Why Outsourcing Customer Service Could Be the Best Decision You Make This Year

Arguably now, more than ever, organisations need to evaluate their resources and capabilities in order to maintain steady development. Not taking the time to do this could have catastrophic results.

With financial resources generally very low at the moment, and for the foreseeable for so many organisations, people must look for alternative solutions to meet their level of service demand.

No matter what sector your organisation operates in, priorities need to be clearly made to ensure fallout from the various lockdowns endured don’t affect operations more than they should.

One way of doing this could be to outsource some of those operations. While outsourcing any part of an organisation – be it charity, business, public service, or any other entity – comes with risks, the benefits are equally, if not more significant.

The key is understanding the most appropriate parts of your organisation to outsource. We firmly believe that, in many cases, outsourcing customer support is one of these.

What is Customer Service Outsourcing?

Outsourcing customer service is a way of delegating some or all external communications channels to a group of specialists from another company dedicated to exactly this.

The reasons behind doing this can vary greatly, due to the broad spectrum of organisations incorporating this into their practices.

Some of the most common factors include supporting growth plans, resource limitations, stakeholder preferences or a spike in demand for services.

Outsourcing customer support, as is the case with outsourcing any part of an operation, involves a great degree of trust in the party you are outsourcing to.

You need to be sure that your level of professionalism and service, as well as your values and ethos are not compromised.

This takes a significant amount of care and consideration on the part of the outsourcer to align themselves with these characteristics.

Customer Service Outsourcing with Us

In the modern era, making sure you have the highest specification tools and applications for external communications is essential.

Without the ability to cater to every way your stakeholders want to engage with you, interest in your brand and its reputation will quickly dwindle.

This is exactly what we provide to all our clients. By offering bespoke customer service outsourcing packages, customer service staff can help alleviate the time and stress that comes with one of the most important aspects to your operation.

We take the time to build a complete understanding of what it means to be a part of your organisation, so that our specialist teams can offer the same level of service and knowledge any of your organisation’s own people would.

A significantly powerful way to reduce costs, outsource customer service can offer all the following and more to our clients:

• Highly trained teams of customer service staff with expert communications training.
• State-of-the-art telephone and IT technology that requires no additional investment.
• A diverse scope of languages within each team for internationally based stakeholders.
• Specialists can be assigned in greater or fewer numbers dependent on busy or quiet periods.

 

Outsourcing Advantages and Disadvantages

When thinking about whether to trust someone else with your all-important customer communications, there is a lot to consider. So much so, we’ve written a guide to helping you make the decision ‘Choosing the right partner: outsourcing 101’. We have also given even more benefits of outsourcing to an expert outsourcing company

Whether it will benefit or hurt your organisations’ development and the commitment you may have to make is not something to take lightly.

The benefits of outsourced customer service with us go far beyond the points previously raised, so here we discuss the benefits and the potential pitfalls of outsourced customer support in more detail.

Around-the-clock support

We know that communicating with your audience never stops. Whether that’s customers, donators, people in need of support or anyone in between.

They need to know that they can engage with your brand at whatever time suits them. So, while you may not be able to take calls all day, every day of the year, rest assured we can.

All the calls our customer support teams take on behalf of your organisation are practiced with the highest level of empathy and professionalism. Exceeding customer expectations with a consistent, high quality service.

This is enhanced by the Five9 technology we use for all our clients, meaning each call is directed to the most appropriate advisor based on their skills and attributes.

Not only does this mean the caller gets the best support and information possible, it also drives efficiency.

It can be argued that a potential draw back to this is that offering a round-the-clock service to an outsourced agency could mean that certain shifts will favour a higher standard of calls. However, this isn’t the case with our specialists. Our call handlers combat this by making sure that whatever time of day or night your audience requires support, we have the best possible people ready and waiting to attend their needs.

Specialist staff

While the technology we utilise undoubtedly supports the work we do and the level of service we provide could not be done without it, it’s our incredible team of call handlers that really set us apart.

We believe that this is one of the biggest benefits of outsourcing customer service with us. With little to no training required, our specialist teams can pick up where you left off, as if they’ve been a part of your team for years.

The easier, corner-cutting path would be to give all our specialists a set script to use. This simply isn’t good enough for us and certainly isn’t good enough for you.

With that in mind, we take the longer but more rewarding path of immersing ourselves in whatever line of work you are in. This human-led approach provides a seamless link from us to you.

There will always be question marks around this aspect of outsourcing customer support. Can the party concerned fully understand how you work on a daily basis, your long-term goals and how you want your business or organisation to be portrayed?

With Connect Assist, there is no need to worry about any of this. As the UK’s leading inbound helpline call centre service, this speaks volumes for our capabilities and puts any worries you may have around integration to rest.

With so much experience, this means we can offer diverse, expert support in the following areas:

• Information and signposting services
• Benefits, debt and money advice
• Befriending, guidance and emotional support
• Contact centre services for the deaf
• Lone worker support
• Translation services

Bespoke support options

No two organisations are the same, even if they work in the same industry or sector. We know this, which is why the support our customer service team & call handlers provide can be as broad or specific to your niche as you need it to be.

What’s universal to all the cases we handle is that we make a difference to people’s lives. How that’s done is up to you. You can utilise all the products, channels, and services we have to offer to fit into your working dynamic.

Whether you’re looking for the latest technology to help you reach the next level, or if improved traditional means of communication are all you need, we can provide everything.

A combination of the following tools and services are available to all our clients, optimising your customer service outsourcing strategy:

• Oracle Service Cloud – combining contact centre applications and customer service systems.
• Customer portals – providing service users autonomy over information and services
• Multi-channel engagement – helping service providers strengthen customer engagement.
• Social media management – adapting your outsourced customer support to suit all generations.
• Customer surveys – giving you the feedback you need to ensure your service meets its potential.
• Oracle Intelligent Advisor – offering analytics and insight to help optimise user experience.

What Are the Next Steps to Outsourcing Customer Service?

Even with all this information, trying to weigh up the various outsource customer service pros and cons for your specific organisation can be difficult.

It’s likely that until our outsourcing customer support is experienced first-hand, regardless of testimonials, there will be an element of doubt as to how well it performs for you and your service users.

With that in mind, we encourage you to further consider what it means to work with us as your outsourced customer service provider, how we integrate our services into your work and where that can take you.

So, to find out even more about outsourced contact centres and what we can offer, contact our team today. We are always on hand to talk you through everything from the smallest of details to the most important decisions.