7 Reasons you need to outsource your customer services
Acquiring new customers for your business is necessary, but so is retaining the existing ones. Getting new customers won’t benefit a company in the long run if they keep losing them over poor customer services. Keeping your customers satisfied and happy with your products and services is crucial if you want to grow and expand in today’s competitive market. There is no dearth of products in the market, so a company not only needs to focus on producing the best products, but they need to provide exemplary support to its customers as well. Your customer won’t appreciate it if your company washes hands off them once the product has been purchased. It is important to cater to their after purchase demands too.
Yet it’s not as simple as setting up call support for your products and services in today’s age. Customer services have evolved over the years with the growth in technology and the advent of the internet. Your customers are spread out on various platforms across the internet, where they reach out to your company with their queries and troubles. So, it becomes vital that their concerns are addressed not just on the phones, but also on social media, emails, messages, chats, etc. Customer services are now its own specialized field requiring proper skills and knowledge. It requires adequate staff who are equipped with the necessary tools to provide excellent customer services; it requires enough resources, both human as well as capital. So how does a company, especially a small enterprise, cater to its customer needs without spending a large number of sums? A most sought after solution to this problem is offshoring. We give out seven reasons for you in this post as to why outsourcing is a great option for customer services.
1. More economical
Offshoring allows you to hire your employees from countries where the cost of living is significantly lower as compared to countries like the USA or the UK. As a result, your company can save money by employing offshore customer service professionals who cost less. You further avoid having to spend on offices, utilities, and advanced infrastructure that goes along with setting up new staff. A small company can afford to have its own customer support staff without depleting their limited resources.
2. Access to varied services
As stated earlier, customer services are no longer just about phone call support. It encompasses a lot more now, including social media, emails, messages, collecting customer reviews and feedback, tracking KPIs regarding customers, etc. It requires a properly skilled team to handle everything, something that cannot be achieved with only a few employees. The right offshore service provider can take care of all these needs of your company efficiently. These agencies are built to provide a range of services to their clients and hence have the required expertise to produce the best results. By partnering up with the right agency, you get access to all customer care services at little cost and no hassle.
3. Trained staff
It is vital to have staff with excellent interpersonal skills who are adept at technology. They have the responsibility of maintaining and nurturing positive relations with your customers and upholding your company’s image. With an offshore provider, you get to hire employees with experience and training who are overseen by managers to ensure quality and productivity both. You can rely on this team to deal with your customers amiably and provide quick solutions. They have strategies and plans in place to tackle all kinds of situations, and even help provide insights to your company for improvement. Quality is not a concern while offshoring if it is done correctly.
4. Proper infrastructure
To set up customer services, you need relevant infrastructure such as enough computers, phones, various tools and software for better performance, etc. When you outsource, your customer services infrastructure is part of the deal. Your staff comes equipped with all the hardware and software needed to perform their jobs as opposed to having to provide them yourselves in case of hiring an in-house team. Not only you save money, but you get access to all the latest tools and technologies in the customer support field that you may not even be aware of.
5. Flexible hiring
Sometimes with certain services or products, the sales increase during holidays or at a particular time of the year. It is during these times that a company’s workload increases, and it can benefit from a larger customer service workforce. It’s not the easiest to scale up with in-house staff as hiring and recruitment is a time-consuming process. But an offshore agency already has the necessary employees with them that you can hire on short notice for any period. It allows you to scale up and down as per your company’s needs. This way, you can also accommodate the rising customer demands of your company once it starts to grow.
6. Focus on core business
When you choose to keep customer services in-house, you either hire new staff, or you delegate the support tasks to your existing employees. Either way, it negatively impacts your business. It takes away the focus from your core-business and hinders the growth of the company. While you are busy managing and training your in-house staff, you are losing out on new customers. This competitive market demands the full concentration of a company on its business, focusing on product innovation and coming up with new growth strategies. So, it is in your best interest to outsource your customer services to an offshore vendor. You focus on your job while your offshore staff takes care of your customers.
7. 24/7 service
When you deal with global customers, you take into account the time zone differences. Your customer might need assistance with your product after your working hours are finished. Instead of making them wait for hours till you can get back to them, by outsourcing customer services, you can acquire round the clock customer services for your product. They have the means to provide 24 hours services if that is what your company requires. Your customers can reach your support staff at any time of the day.
A dedicated offshore team strives to understand your company and your clients to provide the best support to them. A happy customer is not only likely to come back to avail of your services, but they also become a source of advertisement themself, possibly bringing in more customers. So, if you think your company has reached the stage where it can benefit from having customer service staff, you might want to think of offshoring.