Do you want to streamline your operations while enhancing the customer experience? Or do you simply need to cope with an ever-expanding client base? If so, you’re probably weighing up the pros and cons of increasing your in-house team or outsourcing this function to another division.
This is something that every business must carefully consider. In this post, we talk about the reasons that outsourcing call centers makes sense. Read on to see if it’s the right answer for you.
Access to Specialized Expertise
It’s not always easy to source talent locally. Sometimes, you need to cast a wider net to find the skills you need. However, this can be an expensive exercise. Adding to the costs is the expense of recruiting, onboarding, and training personnel.
Outsourcing gives you a shortcut. It allows you to tap into the expertise of professionals who specialize in customer service and support. Because you’re partnering with a company that provides customer support as a service, you can expect them to offer outstanding service.
They train their consultants to:
- Deal with challenging customers properly
- Develop their problem-solving skills
- Provide empathetic support
- Answer queries quickly and correctly
When your customers have access to this level of professional support, their satisfaction increases. They realize they can rely on you to resolve issues fairly and so become more loyal.
Cost Savings and Operational Efficiency
It’s expensive to run an in-house team, so you might think it’ll be more costly to hire an external company. After all, they have similar overheads and need to profit from the deal. What usually comes as a nice surprise is that it’s cheaper to outsource.
While your chosen partner has overheads like rent, annual leave, and so on, they aren’t usually in the same country you are. This means that their cost to operate can be significantly lower than yours.
Also, you need to consider that running a team means allowing for redundancies, leave allowances, and many other costs than simply salaries.
Scalability and Flexibility
Do you have an uptake in sales over certain periods of the year? If so, you need a flexible team that you can scale up or down as necessary. Good outsourcers will give you this option if you communicate your needs upfront. They can then build in excess capacity for when they need it.
The upside is that your clients get the support they want, even during the busiest times. You don’t have to worry about dropping the ball because your in-house team is too busy.
Enhanced Focus on Core Competencies
Did you get into business to answer repetitive questions about opening and closing times or similar things? No, you’ve got hundreds of other things to do with your day. Tasks that are actually related to driving more business.
Unfortunately, however, you can’t let your service levels drop just because you’ve hooked your client. If you do, it won’t be long before you lose them. Outsourcing frees up your team’s time for your core business activities like product development and driving sales.
Improved Customer Experience
We’re living in an age where consumers expect outstanding service as standard. If they don’t receive it, they can be quite vocal on social media. Unfortunately, there’s plenty of room for these situations to get out of hand, with thousands of faceless users jumping on the bandwagon.
Outsourcing gives you the opportunity to deliver an outstanding experience for every client. As the consultants are trained in dealing with challenging situations, they’re more likely to achieve more pleasant outcomes.
Access to Advanced Technology and Analytics
Considering the rate at which technology is advancing today, it’s difficult to keep up to date. It’s hard enough to stay on track with your own industry, let alone with customer service tools.
Partnering with a company that provides support allows you to leverage much more advanced technology. Third-party providers need to ensure that they offer their clients the best data analytics and service possible. You can use this to your advantage in making data-driven decisions.
24/7 Global Support
Where are your clients from? Do they operate in different countries or time zones? If so, offering 24/7 support becomes more important. If they speak a different language, you’re adding one more level of difficulty.
Partnering with a provider gives you easy access to round-the-clock support. If that company also operates in the country your clients are in, they can offer multilingual support that can improve the overall customer experience.
Conclusion
You shouldn’t make the decision to outsource your call center lightly. You need to perform a careful cost-benefit analysis and also take the time to find the right company to partner with. If you’re successful, however, you have access to a useful resource that allows you to offer outstanding service while remaining adaptable.
