Dealing with Customer Frustration by Outsourcing Customer Service

The customer relationship management (CRM) process is of top priority in today’s market. A survey of over 18,000 online shoppers from 51 different countries, conducted by KPMG, revealed that an overwhelming majority of consumers – a whopping 65% – felt that good customer service was the most important factor in retaining customer loyalty. These results highlight the need for excellent CRM in the modern business world. A major component of this is, of course, dealing with customer complaints. This is where outsourcing customer service comes in. 

Customers Want to Deal with an Actual Person 

The nature of business in the Technological Age is such that it runs 24-hours a day. The consumer is able to make a purchase at any time, from almost any place around the world. The challenge in maintaining customer support becomes the fact that services need to be available at all times. Moreover, consumers want to be able to communicate their problems to a person, as opposed to an automated response email or FAQ section on a website. 

Richard Branson, leading businessman and founder of Virgin Enterprises, highlights the importance of customer support delivered by an actual person: “Customers want service that’s delivered by a personable employee and tailored to the customer and the customer’s situation”. Offering customers a personable experience could save you from losing a customer, but can also be resource-intensive. 

Overcoming the Cost by Outsourcing Customer Service

The inadvertent challenge here is cost. In-house customer service facilities are expensive. Not only the operational costs of setting up the facility, and the overheads of maintaining the facility, but the expense of the labor. This leaves businesses with three options: set up and maintain these facilities at a high cost; add customer services to the jobs of pre-existing employees, over and above their primary functions; or outsource customer service. 

Outsourcing eliminates the costs, time, and carbon footprint of setting up a customer service facility. Additionally, it is more cost-effective to outsource customer service tasks than to pay higher-earning employees to do it. Remote teams allow you to dispense with customer support functions. This gives you time to work on your business, while we work for your business.  

The on-boarding process ensures that remote teams are trained to deal with all the tasks you require of them. In addition to dealing directly with customer complaints, remote teams routinely perform other customer service tasks, such as answering real-time questions and closing sales. 

Stepping Away From the Traditional Outsourcing of Customer Service 

A growing market trend is that consumers are posting a large number of reviews on social media. A major implication of this is that companies have little control over what information is posted on public platforms, to which millions of users have access. It is, therefore, imperative that social media sites are monitored. 

This task is again highly time-consuming. At Noon Dalton, our team routinely monitors and manages social media, allowing clients to focus on more pressing tasks. 

The Cyclic Nature of Support 

Many businesses have cyclical client traffic. For example, with e-commerce sites, there may be a time of year where sales are plentiful and other times where sales are slower. 

At Noon Dalton, the remote teams model allows you to expand your workforce only when needed, saving you from maintaining salaries for posts that are only needed at certain points in the year. Additionally, businesses that are in transitional periods, such as mergers or periods of growth, may benefit from the flexible nature of the virtual workforce. 

Training Your Customer Service Remote Teams

There are skills that in-house employees have from experience with both their product and client base. Many businesses have concerns that outsourcing customer support may result in a decrease in quality, because the outsourced labor simply does not have the knowledge of the client or products offered. 

At Noon Dalton, our on-boarding protocols enable you to outline exactly what skills your remote teams need. This allows you to have trained remote teams without going through the time, effort, and cost of training them in-house. 

In today’s market, customer services have become more important than ever before, due to the 24-hour nature of services and the ability of the customer to post online reviews. In order to remain competitive, businesses should have a clear CRM plan.  Do you feel that outsourcing customer service could help your business? If so, contact us today.