Businesses evolve and grow over time. In the beginning, it’s not a problem to handle a few orders and reply to even hundreds if not tens of messages and calls every day. However, when a business expands, the customer service needs also expand.
Not only does the number of calls increase but you also have to incorporate different time zones and languages into our customer services infrastructure. This is a huge undertaking and it’s not possible without outsourcing your customer service.
So, when is the right time to outsource your customer services to a third-party call center agency?
Let’s find out.
What is Customer Service Outsourcing?
When you can no longer handle the load of your customers’ calls and messages, you can outsource your customer service to a partner BPO company to handle it on your behalf. These companies have usually been in business for 10 to 20 years and they have developed quite strong regional and industry knowledge over this time period.
If you outsource your customer services to such a company, you don’t have to worry about hiring new agents or learning about different labor laws pertaining to different countries.
The company handles everything as they already have a working infrastructure and hands-on experience in almost every industry. As such, outsourcing your customer service can be one of the most cost-effective ways to retain your customers and focus on other aspects of your business.
When is Outsourcing the Right Decision for Your Business?
A business runs successfully only if the needs of its customers are met. If your customers are unhappy and dissatisfied, you need to check where you’re doing it wrong.
Here are a few challenges that may indicate that you need to outsource your customer service now.
1. Your costs are increasing
Customer service can easily get costly especially if you are mindful of acquiring the right equipment and the right people for the job.
If you think your response time is being compromised and you need to scale your customer service to handle the high ticket volume, it’s a sign that outsourcing is now inevitable for your business.
2. You need an extra pair of hands occasionally
When you decide to outsource your customer service, you can choose to have a permanent relationship or seasonal, short-term help. If you already have a team, it’s best to use those services just to scale your team.
Your existing team would still be working and you can track their progress the way you want. Outsourcing will only help reach out to more customers, who may be located in other regions and speak other languages.
3. Your support involves multiple languages
One of the biggest challenges in scaling a business is geographical boundaries, which bring on more problems like language barriers and different time zones.
When it’s time to scale your business, the first step to achieve is to outsource your customer service so that you can overcome these challenges.
4. You don’t want your workers to work in shifts
Shift work is certainly a burden on employees. They start feeling demotivated and often lose interest in what they’re doing. If your business is working 24 hours a day for customer service, it is also a burden on your expenses.
Not to mention extra work for schedule creation and hiring more people to fill up gaps. BPO companies offering customer services have regional offices and employees who work during their local office hours. Hiring them will help you provide coverage during your night hours.
Prerequisites to Make Sure the Transition is Smooth
When you decide to outsource your customer service, you have to look at a number of additional aspects, such as privacy considerations and data restriction issues – only to name a few.
To handle all these things, you will first need to create an in-house task force. Make sure the team comprises of representatives from all departments including HR, legal, product managers, and stakeholders.
Another thing to identify before you make the transition from an in-house to an outsourced support team is the tasks that this new team will be assigned.
If you determine that the new team will not bring about a change in what your existing team is already doing, this is probably not the right time to make the transition.
And finally, your customer services policies are most likely to change when you decide to hire a new team. Clear, written-down guidelines will be needed to explain everything clearly to the new team. Since the agents will not be collocated, you will have to make sure they understand your policies very clearly.
If your business operates on private data, the need to have well-defined policies becomes even more pronounced. Where this data will be stored and how the agents are supposed to use it are some of the crucial decisions that you have to make before you decide to outsource your customer service.
Conclusion
Partnering with a BPO company offering call center services is inevitable for businesses. They would have to do it sooner or later. But it’s important to know when is the right time to outsource your customer service. In this post, we looked at some of the challenges that may hinder your efforts to fulfill your customers’ needs.
If you think your business is facing one or more of these challenges, it’s time you considered outsourcing your customer service. However, there are some prerequisites that need to be checked in order to get the maximum out of this bold and pivotal decision.
From simply operational considerations to logistical issues related to security and privacy, you have to go through each and every point to make sure the new team understands your business thoroughly and is all set to help you scale successfully.