Customer Service Outsourcing: 13 Often Overlooked Services
When most people think of customer service outsourcing services, they probably imagine the stereotypical image of a massive, impersonal call center. A huge room lined with rows of agents answering hundreds of calls a day, with no visible connection to the brands or companies they represent.
But that’s completely the wrong picture. When done right, customer service outsourcing is a far more complex, lucrative, and effective business strategy.
How?
Because the best CX solutions offer so much more than just rows of agents robotically answering calls. In this article, we’re deep-diving into 13 of the most often overlooked customer service outsourcing services: what they are, how they work, and how they can benefit your company.
Customer Service Outsourcing Services: More Than Just a Call Center
Customer service is the heart of every customer-facing brand’s success. In fact, in a recent survey of marketing leaders, 81% of respondents said they believe that their brands compete mostly or solely based on the strength of their customer experience.
When done correctly, outsourced customer service can be the most successful approach to driving customer happiness. That’s why major multinational companies – like Google, Target, NBC, Amazon, JP Morgan, and more – outsource customer service.
It’s so much more than just a call center.
What is Outsourced Customer Service?
Outsourced customer service is the business practice of paying another company to handle customer experience management for you. Companies can outsource all of their customer-facing workflows and channels to a third-party provider whose sole focus is customer support.
Have you ever wondered, “How can I get better customer service results?” Or, “What’s the most affordable option if I can’t hire in-house customer service staff?” The answer to both is: outsource it.
Beyond a traditional call center, outsourced customer service is a holistic solution to giving your customers what they need at every stage of their journey with your brand.
Customer Service Outsourcing Channels
Customer service outsourcing channels can be as wide and robust as your customers’ needs. They may (and probably should!) include:
- Live phone support
- Live chat support
- Email support
- Mobile app support
- Social media support
Essentially, your outsourcing solution should have an omnichannel approach that can meet your customers wherever they are whenever they need it.
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Advantages of Outsourcing Services
Companies choose to outsource because they can save on costs, reduce overhead and training time, and boost their customer results and sales. Here are just a few of the advantages of outsourcing customer service:
- Cut your costs. You aren’t taking on the salaries and benefits of the agents themselves, and you don’t have to build the tech, workflow, and other infrastructure to support CX.
- Reduce your team’s workload. Outsourcing customer service can free up your time – and your team’s time – to focus on more strategic tasks and initiatives.
- Scale up your coverage. You can increase coverage hours to include weekends and after-hours and/or scale up and down around surge seasons.
- Multilingual support. If your customer base is global, outsourcing can provide multilingual support for all your customers.
- Boost customer satisfaction (CSAT). Outsourcing your customer service to CX specialists ensures that your customers are getting the highest-quality support every time they get in touch.
The advantages go on, but these are some of the top reasons that executives value outsourcing.
Inbound Customer Service Outsourcing Services
Now let’s dive into the most critical, yet often most overlooked, features of a robust CX solution. We’ll explore 13 customer service outsourcing services. First, we’ll look at seven inbound customer service features that you should look for in any outsourcing solution.
Inbound customer service is any time a customer contacts your company and receives assistance. Inbound contacts can include voice calls, chats, and emails. They also provide an excellent opportunity for building brand loyalty, cross-selling, up-selling, and driving sales. In other words, inbound strategies are key to your customer satisfaction and growth.
Here are the seven ways that outsourcing solutions like ROI provide inbound support.
1. Answering Services
Answering services are live phone support from customer service agents. We’ve all had bad experiences with answering services. Maybe you get an agent who seems unwilling to help or an agent who doesn’t seem to understand what you need.
That’s why access to 24/7 specialists is so important. An excellent representative can make all the difference between a happy customer and a lost customer. Your outsourcer should have agents who are well-trained on the best resources and know your brand inside and out.
2. Customer Care
When you’re looking for an outsourcing partner, it’s critical to find one focused on customer care. Their agents should be socially savvy, have a high EQ, and work well with others. They should embrace the idea of treating every customer like a VIP, and keep them coming back for more.
3. Customer Service Chat Services
A study by Ecoconsultancy found that 79% of consumers prefer to have their questions answered over chat rather than voice calls because it’s easier and faster. Your outsourcing partner should have a robust digital chat that can integrate into analytics, CRM, and more. Live chat should include
- 24/7 services
- Text message chat options
- Website chat services
- Video chat
- Data-driven strategies
- Full digital integration
4. Help Desk Provider
Help desk support provides solutions for your customers when they run across technical issues with your products or services. A help desk provider should have technical expertise and experience in IT and CX. The Help Desk should be available at all hours and through any channel and should be able to solve or escalate the customer’s issue immediately.
5. Omnichannel Call Center Services
In our digital age, customers should be able to contact you in whatever way they are most comfortable, whether that’s over live chat, voice calls, email, or in person. That’s why an omnichannel call center service is critical for CX success.
Omnichannel call center services mean support agents who are available across any channel you want to offer your customers. An omnichannel solution flows all channels into one place to ensure that with each contact, the customer has a continuous, seamless experience all the way.
6. Order Taking
In an ideal world, all online shopping orders would take place through automation, and customers would never need to reach out for anything more. But we don’t live in that world, and often customers have complex or unique orders that require the help of an agent.
Your customer service outsourcing partner should have solutions that integrate both automated and in-person order-taking. Customer service representatives should have expertise in order taking so that each time a customer calls, they can seamlessly complete their order.
7. Technical Support
Your CX partner should provide several levels of technical support so that the customer can quickly get complex problems resolved. Each agent should have in-depth knowledge of your products and services and training on how to use and fix them. They should also have excellent people skills and be able to calm customers and support them patiently through the process.
Outbound Customer Service Outsourcing Services
The other major category of CX outsourcing is outbound customer service outsourcing services.
Outbound customer service is any time a customer service representative contacts a customer. It’s a more proactive service and involves contacting customers about an inquiry they submitted, a review they left, or works to promote or sell products.
Here are the six ways that solutions like ROI provide outbound support.
1. Lead Generation Call Center Services
Lead generation call center services help build a sales pipeline without wasting your team’s time with unqualified contacts. Outsourcing lead generation means you get leads delivered to you that are guaranteed to have been contacted, vetted, and qualified by a real contact center agent. You should see higher sales volume, reduced costs per contact, and decreased time spent on generating those leads.
2. Telemarketing
Telemarketing can get a bad rap. But, when done well, excellent telemarketing strategies can build excellent brand recognition and drive sales. By outsourcing telemarketing, you can accelerate that process and scale up or down at a low cost.
Solutions like ROI can provide resources like B2B telemarketing, offshore and nearshore options, event registrations and signups, appointment scheduling, database management, and more.
3. Surveys
From social media to online reviews, modern customers have more ways than ever to deliver feedback to brands. That feedback helps brands stay closer to their customers. Surveys are one of the best ways to be proactive about seeking that productive feedback loop. ROI provides Market Research Surveys, Customer Satisfaction Surveys, Political Surveys, and more.
Surveys can help build market strategies, understand consumer behavior and motivation, determine optimal product marketing, enhance the shopping or service experience, track the quality of services, and more.
4. Up-selling and Cross-selling
Sales are the lifeblood of nearly every company. Building up-selling and cross-selling strategies into your customer journey can boost sales by 40% or higher.
ROI leverages CX technology, agent training, and statistical analysis to build on these opportunities and boost your sales. By getting to know your customers and using detailed analytics, we can better target the best opportunities for both up-selling and cross-selling. And because they build a strong rapport with your customer base, our agents can successfully leverage that data into more sales.
5. Enterprise Call Center Solutions
As companies grow and scale, it can become even harder to scale up a massive contact center solution. Doing customer service in-house becomes a financial and tactical burden. That’s why enterprise call center solutions are one of the most critical outsourcing customer services.
Your customer service BPO needs to be able to scale up quickly and manage massive amounts of contacts and customers every day. At ROI Solutions, that looks like leveraging technology, training, and nimble teams to deliver the service you need at the scale you need.
6. Call Center Services for Small Business
But it’s not just enterprise companies that need to outsource CX. For smaller businesses, resources are tight, and your payroll or your staff may not have the bandwidth for customer service specialization. That’s when outsourcing can change the game.
Outsourcing comes at a fraction of the cost of building in-house solutions, with far more expertise and specialization. With a CX partner taking care of your customers at every part of the customer journey, your team can focus on your products and services.
The benefits of outsourcing customer service for small businesses include getting a competitive edge, cutting costs, spending money on other business needs, and more. You don’t have to buy equipment or pay for agents you don’t need, and you’ll get deep customer insights from your partner’s analytics.
Each of these outbound services can deliver the most competitive results at a fraction of the cost of working outbound customer service in-house.
The Best in Customer Service Outsourcing
Bland, unbranded, frustrating call centers should be a thing of the past. Customer service outsourcing means so much more and involves a network of customizable options, services, and benefits that give companies a competitive edge.
After all, the majority of consumers say that customer service is one of the most important parts of their decision to do business with any company.
If you’ve found yourself asking: “How can I boost my customer service without blowing my budget?” – you’re looking for customer service outsourcing. To learn more about ROI CX Solutions and the services you can leverage, request a quote today.
