Beyond the products and services you offer, your customer support team has the potential to make or break your business. These staff members are the face of your company and are frequently the first human interaction a potential customer receives. Not having enough resources for optimal customer service staffing, or even having the wrong people in those positions, can drastically affect your brand’s image and loyalty.
For many companies, the answer for this is outsourcing. Discover the benefits of outsourcing customer support and how it can help you build your brand in ways that keep your customers satisfied and prevent the risks associated with poor service.
Resource Management Improvements
Whether your company is already established or just getting started, outsourcing customer support helps you better use the resources you have. Imagine how your current processes might improve if your employees only focused on daily operational tasks. Consider the amount of time managers spend on dealing with customer calls and issues. These are just one aspect of the benefits of outsourcing customer support.
When you take the weight of support calls off of your current employees, they have more time to dedicate to daily tasks that improve the business. Outsourcing also reduces interruptions in these tasks, helping streamline the processes and making sure that important details aren’t missed. When your employees can focus on operations, and your managers have time to deal with issues and emergencies, your business becomes more solid and provides better service to your clients.
Improved Customer Service
Whether you need traditional or e-commerce customer service outsourcing, your business will see internal and external improvements. Most businesses simply don’t have enough staff to handle the amount of calls that come in each day. With outsourced customer support, you help ensure that each customer receives a timely response to their questions and issues. Call centers generally have a high number of employees, which means there are enough team members to address the needs of your customers when they need it.
Customers who experience long wait times or have to wait hours for a response tend to be unhappy with the service. This means they are more likely to share their negative experiences with others, which can damage your brand’s image. Having a call center available that answers quickly boosts the customer experience and keeps them happier throughout the process.
Meet Customers on Their Terms
One consideration when thinking about how to outsource customer service is the methods that buyers use to reach you. Most call centers provide a mix of telephone, live chat, social media and email representatives, which means that your customers can reach out on their terms. One of the important customer experience trends is providing service in ways that clients want it. Being able to answer their questions and concerns quickly using the same communication platforms they prefer bolsters confidence in your organization and often improves brand loyalty. Both of these significantly impact revenue and repeat customers.
Another important benefit of outsourcing customer support is multi-language capabilities that help you meet your customers’ needs. If you have an online presence, it is likely that your customer base comes from all over the world. Outsourcing your customer support helps ensure that clients can speak to someone in their native language, which greatly reduces the chances of miscommunication. This also makes customers more comfortable when contacting your business, simply because they know someone will be available that understands them and can discuss their questions and concerns easily.
Reduced Need For Employee Training
Training employees can cost your business thousands over a single year. Rather than spending years grooming employees into efficient and friendly customer service representatives, you can use those funds towards other areas. Eliminating the need to train and instill certain values into employees that answer phone calls gives your business more time and money to spend on finding highly skilled candidates for other positions. Additionally, administrative employees have more time to focus on their specific tasks rather than phone calls, which helps improve efficiency.
How to Outsource Customer Service
Now that you know some of the benefits of outsourcing customer support, you need to understand how to do so correctly. It is important to have a clear understanding of what outsourcing should accomplish, and what the main goals are for the support team.
Make sure to think about your customers and how they typically interact with your business. If you have contact across different platforms, you need to consider call centers that meet those demands. Contact different outsourcing partners before making your choice. Carefully consider what they offer and how their previous clients rate them. Finally, take the time to create a training process for onboarding the company. Make sure to include methods for showing your business culture, quality standards and the type of customers you have.
By completing these steps, your business can quickly start enjoying the benefits of outsourcing customer support with a company that aligns with your goals and the needs of your customers.
