5 Reasons to Outsource Customer Support Services
Customer support service has become one of the most essential and important pillars for building your business. Businesses of all sizes are investing in customer support service to grow.
With the changes in digital technology, customer behaviors and expectations, customer service now requires specialised training, tools, processes and technologies. As a result, more businesses are outsourcing customer support services to gain access to expertise, reduce operating cost and minimise investment. Moreover, outsourcing to a multi-channel contact center service company provides inputs on customer behavior and provides key data for decision-making.
However, despite the advantages of outsourcing, some businesses are still unsure about outsourcing customer service. They are not sure what results they will get and whether they will lose control over their support team.
Here are 5 reasons to help you decide whether your organisation should outsource customer service.
Reasons to Outsource Customer Service
Cost savings
Every business wants to save cost and become more efficient. Cost is the biggest driver of outsourcing. An outsourced support service provider benefits from economies of scale in hiring, management, technology and processes. Many outsourcers operate in low cost cities or countries and can deliver even more savings.
Multi-channel support
Today, customers are looking for omnichannel support. They want to contact your support team using their channel of choice, not the channels you want to use. Building internal capacity and expertise to provide omnichannel support is expensive and time consuming. In fact, it may not be feasible for most companies to build this capacity internally.
Outsourcing can solve this problem by providing access to multichannel support at an affordable cost. If your customers are using multiple channels – voice calls, emails, live chat, and social media – for support, outsourcing may be the best option for you.
24×7 support
Outsourcing is a great option if you need to support your customers outside regular business hours or on weekends. Providing 24x7 support is a necessity for most businesses in today’s globalised world. If you are an ecommerce, SaaS or another type of online business, your customers expect round the clock support from you.
Establishing 24×7 customer operations may be difficult for a business. Outsourcing to a specialist company that will give this facility becomes the only viable alternative in such cases.
Seasonal changes in volume
Businesses, like those in the ecommerce and hospitality sector, experience a seasonal peak in sales volumes during certain times of the year, like the holiday season. These businesses tend to do a major portion of their annual sales d and these periods and cannot afford to miss the bus. The outsourcing model for customer service becomes very helpful in these situations, because more personnel can be simply assigned to handle customer queries and orders.
Complexity
If your business handles complicated technical calls on an everyday basis, it's better to have an in-house team to take such calls. A third party might not have the technical ability to provide the level of service expected by your customers. Additionally, if calls tend to transfer to numerous departments, then it might be difficult for an outsourcing firm to process such calls.
In these cases, the in-house customer relations center will make sure that customers are receiving correct, optimum solutions to their problems. Other activities like appointment setting and lead generation may be outsourced.
Lastly, customer service suppliers will work with you to generate revenue through your customer care operations by improving metrics like first-call resolution, average handle time, customer satisfaction.
So now, do you think outsourcing customer support service will work for your business?