Why Top Companies Outsource Their Customer Service
With bad customer service costing UK companies a reported 37 billion British Pounds a year, it might not be surprising that every industry is reassessing how they’re running.
For all of the time and man-hours that are spent training employees on good customer service, it’s hard to balance customer service with every other task. Businesses across every industry are starting to outsource customer service to help fight these problems.
With a shocking 84% of consumers trusting online reviews as much they trust referrals from friends, it’s important to protect your reputation. One bad interaction with your staff could cause a mark on your online profile. Just a few negative reviews on your Yelp or Google profile could damage your profits when clients find you online.
If you want to improve your relationship with clients, you may want to outsource customer service. Here are 6 reasons why it could work for you.
1. Save on Costs
While you might be trying to calculate how you’ll be able to pay for more staff, you should know that outsourcing customer service won’t cost you as much as the staff. By letting a call center handle most of your communications, you’ll have access to well-trained employees at a fraction of the cost.
Rather than paying one or two full-time employees to learn customer service and juggle a number of roles, you’ll get access to a wide bench of professionals. They’ll be provided with a salary, benefits, and proper training by the customer service staffing company. You’ll free up a big chunk of your budget and be able to put that money into other elements of your business.
2. You’ll Save Time
If you want to free up some of the time you spend training people in customer service techniques, you can outsource customer service. You’ll be able to plug into a network of well-trained professionals who can handle just about any situation.
They know how to help customers who are frustrated and troubleshooting products. They’ll be able to manage any scheduling changes. Your customer service professionals will even be able to assist customers who are struggling to complete orders.
You won’t have to stop what you’re doing to assist customers unless they meet the criteria you set for forwarding their calls to you.
3. You Get Professionals
When looking at an employee’s resume, you might see some great experience but there is so much missing from the picture. You don’t know how they interacted with staff from day to day. You’ll have no idea how many PR disasters they might have left at their last job unless you do some digging.
When you outsource customer service, you avoid all of this. Customer service professionals know what to do to avoid these issues. They’re trained to avoid using insensitive language and what to look out for.
You might even find yourself learning from your customer service team.
4. They’re Available When You’re Not
As a business owner, the demands on your time are constant. Every time the phone rings, that could be another customer or a client who needs assistance.
What if you’re in the middle of a meeting with another client? Do you jeopardise their business for the sake of someone who merely called on the phone? Or do you let that call go to voicemail where your customer might feel they’ll never get a callback?
Making this choice is like gambling with your reputation.
When you outsource your customer service, you’ll never have to worry about this problem again. You’ll be able to handle both customers, offering them personal attention, without having to be two places at once.
And what if a customer calls you at 5:01, right after you’ve left for the day? Should you leave that customer to believe that they’re not worth you’re time or that you’re not serious enough to be around? Should you start sleeping at your office?
Of course not. You can rely on an outsourced customer service company to take care of that business. They can take messages, deal with customers, and even forward customers who are in desperate need of your personal attention.
Meanwhile, you’ll be able to work on the most pressing tasks of the day without breaking your stride.
5. Increase Office Efficiency
You know that one of your most important resources is your time. While you might be making a handy profit, you’ll hit a ceiling if you don’t have the time to manage all of your affairs.
When you outsource your customer service, you won’t have to be spending all of your attention helping customers with basic tasks or filing documents. You’ll be able to hand off work when you need it and then pick it back up when it’s important.
6. You’ll Be Available Immediately
Because of the interconnectedness of business in this era, customers expect the businesses they deal with the be available on a moment’s notice. People want an immediate response to their emails, a call back within a few minutes, and solutions to their problems as soon as they arise.
As the owner of a business, it’s not reasonable to think they you would be available at a moment’s notice for minor affairs. But if you’re a small business, you might not have the staff to deal with each issue as it comes up. That’s where your outsourced customer service representatives come in.
They appear like fixers, looking at the issues your clients have and using every tool in their customer service kit for dealing with it.
Outsource Customer Service to Improve Your Business
While you might think a personal touch would be preferred by customers, when you outsource customer service, clients don’t know they’re dealing with a third-party. You get to display the perception that you’re a much larger company without having to open up extra office space.
If you want to know more about how remote receptionists can help your business, check out our guide to hiring one.