile and PC devices - even outside business hours! Third-party call centers use cutting-edge technology for customer service teams provision allowing them to handle customer retention more efficiently with cutting-edge call centers using call management technology.
The Disadvantages of Outsourcing Customer Service
1. Chance of Customer Satisfaction Declining
Outsourcing customer satisfaction is often top of mind for business owners. External employees can only sometimes show as much commitment to their jobs as your staff can. At the same time, agents at call centers should give your customers their full attention due to being employed by multiple companies simultaneously. One solution might be hiring dedicated call center staff for this specific purpose, but this comes at a price.
Contact center software solutions can be especially beneficial if you prefer channels, managing customer support independently. They allow for greater efficiency by automating and streamlining key aspects of customer support experience procedures; additionally, personnel will be able to interact directly with customers and help advance your company by responding directly to customer calls for service internally.
2. Lack of Business Knowledge
Your external firm may need to comprehend your organization's culture and values fully. To keep employees updated on new products, services, pricing changes, policies or any other aspect of your company, customer service agents must adhere to business protocol while offering updated information to their clients using knowledge management systems.
3. Data Isolation
One major disadvantage of outsourcing customer service is that data exists in separate silos, making it more difficult to gain insights when needed. You won't get an accurate picture of customer issues or trends that affect product development decisions.
4. Security Concerns
It may be necessary for customers and call centers to exchange highly confidential data during customer service calls, so the firm that you outsource your business to must possess enterprise-level security certification to protect and safeguard customer data. Failure to do this could jeopardize its reputation and cost you dearly in terms of lost customers and financial costs.
Customer Service Outsourcing: Best Practices
Customers now expect superior service. After one bad experience, they quickly move on. For this reason alone, outsourcing may seem risky. Before outsourcing customer service, carefully evaluate its potential customer advantages and disadvantages. Use best practices as guidance when outsourcing this function.
1. Set Clear Goals
Before outsourcing support services, outline clear goals to meet the purpose of outsourcing support - reducing costs, increasing service hours or improving quality. Consider everything from technical requirements, service hours and skill requirements, and contract types when setting this stage of your outsourcing plans. Outsourced teams must receive clear instructions regarding what their role should be so that they can help achieve their desired goals.
2. Training and Quality Call
Centers employ sales teams of customer service representatives responsible for handling multiple calls simultaneously. These staff must understand your company values, technical details and how best to serve customers.
Considering linguistic and cultural barriers when outsourcing to an overseas call center is vital to maintaining brand integrity. Utilize learning management software to take control of your training program and address its unique culture and technical aspects for your brand and business. Furthermore, tracking service delivery to ensure the achievement of desired goals.
3. Regular Meetings and Discussions
Regular contact with representatives is vital to stay aware of the status of customer service. Doing this helps identify bottlenecks that appear occasionally and assess how well customer service is performing at this moment in time, how improvements could bring it forward, and any product changes necessary to meet customer expectations.
4. How to Analyze Customer Service Success
Outsourcing customer service can help ensure that your goals are achieved, but it is crucially important that you remain aware of how well your objectives for cost, reaction time and client satisfaction are being met.
When evaluating the performance of customer service representatives, they should be evaluated on product knowledge bases, communication abilities, and any performance gaps that need filling. It would help if you informed them how often satisfaction surveys should occur and customer request reports from call centers frequently so you can gauge their customers.
5. Be Sure to Select an Appropriate Call Center
When choosing a call center partner, consider which provider best meets your needs, goals, and values. Many call centers offer flexible services for call volumes, specialization needs and budgets. Select a provider that best matches your business requirements by considering factors like time zone requirements, language needs, expertise levels required, and security issues.
How to Select an Effective Outsourcing Customer Support Service Provider
1. Call Centers: Physical or Remote?
Remote work has grown increasingly popular for various reasons, and its advantages and disadvantages may already be familiar to you if you already employ remote workers or are contemplating employing one. These considerations also apply when selecting which form of a call center to utilize.
Remote support agents are an excellent way to enhance a business process outsourcing (BPO).
- Hire by location: BPOs can source talent for remote agents just as they do with other remote jobs. They keep their hiring and recruiting pipelines open by location.
- Redundancy: When your customer service agents have been physically separated, you are assured that a power failure or bad weather will not affect your ability to serve customers.
- Employee contentment: Remote work is associated with improved wellness, decreased unscheduled absences, and more employee loyalty.
Some benefits could be lost if you utilize a BPO instead of a call center. Physical call centers often help address one of the primary challenges of working remotely; developing camaraderie between members. Therefore, put extra effort into outsourcing customer service with remote teams.
2. Differentiate Between International and Domestic Outsourcing
Discussions around outsourcing often presume that work will be performed abroad. While this can sometimes be the case, outsourcing customer service to a BPO in the US could make sense in certain situations.
Outsourcing internationally is usually less costly when the cost of living in another country is lower than your location; hiring top-tier support agents and offering them fair wages is less costly - while your own country would have more expensive support agents with similar qualifications available to hire customer support.
International outsourcing offers another major benefit: a large talent pool is readily available across different time zones. In countries like the Philippines, millions of customer service representatives are looking for meaningful work with growing customer support automation companies.
Domestic outsourcing offers two important advantages that should be noted. Cultural familiarity is first among them. Suppose most of your clientele reside within your domestic country borders. In that case, domestic support staff will more easily understand and address their clients' problems and worries than international agents can with the proper training program in place.
Domestic outsourcing provides another advantage: perception. In certain societies, outsourcing employment to another nation may be seen as a negative experience. Decadence in outsourcing should not be made lightly, and domestic outsourcing could be an option if your customers will be offended if they work shifts overseas.
Refrain from choosing between domestic or international outsourcing; sometimes, hybrid customer service models incorporating domestic and international agents can bring outstanding results. Hybrid models may include segmenting work to fit each team's strengths or finding temporary solutions. At the same time, you train international agents as experts on your products.
3. What Should Be My Outsourcing Location?
Once you've decided to outsource BPO services, the question becomes which country should serve as your outsourcing destination. As mentioned, several countries possessing great talent are ideal locations for international outsourcing. India, the Philippines and Mexico in Central America and Bulgaria are among the most sought-after locations.
Consider your company's needs before choosing an outsourcing location. If customer support representatives who speak multiple European languages are needed, eastern Europe might be an appropriate location; Mexico or the Philippines could offer bilingual agents;
Otherwise, the Philippines offers great customer care in English - millions of contact center workers possess college degrees and speak it with an easy accent; furthermore, this location boasts agents available 24 hours per day so can support a 24-hour operation! Other key considerations for development projects are literacy rates, technological infrastructures, political stability and cultural considerations, and costs.
4. Shared or Dedicated Agents
Businesses often outsource customer service to BPOs that use agents shared among multiple businesses; this option may be suitable if your ticket volume is low and you cannot afford a dedicated team; however, this approach has some drawbacks that should be carefully considered before choosing this option.
As shared agents serve multiple companies, they may need to help comprehend your product and respond intelligently to customer experiences / questions. If this strategy appeals to you, consider sending only simple tickets like password resets for outsourcing. As their name implies, dedicated agents specialize in supporting your business exclusively and can bring numerous advantages.
- Agents can be dedicated to becoming familiar with your company's product, culture and brand.
- Integrating dedicated agents into your team is easier.
- Dedicated agents can develop a deeper understanding of your business strategy and provide more feedback that can help improve your products and service.
How to Provide Excellent Customer Service
The ten best ways to provide excellent customer service.
1. Know Your Product
As a customer service agent, your day entails finding solutions to customer issues - this requires being an expert on any products you sell. Knowledge of your product features and benefits is integral to providing great customer service. In an ideal world, you should feel confident enough in its features to articulate them clearly to customers while simultaneously showing them its benefits and solving any potential issues.
Your job as a customer base service agent should be to ensure customers feel they're getting maximum value from their investment in products or services. Know everything about what you offer so that you can delight customers by suggesting timely improvements for features or services they may want to be added.
2. Display a Positive Attitude
Maintaining a positive outlook is integral to providing excellent service. Email and live chat may come across as cold. Your brain uses multiple signals to detect your emotional states, such as body language and facial expressions, that often remain absent when communicating online. Emojis can help convey warmth and humor when email or chat conversations become heated or contentious or pick up the telephone if things escalate quickly.
3. Solve Problems Creatively
Poor customer service has caused many consumers to leave, making problem-solving an essential aspect of your job. Problems will always need solving! Refrain from surprising customers when trying to solve their issues; exceeding expectations by meeting all their needs will create loyal customers who will continue buying your products.
4. Respond Rapidly
At the heart of any online experience for customers is their value is recognized, and customer service consists of quickly and efficiently solving queries as efficiently as possible. Being prompt in responding to smaller issues that consume less time can only strengthen that perception. Customer service always wins out over speed.
Customers understand that more complicated inquiries require additional time to answer. You should never compare the speed with which you respond with the speed with which they solve their issue - they do not like waiting in queues but should take whatever time necessary to address their concern - something which you should also strive for as an individual service provider. Your customers are important, so do everything possible to respond promptly without making them feel rushed or pressured into hanging up immediately.
5. Tailor Your Service
Customers desire personalized service and considerate treatment when seeking service; being treated as more than a number results in them becoming upset when not treated as individuals with unique answers rather than being passed around like tennis balls by different personnel. Customers prefer dealing with people rather than businesses, and many give out gifts on customers' birthdays.
Do Customer Support Companies Understand Their Birthdays and Interests? By knowing their birthdays and interests and any hobbies or passions they share? Are You Able to Make Them Laugh? While this may only sometimes be possible with customers, adding personal touches or going off script is a fantastic way to show that You Care About Their Customer loyalty / Satisfaction.
6. Customers Can Assist Themselves
Customers prefer to avoid reaching out for help to solve their problems; they want to tackle and quickly resolve them themselves. 81 percent of customers want to resolve complex issues on their own before speaking with an official, while another survey shows 71% want the ability to address most customer service problems themselves.
Help is founded on the idea that self-service options can be economical and scalable to keep satisfied customers. By placing help content front and center on each page, customers can quickly get answers without leaving. And should they not find their answer themselves, real-life assistance is only a few clicks away.
7. Customer-Focused Support
Customers are the cornerstone of your business and should be treated as such. Treat them like the center of the universe because that is exactly how they should be treated! Southwest Airlines demonstrated this principle when one of their pilots put people before targets by delaying a flight for someone attending a funeral service. That customer's expectations will always remember how Southwest put people first!
8. Listening Actively
Receiving customer feedback means both reviewing past data and listening in real time. When your customers take time to talk with you, make sure they know you are paying attention! Listening will increase the odds that you'll detect their real issues and be able to resolve them efficiently for happier customers. Listening is key; don't assume you know everything your customer says!
9. Live Up to your Promise
Customer service should always be done with common sense; don't disappoint your customers by breaking your promises or their trust. Respect and reliability are key components in upholding promises made. If you commit to an SLA of 99% uptime, for example, ensure this standard is kept.
Uphold your promise! If you don't keep your word, offer something in exchange, such as promising to contact the buyer within 24 hours or offering to replace or refund their product if it breaks. Although short-term financial loss may be associated with this arrangement, over time, this strategy could bring you lasting happy customer relationships.
Not surprisingly, customers do not appreciate when you exceed promises; they get upset when promises are broken. Therefore it is prudent to underpromise and overdeliver to maintain this important social contract.
10. Help Others by Being Proactive
It is crucial to go the extra mile when providing excellent customer service; when all boxes have been checked off but still require improvements. Being proactive in this regard is the way forward. Helping customers can mean anticipating and meeting their needs before they have even expressed them. Customers may request one thing without realizing they require another; your job is anticipating and meeting customer queries and their needs.
Customers will return if they feel valued by you, which relates to social psychology's phenomenon of reciprocity: being nice to customers in return will motivate them to buy your products! Sending customers a small "just because" present or promotional code will show your appreciation for their business and show that you care.
Conclusion
Customer service is integral to any successful business, yet trusting someone with their care may be daunting when outsourcing customer service responsibilities. That is why research should always precede making definitive decisions about outsourcing customer service roles.
Outsourcing can be a fantastic way to expand customer service capabilities and support the growth of your business. A reputable BPO may provide your key to future expansion if your support queue is growing beyond manageability and you need help to provide excellent customer service experience.
