Customer service is an essential part of every business, which is why many companies think they need to rely on an in-house team rather than customer service outsourcing.
The best client communications can safeguard valuable consumers who are happy and at the same time are willing to endorse the company to their family and friends. Businesses that can’t offer a high level of customer service aren’t likely to see customer retention.
By 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. (Source: Walker)
Two of the most significant factors influencing customer service these days are expansions in technology and the move towards customer centricity.
Three major facilities that fall under “Customer Service Outsourcing”
1. Live Chat Support for Website
Live chat support seems an ordinary job but it is essential for all kind of businesses. Especially businesses that need instant customer queries resolved and eCommerce websites.
77% of customers won’t make a purchase if there’s no live chat support.
Suppose you have done everything right up to this point, however your website doesn’t have an agent to answer those quick queries. You might lose a large number of customers.
The job of a website live chat agent is so straight forward that you can hire an agent from outside your country and not have to worry about it.
Here are some tools that can help you with live chat support –
Nudgespot – Allows site operator to engage with customers seamlessly
Intercom – It offers similar features to “Nudgespot” and has pretty cool data management capability
LiveHelpNow – Ideal for Small/Medium Businesses
WebsiteAlive – The One-Person Support Solution
Velaro – Ideal for E-Commerce
2. Email Management Support
Who doesn’t hate getting automated emails?
Yet businesses are sending those machine generated emails every day and probably losing their valuable customers.
Personalized emails deliver 6x higher transaction rates
It’s not just sending emails, there is a lot of components that fall under email management services. To name some – sending mails to prospects, responding to current customers mail, managing email list, email management through CRM, managing newsletter list and sending contents to the customers.
Email conversion is still on the top comparing to other medium.
People who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than people that do not receive email offers
Some tools that will help you manage your emails better.
Help Scout – A cost-efficient, easy-to-use help system
Mojo Helpdesk – For timing replies and tracking customer response
Sirportly – For real-language reports
Snappy – For a fast, Markdown-powered support inbox
3. Social Media Support Services
In today’s market every company is going global and for that reason, you need some help along with your in-house team.
Answering a complaint increases customer advocacy by as much as 25%
If any of your global consumers ask a question in a hurry and you don’t solve it in time, it can reduce your authority by a great deal.
To be exact
Not answering a complaint decreases customer advocacy by as much as 50%
40% of customers who complain in social expect a response within one hour
There are a lot of tasks that falls under social media customer support outsourcing. For instance – social media monitoring, solving customer’s query, launching a social media campaign, social selling and so on.
Tools that can help social media customer support –
Sparkcentral – Customer service tool for communicating in different social platforms
Sprout Social – Specialized tool for social media marketing
Respond – App by buffer focused only on Twitter
Lithium – Intended for managing customer service at scale
Hootsuite – It’s a great tool for one-person response teams
Sprinklr – Enterprise plan that lets you shape relationships with customers via monitoring, listening, and customer service
When you should think about customer service outsourcing –
1. You are Stuck in a Maze of Routine Tasks
If you notice that your company stays in one place for a long period, it is a sign that something is certainly fishy. Your marketing department may be too busy dealing with everyday routine tasks; as a result they are not coming up with fresh ideas.
By customer service outsourcing these everyday tasks, you will get ample time to focus on your main goals.
2. Your Business Deals with Seasonal Clients
The best part about customer service outsourcing is that you don’t have to deal with your team every day. This type of arrangement is certainly useful when your business deals with more seasonal clients.
Once you hire an employee, you have to pay them regardless of your business type. However, you can hire offshore employees only when you need them.
3. You Always Seem to be Falling Behind
No matter what, you’re going to face times of high anxiety and high workloads. But if you find that you’re always running late on your projects and campaigns, you should look to an outsourced form of marketing assistance.
If you find that all your assignments get pushed to the last second, forcing you up against constricted deadlines on a regular basis, it’s time you get an extra hand.
4. Your Managerial Employees are Overloaded
Good outsourcing companies are dependable and consistent. You don’t need to control their work all day to make sure they are doing it right. If your executives are too overwhelmed with duties, you can help them by going for customer service outsourcing.
Thus, they will have fewer people to control and they will be able to do their job better.
5. Employee Switching Rate is High in your Industry
Depending on your industry employee switching rate may vary.
However in customer support and service industry employee switching rate is comparatively high. But it takes a lot of time and resource to train an employee to the market standard.
So you can formulate a secondary service team to always have your back.
6. Your Budget Gets Smaller
Having in-house employees is always more costly than customer service outsourcing.
The salary itself is usually higher not to mention all the other costs such as work insurance, sick leaves, paid vacations, pensions, taxes, bonus and so on.
Especially for startups looking to increase their limits as quickly as possible, reducing employee expenses will mean you can use your cash flow elsewhere without harming your productivity.
7. Your Employees Don’t Provide New perspectives
If you have been in the marketplace with the same team of employees for an extensive period, there is a chance they will fade away bit by bit and not supply epic ideas anymore.
It is fairly a regular thing, as they’ve seen it all and done it all. Instead of sacking all of them, getting a new bunch of employees makes more sense in the long run.
8. Training Takes too Much Time
Training takes time, specifically if they have work accountabilities that disturb the flow every so often.
Outsourcing customer service lets your employees focus most of their efforts on training faster, so that they can fully complete their duties freely.
Over to You
Even considering drawbacks of outsourcing such as insecurity or risk of leak, you cannot negate the obvious benefits, which seem to outnumber the cons. You just need to choose your outsourcing associates smartly and start your profitable journey.
The intensive market development shows that customer service outsourcing is gradually becoming a standard practice for both big international companies as well as small local ones.