How effective is your current customer service team? Do they catch all the incoming calls? Industry standards dictate that you have 20 seconds to answer 80% of calls, just to keep up. To complicate matters further, 66% of consumers expect brands to answer social media queries within 24 hours.
These are just two possible contact methods clients have at their disposal. Considering that 75% of consumers equate modern engagement capabilities with an enhanced experience, there are several other channels with which to deal.
The modern service team may have to deal with communication via:
- Call center
- Social media
- Instant chat
- App
- Online portal
- Messenger systems
The complex number of systems to deal with makes it a daunting task. Firms must find consultants conversant in all the platforms and able to switch between them effortlessly. While switching is simple enough for digital natives, maintaining a consistent focus for each client is not.
Delivering outstanding service across so many channels proves a difficult task. It’s for this reason that many companies choose instead to outsource their support to service specialists like SupportYourApp company provides.
Could your firm benefit from doing the same? In this article, we’ll look at the top five benefits of outsourcing customer support for operational efficiency.
The Benefits of Outsourcing Your Customer Support
1. Access to a Professional Service Solution
A firm without a dedicated support center relies on something similar to a “spray and pray approach” in marketing. They direct call to whoever is available to take them, hoping the employee knows the answer.
Much like in marketing, this lack of a targeted approach produces mediocre results. Occasionally, the client speaks to the correct person the first time around. That’s not often how it works in real life, however.
To illustrate the point, let’s look at an example of how an interaction might occur.
Sam looks on the company website for advice about a feature. Finding nothing, he calls the company for assistance. The switchboard directs the call to the development department. No developers are in, so Dan from Accounting picks up.
Dan has no clue about the feature and, quite frankly, has his work to do. He politely offers to get one of the developers to call Sam back. He leaves a note for a developer to call Sam back.
Within an hour, the developer calls Sam. Sam again explains the problem and gets the required answer.
Dan and the developer are pleased with the interaction. They feel that they dealt with the situation admirably. Who needs a dedicated call center?
Does Sam agree? According to Microsoft, the following issues top the list of client frustrations when dealing with support:
- 35% of consumers find it annoying when the agent cannot answer their question
- 32% of customers dislike having to repeat themselves to a different consultant
- 21% find it annoying not to be able to reach an agent
- 12% prefer to resolve the issue themselves
The landscape, when we look at things from the client’s perspective, changes remarkably. If we asked Sam whether he got the service he deserved, he probably would’ve said, “No.”
Hiring professionals to deal with customer support gives your clients one point of contact and Oworkers are among the best at their job.
They receive service from a dedicated professional whose only task is to focus on their query. The team trains to answer client queries quickly, pleasantly, and efficiently and build the relationship.
The customer leaves the interaction feeling satisfied and valued.
2. Better Organizational Efficiency
To understand how a dedicated support team improves organizational efficiency, let’s get back to Dan. Dan was busy checking an expense report when the call came in. He had to drop what he was doing, listen to the client, and then take a message.
It doesn’t seem like a big deal as we’re only talking about minutes. It was, however, an interruption to Dan’s concentration. He’d have had to refocus his mind on what he was doing previously. He may even have had to start again.
The point is that the call took mere minutes but effectively disrupted Dan’s day. Support calls are seldom isolated incidents. We wonder how many other calls Dan may have fielded.
The issue at play here is not the query itself. The question that Sam asked was relatively simple. Dan couldn’t answer it, so the interaction was over quickly. The issue is instead the impact of the interruption and consequent reduction in productivity.
3. Fewer Overheads
COVID-19 did the business world one great favor. It’s shown us that there’s no real need for expensive headquarters or housing more employees on-site than absolutely necessary.
The support staff is something that firms will always, however, require. Keeping these teams in-house requires a significant infrastructural investment. Firms must provide their teams with:
- Top-notch communication technology, updated regularly
- Robust CRM systems
- Fast and stable internet
- Space
- Enough free capacity to adequately man desks
- Intensive customer service training
Together it adds up to a significant investment in both time and money. With both commodities being in short supply, it makes sense instead to opt for cost-saving outsourcing instead. By partnering with specialists, the firm pays only for the capacity that it requires.
4. Flexibility
Aside from the costs, the main disadvantage of running your own call center is managing redundancy. Every system must have built-in buffers to handle call overflows. At the same time, however, it doesn’t make good business sense to pay people to sit around waiting for calls.
Managing to keep the lines staffed at optimal capacity is a delicate balancing act with an in-house team. It’s a highly inflexible solution. Ideally, you’d hire employees on an ad hoc basis when call volumes increase and let them go during off-peak periods.
In reality, that’s easier said than done.
Unless that is, you hand the staffing headaches over to another company. By using a service, firms have more flexibility and can better manage the ebbs and flows.
5. Multi-Lingual Consultants
For brands operating in the international market, it’s increasingly important to offer support in several languages. Partnering with a professional service company gives them access to the multi-lingual support they require.
Final Notes
Should you outsource your customer support? If you wish to improve organizational efficiency, reduce running costs, and provide clients with a professional solution, it may be the right move for you.
