Customer service outsourcing has a number of great benefits, but it might not offer the best ROI for all companies - while some businesses may just not have the right motives when choosing to outsource.
To help make sure that your move to outsourced customer service is successful, you need to make sure you are doing it for the right reasons. So, with that in mind, we’ve listed the top three best, and worst, reasons to outsource your customer service program.
We hope this blog helps you to choose whether outsourcing your customer service is the right choice for your business.
Bad reason #1: Blindly cutting costs
Outsourcing can help reduce costs but if your main goal is to get the cheapest price and make high cuts to your customer service budget, it could affect your overall service quality. Instead, focus on finding a support provider that is equipped to handle your specific customer service and support needs.
Good reason #1: Strategic cost reduction
While looking to reduce your customer service costs as much as possible could land you a team that doesn’t truly help your customers, outsourcing can help cut costs when strategically implemented. In fact, it is one of the main reasons businesses decide to switch from in-house teams.
Outsourcing allows you to contract out your customer service to reduce salaries and wages, along with other costs such as:
- Benefits
- Bonuses
- Healthcare and dental
- Overtime pay
- Training
- Additional office space
- Equipment and software
Bad reason #2: Not wanting to deal with customers
Providing excellent customer service is a lot of responsibility. While customer service isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, it’s important to remember the reason for it is to strengthen your relationship with your customers and to drive new revenue opportunities for your business.
You need to be able to work with your customer service team, whether in house or outsourced, to ensure they have the information they need to represent your brand and help customers. If you don’t take the time to work with them, your customer service quality can quickly plummet.
You can also get a lot of valuable information from your customer service experience. If you only want to outsource so that you can avoid having to deal with it, you may be missing out on opportunities to better connect and understand your customers.
Good reason #2: To serve more customers
If you have a growing number of customer service calls and emails, or if your business experiences seasonal increases, outsourcing your customer service can be a great way to meet demands without having to find and train new staff.
By outsourcing your customer service for increased demands, you can ensure you have constant access to new team members who are trained to provide quality customer service and have experience integrating with businesses and their brands quickly and effectively.
Bad reason #3: Looking for a quick fix
If your customer service is becoming too much to handle, you will likely benefit from customer service outsourcing. But that doesn’t mean it will be a quick fix.
Implementing quality customer service through a provider requires time and planning to get started. That is the only way to ensure your customer support team will be able to properly speak on behalf of your business and successfully help your customers.
Good reason #3: To reduce time spent on repetitive tasks
It’s not uncommon for a business to have repetitive inquiries and problems. While these repetitive tasks are easy to resolve because you have seen it before, they can be time consuming and take away from customers with more unique problems.
Outsourced customer service teams have the skills, training, contact center technologies and resources to manage repetitive tasks quickly and efficiently so that your team can focus on more complicated inquiries.
If you are considering outsourcing for any reason, reach out to Advantage Communications today. We would be happy to discuss the real benefits of switching, what is involved and what options are available to help your business better reach its goals.