It is important in all growing businesses to understand the benefits and the downside of outsourcing their technical support processes. There are always pros and cons of outsourcing and you should consider those before making a decision on a new partner.
Here’s a light comparison between outsourcing technical support versus keeping it in-house:
Cost of Ownership
When you choose to outsource, you pay someone else to hire agents, train them, get resources and over-seeing all the process.
Outsourcing may seem like you are just redirecting your budget and paying for calls to be routed overseas, but the bottom line is outsourcing tech support is most likely cheaper than doing it yourself.
When it comes to the Tech Support, outsourcing companies manage to cover and execute the whole process without directly increasing your redundant costs to run it.
Scaling Up or Down
There can be a time when your support agents are receiving more calls than what they can handle, or requests decrease during a period of time. In both scenarios you will have to expand or downsize the team of agents accordingly. This could mean hiring more agents, more training and equipment or removing people from the job, but when outsourcing your Tech Support these decisions and requirements don’t have to be yours anymore. Your outsourcing partner will handle expanding or downsizing which can save you a lot of time and money.
Quality Control
When working with an outsourced partner, you are handing over the responsibility of making sure that your customers are getting the attention they deserve. This is why setting quality controls standards is so important and widely promoted by outsourcing companies.
You should always be aware and know if the agents are going the extra mile to ensure that your customers are satisfied.
In-house tech support is easy to supervise and improve when things are going the wrong way, so it can be as hands-on as you need it to be. If you work with a reliable outsourcing company you shouldn’t have any problem setting quality control procedures to guarantee your customer satisfaction and your business growth.
Staying in Touch
You will need feedback about the levels of satisfaction and the opinions of your customers regarding your service or product, so when it comes to being in touch with the customers, outsourcing may not seem like the best option but you’d be pleasantly surprised. Just make sure to require this feedback when reaching out for a Tech Support partner.
Depending on your intentions and the size of your company, it may be easier to do it In-house but consider the outsourcing companies may have software and resources to get the information you require when you require it.
Trained Agents
A great partner will guarantee hiring the best available candidates and proper hands-on training for every agent, eliminating the downside of not having permanent employees that are familiar or experts in your field. Professional agents are prepared to solve queries and give solutions fast, they are also familiar with the software which makes providing a high quality experience to our customers easier.
Even when providing in-house Tech Support, rigorous training will be required, keeping in mind that real experts at the company are the ones working on the product, not necessarily available to be answering calls. This means extended training sessions and coaching, which can dig into your pockets and take longer.
Going beyond
In these times Tech Support is all about being reactive, quick and creative. Customers have an open opportunity to share their thoughts and complaints through Social Media for the World to see. This is when outsourcing can help you provide an immediate response to those situations and get your customers (and his followers) a fast and consistent solution to their complaint.
Outsourcing companies can provide a wide variety of communication solutions to keep you close to your customers, they can cover calls, emails, live chat, social media and many other platforms to assure all your customers complaints, queries and needs will be taken care of.
In a lot of cases, outsourcing definitely seems to be the way to go. The most effective way to scale up is adding more effective, coordinated resources. With trained and experienced agents it is more likely to solve a wide variety of queries, or you can specialize some of them in certain areas that require a fair deal of domain expertise and knowledge to answer.
And last but certainly not least, one of the biggest benefits is the reduced price tag: you won’t need to increase your budget to acquire new equipment, parking, and all other additional hidden costs that come with every new hire.
