How to Outsource Customer Service The Right Way
Customer Outsourcing of Services is a shrewd idea. The idea of outsourcing your customer service to an outside agent could reduce your overheads by a significant amount, which will save your company money, resources and, in many cases an enormous amount of stress.
It's certainly not a one-size-fits all solution, and there's no magical outsourcing beans to help ease the process.
It is the reason you must be aware of your choices in particular when an outside company is likely to be directly in contact directly with customers.
We'll discuss outsourcing of customer service in depth. We'll review its advantages and drawbacks, as well as offer five tips to help you create seamless outsourcing of customer service.
Then, we'll discuss how to choose the best outsourcer and also highlight three outstanding customer service outsourcing firms. In the final part, we'll outline the five-step method to switch to an outsourcing customer support team without difficulty.
This Article Contains:
(Click the link to get the direct link to the section you want to jump into)
- What is Customer Service Outsourcing?
- 5 "Right" Motives to outsource your customer support
- 3 'Wrong' Reasons To Outsource Your Customer Service
- 5 Secrets To Flawless Customer Service Outsourcing
- Which Type of Customer Service Should You Choose?
- How To Find Kickass Customer Service Professionals?
- 3 Top Customer Support Outsourcing Companies
- How to Switch To An Outsourced Support Team?
Let's get started.
If you're in search of simple ways to know the tasks your outsourcing customer service representative is working on, you can download Time Doctor free for 14 days. You can see what is their current task, and how they take to complete, and also see which websites or apps they're using in real-time.
What is Customer Service Outsourcing?
Outsourcing customer support involves engaging a third party company to handle support for you.
You can now choose to provide a multichannel, or Omni channel customer services to your customers:
- Support for multichannel: providing customer support across two or more channels including offline and online messaging such as social media, email and more.
- Omni channel Support is the process of storing all customer data in one location to make it easily available to agents who support customers across different interactions.
The best method of outsourcing your customer service is contingent on the needs of your business. Also, you should be willing to look at suppliers who employ new and cutting-edge technologies to improve customer satisfaction (CSAT.)
But how much does outsourcing customer service cost?
The price can differ based on the type of service that you need. It could start as low as 70 cents/minute for the basic answering service and rise to as high as $25 per hour for contact center specialists who are dedicated.
If you're new to outsourcing or haven't had the chance to try it before, take a look at The Complete Guide to Outsourcing.
Five 'Right' reasons to outsource your Customer Service
outsourcing the customer support department may benefit you for many reasons. Let's take a look at five most beneficial ones:
1. To Lower Operational Costs
Do you want the same high-quality of customer service and cost savings?
Outsourcing your customer service personnel is an alternative to hiring a full-time customer service team.
Outsourcing permits the business owner to contract employees instead of full-time employees. It means that they do not have to pay a set amount and provide benefits like health insurance and transportation, overtime and more.
When you outsource, you could save up to $3000 for initial installation and infrastructure costs! This is nearly the length of a 25-year Amazon Prime subscription at current prices.
Additionally, the costs of your employees can be reduced further by outsourcing customer service to a nation with lower costs of living.
For instance, that, costs of living in India is less expensive than that is the case in US. This means you are able to offer more affordable and affordable rates to your outsourced customer service staff based in India.
2. To Increase Support Coverage Quickly
Businesses like e-commerce could be busier during the Christmas season.
You may need recruit additional staff to handle the increased demand for customer support rapidly.
If you decide to hire employees and you are looking for applicants, the process of finding the right, interviewing and training potential employees may take a few weeks.
In contrast, outsourced partners such as Companies such as Accenture as well as Mindy Support can provide fully integrated customer service teams that swiftly adapt to the company's needs.
3. To Streamline Repetitive Tasks
Different customers could encounter the same problem or encounter the similar problems.
Instead of trying to fix the same problems every time you and your team's time could be more productively spent working on different tasks. This is why outsourcing a customer support manager to take care of repetitive tasks is a great choice, particularly if the questions aren't overly technical.
4. To Scale Up Your Business
If your business is experiencing rapid change and expansion and rapid changes, you may not be able to concentrate on customer service.
It is the perfect moment to outsource customer support to ensure you have a fast, reliable service, while also determining the goals for the future of your business.
5. To Increase Global Coverage
Let's say that you wish to expand the geographical areaof your company.
You'll need to recruit bilingual support personnel who are able to communicate with new customers efficiently.
Instead, if you decide to outsource this service requirement to a trusted service partner it is easy to promote this service to increase your customers.
3 'Wrong' Reasons to Outsource Your Customer Service
Support for outsourcing has been in use since the age of the internet. But, there's an immense gap in the knowledge base which has led to all kinds of myths and misperceptions.
Don't make these mistakes in your decision to move to an external support team.
1. To Exercise High Budget Cuts
While outsourcing the customer support department may save money in the short term but it can impact your performance. A service that is low-cost usually has the capability to handle just routine requests for support.
Therefore, they may not be equipped to deal with technically demanding or specific requests.
2. To Avoid Support Responsibilities
The outsourcing of customer support isn't the best method to let go of the responsibility.
It's a partnership which requires cooperation and commitment for both parties.
If you allow your support team outsourced to their own devices the team could become disengaged from your company's image. This means that the quality of your customer service could drop dramatically at an alarming rate.
3. To Make a Quick Fix
Sure, a service provider is a professional but don't expect them to resolve all of your issues in a matter of minutes!
Achieving a high-quality customer experience takes patience, consistency and the ability to plan. It is possible that you will need to spend a significant amount of time to train your team that you outsource to.
5 Secrets to Flawless Customer Service Outsourcing
Before you start to look for help from outside sources it is essential to develop an action plan of how you can achieve your goals in customer service.
Here are five key strategies to optimize outsourcing of customer service procedures.
1. Establish Brand Voice and Tone Guidelines
If it's through telephone, text, or even through your logo the way your customers interact with you is a testament to your interactions with them.
So it is important that when you work with external support staff it should be exactly like your in-house team.
Here's how:
- Develop a set of guidelines for your brand that outline what your company's brand guidelines can and cannot communicate.
- Think of scenarios they could be confronted with in the future, and assess their response to the scenario.
- Let your children see Dilbert cartoons on loops so that they are able to deal with difficult people.
(Okay this one could be a bit of a stretch, however the two others are certainly not a stretch.)
2. Research Multiple Options
Some call centers are adept in handling repetitive or high-volume conversations, whereas others concentrate on more in-depth scenarios.
To ensure that you locate the best service to meet your requirements You should invest an extensive amount of time seeking out viable solutions for customer service. You should take into consideration the time difference, language requirements, and the minimal number of support calls, among other factors.
3. Consider Legal and Security Risks
You must examine you secure internal system before you permit anyone else to gain access to your files.
Discover which data about customers is considered to be sensitive. You can then limit access to specific data like health records, etc.
Before you sign any contracts that are binding with the service provider ensure that your legal team read the contract documents thoroughly.
4. Invest in the Right Tools
If you're planning to talk to your outsourced support team, you will need to utilize Slack and Zoom tools.
If you're charging your call center workers outsourced for their time, Time Doctor is a fantastic alternative. It calculates your pay automatically in accordance with the hours actually employed.
5. Set Aside Time for Training
Whatever your schedule, you'll have to devote a significant portion of your time to educate your staff.
Why is training so crucial to Customer Service?
The quality of customer service can determine the success or failure of your business.
After one bad incident, 51% of customers have never done business with the company again!
In addition, the fact that customers are significantly greater likely leave negative reviews due to one bad experience with a service.
This all shows how important it is to maintain the highest level of customer service in all times.
Which Type of Customer Service Should You Choose?
After you've decided outsourcing is the right choice for your needs then it's time to investigate the various kinds that are available for customer support.
Here are three kinds of customer service tasks that you can outsource:
1. Email
Support for email is usually a secure outsourcing choice due to the fact that the most clients don't need to receive a response in a matter of minutes it takes 24 hours to respond. standard in the industry to receive a response.
This allows the customer service agent ample time to investigate any issues and address the customer with the appropriate answers, increasing customer satisfaction.
The use of email also removes one of the biggest consumer complaints about outsourcing customer service - difficult understanding the rep or understanding the representative.
Tips for success Use the software that comes with an sharing inbox feature that lets your entire team be able to access and reply to all emails in one place, whether they come from clients or sales leads is among the easiest ways to ensure that everyone is current.
2. Call Centers
call centers can be a great choice, particularly if have a lot of interactions with customers.
If you opt for this method, you need to select the right contact center you choose carefully.
Why?
Representatives may take on many inbound as well as callers every day from different organizations and employee turnover rates could also be a problem.
For more details, look into our comprehensive outsourcing for call centers in our guide.
3. Social Media
Alongside traditional methods Many companies manage customer service issues via social media sites such as Twitter as well as Facebook.
A customer's query can typically be addressed with an instant response, which makes Twitter's 280 characters a great method of communicating. Additionally, customers can leave messages and receive quick responses without waiting.
Small and large companies also take a proactive approach by searching their company's identity on social media to locate complaints or issues they can answer.
How to Find Kickass Customer Service Professionals?
Here are some tips you can employ when selecting an outsourcing customer service team:
A. Hiring a Call Center Team
If you're a business owner, should you be considering a certain contact center for outsourcing your customer support needs be aware of these things:
1. Primary Language
It's difficult for both the client and the agent when barriers to communication in the form of language prevent the ability to communicate clearly and effectively.
If you decide to outsource customer service on an area in which this could be a concern, look into the service aspect through an experiment call to make sure that it doesn't affect the quality of service.
2. Testimonials
You can search online for forum or blog posts in which customers are able to post reviews for the customer service. There are consume
