Outsourcing customer service is a strategy that many businesses use to contain costs, control quality, expand service and make better use of their labor in-house. Is outsourced customer service right for you? Here are five questions to help you decide.
1. Are you delivering the customer experience you’ve envisioned?
One might suppose that customer service will always be best when delivered in-house, where you have more control over it. However, sometimes the opposite is true.
Can you guarantee that every member of your team is adhering to brand, both in words and tone? Do you struggle with consistency in the voice and quality of the service you deliver?
When you outsource your customer service, you may find you’ve gained more control, not less. You provide us with detailed instructions on what and how we should communicate to your customers or clients; we follow through with personalized, professional service tailored to your guidelines.
2. Does outsourcing make sense financially?
If your business gets a high volume of calls, the answer may be yes. By outsourcing your helpdesk and paying for customer service on-demand, you can lift the overhead burden of in-house HR expenses, equipment, supplies and workspace.
3. Is your business ready to scale?
Sometimes a small staff size can actually prevent your organization from scaling. To expand your workforce, you have to be doing enough business to support it. But in order to grow your business to that point, you need more employees. It’s a catch-22 for which there is no easy in-house answer. In these situations, customer service outsourcing can relieve the pressure and give you room to grow.
4. How are your employees currently spending their time?
If you hire an employee for a certain set of skills and talents, quite obviously you want them to spend their time delivering on those. If you don’t have a dedicated helpdesk in-house, however, your high-value employees may be taking time to perform a task – answering the phone – that could be handled more cost-effectively by someone else. To decide whether outsourcing customer service is right for you, take a step back and look at how you’re allocating labor, big picture.
5. Do your customers need service around the clock?
People may have questions at any hour of the day or night. Customers may need your help on holidays and weekends as well as normal business days. Clients may run into an urgent issue whether you’re at work or on vacation. If you find that the demands of those you serve don’t fit neatly into the nine-to-five, outsourcing customer service may be a fit. We offer service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, in any time zone, in 12 languages. There are times when that’s precisely the flexibility you need.
Trust Instant Call Center to enhance your service, reduce your costs and do better at what you do. Contact us for an outsourced customer service quote today.