Customer support services have travelled the world and back. No wonder excellent customer service is a secret weapon of every business. With the eCommerce market growing and customers being flooded with options, timely customer service is paramount.
With research revealing how quickly bad word of mouth happens, most businesses have to a realization that they need to put effort into customer support. Another study points out that customers are 60% more likely to lose faith and spread negative word of mouth if they face poor customer support.
All of this indicates how important it is that, as a small business, you provide excellent customer support services in India. However, as a small business, it might be expensive to hire the best customer support team to fulfil customers’ demands. While recruiting the best support team can be an agile option, it can cost an arm and leg for most small businesses due to the limited budget.
Now you might be wondering how to ensure an excellent customer experience without a dedicated in-house customer service team. Well, the solution lies in outsourcing customer service entirely.
Understanding outsourced customer service
Before diving deep into the topic, let us explore what outsourced customer service is. Usually, it revolves around outsourcing services such as telephone answering, social media management, live chat and whatnot. Not all service providers will provide the same service, and different providers will go to different lengths to provide customer service via these channels.
While some may offer basic messaging, others will answer Frequently Asked Questions, and some will fully integrate with your CRM and do everything to ensure your customer support needs are fulfilled.
While deciding your outsourcing your customer support services, make sure that you know what level of support you need them to provide.
Concerns pertaining to outsourcing customer service
Unfortunately, outsourcing experienced a lag during the late 90s and early 2000s because big companies started outsourcing their customer support services to India. The general public was sceptical about the outsourcing practice as they had a feeling that these outsourced customer services were of poor standard.
Due to the negative effect of outsourcing, many businesses got knocked out hard. However, today, the customer support industry from all across the globe is serious about outsourcing their inbound call services.
So, the question remains – should you outsource your customer service?
Should you outsource?
Lots of reasons are there why you should consider outsourcing customer services, with overheads being the first. When your small business outsources customer support services, you only pay for the time your customer services are dealt with.
This is relatively less expensive as opposed to hiring a full-time customer support team in house. You pay them a salary even when there are no enquiries coming in. This is not the case with outsourcing.
The second reason why you should consider outsourcing customer service is a better experience. When you decide to outsource customer service, you have peace of mind because you know there is always someone to attend calls 24/7.
Outsourcing customer service gives you the scope to outrun your competitors by keeping customer service representatives available after-hours and beyond. That means it lets you enjoy more coverage.
Companies that choose to outsource are more likely to broaden their customer base by including more language options than English alone.
When there are more hands on the deck, the response times are reduced. That means it contributes to increased customer satisfaction.
Your customer service outsourced partner will offer you better value by giving you access to state-of-the-art technology and a host of resources you might not be able to invest in.
Finally, outsourcing serves as a tool to improve customer service standards. Outsourcing these services allows you to use your valuable time in the more critical aspects of your job.
You cannot deny the fact that as a full-time operating business, you may have to deal with a customer service issue that could keep you at the office late. However, on the other hand, when you outsource the service, you face no such problem.
On top of that, the outsourced customer support team has the best knowledge to deal with any customer service issue. So, you no longer have to worry.
If you are a startup that aims to outsource your customer support service, get in touch with Met Technologies Pvt. Ltd. We are adept at providing unmatched BPO customer services at an affordable price.