If you have a fast-growing company at your hands, you will surely need to increase the coverage of your support services really soon.
Outsourcing is a great way to overcome some of the challenges a fast growing company can have, since you will be able to hire a skilled support team any time.
In the outsourcing world there are many service providers, so it may be challenging to choose a reliable partner from this wide variety.
If you are in need to outsource customer service, keep reading, you are on the right path, in this article we will learn what to look for when choosing the right outsourcing partner and how to make their work as productive as possible.
There are many reasons to outsource your customer service, as more than 59% of companies outsource services just to lower their expenses. While this can be a primary motivation, there are many factors in favor of outsourcing customer support services.
These are the 4 major benefits of customer service outsourcing:
Lower Costs
You can lower operational costs just from the basic start that when outsourcing there is no need to pay a fixed salary. Outsource companies usually have per hour rate, so you can scale your expenses according to your current needs.
Increased coverage
Outsourced customer support can be vital during the hot seasons, you will need additional help and because there are highly trained agents you can get them involved in your workflow very fast. You can also increase the geographical reach of your company by hiring multilingual support partners.
Streamlining tasks
When most clients’ queries are typical, you can rely on the outsourced team agents to take care of them, and speed up. You will reduce the time spent on solving issues and focus on business tasks.
Scaling up
When a company is growing fast, the time to control all aspects of your business is limited. Hiring an outsourced team to provide high-quality service to your customers while you work on the long-term goals of the company is the best way to go.
What services to outsource?
As you know there are different ways to provide customer service, but a vital thing is to cover most communication channels.
All customer support services can be outsourced. From email communication, call centers, social media interaction, online chats, and many more.
Which services to choose for your project depends only on your customer’s needs, it is a good strategy to plan and create more complex interactions, consider including emails, social media and online chats to provide your customers with more communication channels.
Before Outsourcing
Before searching for your ideal outsourcing partner, you need to develop a customer service strategy. You need to know exactly how you expect your outsource customer service can satisfy your business needs.
There are the 5 factors you should consider before you contract an outsourced customer service:
Location
A thing to consider is the geographical location of your outscored partner, this can determine the price range of the services.
Specialization
Some companies specialize in repetitive requests and processes, while others can be proficient in solving in-depth situations. Take into account the agents communication and language skills because they will be the face of your company and they need to meet your customer’s expectations, and even guarantee an improvement in the customer service you provided in-house.
Focus on experience and skills. Always trust the customers’ reviews of the company, do a deep research, look in their website for additional benefits and make a test call to experience their service.
KPIs
Be sure to know how this company monitors its quality assurance and how transparent their rating system can be. The lack of quality control may show low responsibility and bad service.
There are several factors that can show the effectiveness of a customer service team, make sure your chosen outsourcing partner has a verified quality control system, to assure your customers satisfaction.
Added Services
Outsourced companies can offer a wide range of benefits with customer service. The more added services the better, this means you will provide your customers with additional communication channels and this add-ons can be beneficial for customer service ROI.
Look for an all-in-all service provider, as it may be more convenient for your company.
Security
Before hiring external help, review your internal security. You need to figure out the weak spots of your processes and restrict access to certain information. Your outsourcing partner needs to ensure that no third party can reach your client’s credit card details, health records, etc.
Always consult your legal team about any possible contracts you are planning to sign, to clearly understand all the terms of your contract with the provider.
Manage your outsourced service team
Customer experience is the major factor for your business growth, so you should never leave your customer support team without supervision.
You will need to train internal managers to ensure connection with your outsourced agents. The agent managers should keep both parties informed about the customer support status and resolve all routine issues.
Focus on Training
Training is a key factor to help your outsourced team become as productive as possible. Make sure to share your knowledge and provide external employees with manuals, training videos, FAQs and all the possible material to engage with your company and its customers.
You also have to establish brand guidelines so your customers will be treated in the way they deserve and they are used to.
If necessary specify what the agents need to say, create a script and which phrases they need to avoid, then test them using hypothetical scenarios. Try to cover the widest range possible of customer’s interactions.
Open and honest communication
Establish two-way communication with your outsourcing team to really create a partnership. This is the only way you will be updated on the current situation and get feedback about weak spots that require additional training and some insights that might be useful to maintain great customer satisfaction.
Monitor Quality
Quality assurance metrics help you to evaluate the performance of your outsourced service team of agents.
These metrics cover most contact center processes:
- Average speed of answering – how much time it takes to answer an incoming call
- Customer satisfaction score – measures whether your clients are pleased with the support service
- Customer effort score – tracks customer experience during the interaction with the call center;
- First-call resolution – evaluates your employees’ ability to solve client’s issues;
- Average handle time – how much time your customer spends on the line.
All these metrics are valuable insights on how to increase customer service productivity and improve customer satisfaction.
Customer service outsourcing will definitely help scale up your business, lower your expenses, and improve support quality and coverage.
When researching for an outsourced partner, always consider their experience, skills, geographical location, and the availability of added services that can help to improve your workflow.
Keep in mind that an external customer service requires constant training and supervision to represent your brand and achieve high customer satisfaction.
