5 Benefits of Outsourcing Your Customer Service – Justin Osborne
Customer service plays a vital role in your business. It can increase your number of customers, the amount of money they will spend with your business, and how frequently they will buy from you. It also generates positive word-of-mouth about your business.
Needless to say, customer service is one of the essential pillars of a company. Yet, some businesses run low on resources (or staff for that matter) to tend their customers’ or client’s post-purchase needs.
Thousands of companies find outsourcing customer service as a cost-efficient solution. Yet, many are still skeptical about it, citing the lack of management control and having doubts about the result.
In this article, you’ll find the top 5 benefits of outsourcing to help you decide whether you should outsource your customer service or not.
#1. Cuts Expenses
According to Micro Sourcing, companies outsource to lower their operating costs. In fact, it’s the top reason why businesses hire teams from overseas.
It’s in every company’s desire to come up with solutions that can significantly improve the business without hurting the bank. If you are a startup company and the calls aren’t that many, outsourcing your customer service may be the best way to go. Teams from overseas usually have a lower hourly rate.
Moreover, when you outsource your customer service, you’re actually hiring representatives that already possess the necessary skills in handling clienteles professionally. This means training new employees isn’t needed.
There’s also no need to invest in new equipment, facilities, and operations as these will be handled by the provider or the hired representative.
Of course, cutting overheads shouldn’t be the primary motive in outsourcing. Your customer service team can make or break your business. Customers want to feel they are heard, supported, and respected. Hence, it’s crucial to put emphasis on outsourcing quality service.
Hire people who are customer-minded, able to handle challenging matters professionally, and can deal with difficult people. Hence, when outsourcing customer representatives from overseas, check out what their clients had to say about them.
#2. 24/7 Support
A round-the-clock customer service is imperative more so if your business is operating globally. For example, an eCommerce company needs customer service that can be contacted regardless of the time zone of the customer.
As mentioned, customers love to be heard. They love being able to send an email, pick up the phone, or have a live chat with a customer service representative and get real-time responses. For people who work night shifts or live in different time zones, a customer service that’s readily available at any time of the day is remarkable.
For example, an online assignment help company that has customers across the globe, most of which are students and professors, may need to have a 24/7 customer service available.
Having a 24/7 customer service won’t be easy. Therefore, hiring people from a specialist company that offers this facility is a viable alternative. Also, getting customer operations is cheaper when outsourced.
#3. More Focus, Less Stress
One of the top reasons why companies outsource is that they want to focus more on the core business, according to Deloitte.
There are just too many things to deal with when you run a business—the overwhelming stress of how to improve the products or services, hiring best talents, brainstorming of effective and trending marketing strategies, to name a few.
On top of these things, dealing with customer complaints and post-purchase concerns make the load much heavier to bear.
When you outsource your customer service, you’ll be able to free up your in-house resources and reassign them to growth-driving functions, such as marketing, sales, and business development. Outsourcing your customer operations team won’t just benefit you but also your in-house staff.
Some people doubt the efficacy of outsourcing customer service. They fear that outsourcing will lose the personal touch in the in-house service staff. While this concern is valid and totally understandable, it’s important to take note that overworked staff does not function efficiently.
When your in-house staff is stressed, swamped, and overwhelmed with endless phone calls, it prevents them from fulfilling their duties properly.
The strategy is to tell the outsourcing company about your brand—your business’ personality and approach. Write down everything about your company that can help the outsourcing company understand your requirements. Take advantage of tools like Grammarly, Hemingway App, write my essay apps, and Ginger to ensure your document is free of error and concise.
On the other hand, the outsourced customer service may not know the technical know-how of your company. Hence, it helps if you have an in-house customer service team to answer calls that may be too technical for the outsourced team to comprehend. Other activities such as lead generation, general inquiry, and appointment setting can be tasked with the outsourced team.
#4. Flexibility
Call volume may increase, especially if you run a retail or hospitality business. Such a business may get tons of calls during the holiday seasons.
Of course, you do not want to miss a pie, so you want to ensure you have a team of excellent customer service representatives to accommodate calls and answer queries.
#5. Scalability
As for a startup business, the need for a customer service team may swing up and down over time. As your business grows, having a dedicated team in customer operations becomes a necessity.
For example, James Well, the paper writing services CMO, finds it necessary to expand customer service support as the huge impact to enter new markets by the increase their company’s presence via online segment.
You can add more people or hours according to the needs of your company. If, however, the need for customer service decreases, you can renegotiate your contract with the outsourcing company instead of terminating full-time staff.
Understanding the benefits of outsourcing your customer service will help you make an educated choice for you and your firm. Take note, though, that there are other factors that must be considered, such as employee compensation, training, equipment costs, and business volumes.
Should you need to outsource customer service support, pick a company with proven competence that meets all your present and future business needs.
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