A Fresh Perspective on Outsourced Customer Service

Customer service written on chalkboard with other images

If you run a business, it may feel tough to keep up with the demands of running your company.

Customer service, marketing, sales, business development – you have a lot on your plate, and if you do not have enough staff members to provide excellent customer service, your business may suffer for it.

About 35% of small businesses are understaffed, and may not have the money or resources to hire new staff. This can lead to a dangerous spiral – as your business remains understaffed, more work is thrust on your customer service employees, and they become less and less effective.

This can lead to serious consequences for your business. Great customer service helps you keep your customers and clients around – and bad customer service does the opposite. More than half of Americans have changed their mind about a purchase due to poor customer service. Companies lose more than $62 billion per year due to bad customer service. And, according to the same study, after a single negative experience, 51% of customers will never do business with your company again.

We’re not giving you these statistics to shock or scare you – but to prove a point. Understaffed, overworked customer service representatives cannot deliver great service. But then what’s the solution if you can’t afford to hire more full-time staff?

Outsourced customer service may be just what you need. In this article, we’ll discuss outsourced customer service – and help you understand how it can work for you, and benefit your business. Let’s get started now.

Why Invest In Outsourced Customer Service?

When you think of outsourced customer service, you may picture a large, overcrowded call center – packed with customer service representatives talking over each other, and doing their best to wade through a huge volume of calls.

You may think that this means you’ll get bad service from an outsourced customer service company – but this is not always the case. Not all outsourced customer service companies are alike.  Sure, there are some companies that use large, crowded call centers and have poorly-trained employees.

But there are also many outsourced customer service companies that employ professional, experienced, and high-quality customer service representatives – who could provide even better service than your own full-time employees!

With a little bit of research, you can easily find a US-based company that offers excellent service at a reasonable rate – ensuring that your customers are totally, 100% satisfied by your outsourced customer service partner.

Wondering why you should choose to invest in outsourced customer service? Here are a few reasons you may want to consider partnering with a high-quality, outsourced customer service call center.

We Live In An On-Demand Economy

It’s an unfortunate fact that we live in a world where people do not even have the patience to wait for a fast-food order – let alone a customer service representative. Your customers do not want to wait around, fiddling with robotic menus, and being placed on hold – they want to talk to a real person who can help them with their problems right away.

The on-demand economy has made it critical for you to employ a fully-responsive, understanding, and caring customer support team. Your customers expect fast service, and to have their issue resolved without dealing with a complicated support system.

The best way to satisfy this demand is by employing an outsourced customer support team. You can ensure that your customers will always be able to talk to a real person and have their issue resolved – even if your full-time customer support staff are busy.

If you don’t have someone waiting to help your customers overcome their challenges and issues, it’s more likely that your customers will be unhappy – and may stop purchasing your products or using your services.

While it would be nice if we all had a bit more patience, that’s not the world we live in – and you need to take that into account when hiring full-time and outsourced customer support staff.

Customers Are Even Outsourcing Their Own Customer Support

How impatient are customers? They’re so tired of dealing with slow customer service that, instead of wasting their time trying to contact support personnel directly, they’re turning to their very own outsourced customer support applications!

What do we mean? As an example, customers are paying for services like Billshark to negotiate with customer support and talk to companies on their behalf – they’re so sick of waiting around, that they would rather pay someone else than talk to a customer service professional for free.

So, if individuals are outsourcing their own customer support, why shouldn’t you? By doing so, you can keep up with the rising demand for timely, professional services.

There Is More Demand For Customer Service

You may think that the rise in search engines like Google has reduced the amount of customer service personnel required from you. Can’t your customers just use FAQs, forums, and other such resources to find the answers they’re looking for?

The answer is… of course they can! But not everyone wants to spend time Googling for an answer to a simple question – when they could simply call a phone number, speak to a human, and get the information that they need without poring over pages of search results.

The demand for customer service professionals is always growing – and it can be too much for your in-house team. But the good thing is that you don’t have to rely solely on outsourced customer service. You can simply bring on a team of professionals to augment your in-house staff – and answer calls during peak hours, or when your full-time staff members are not working, such as late at night.

Outsourced Customer Service Is Affordable

One of the best reasons to consider outsourced customer service is that it’s much more affordable than hiring more in-house staff. As mentioned above, you don’t have to let your own customer support staff go – but if you are having budget issues, you can turn to an outsourced customer service company, rather than hire more full-time staff members.

With many answering service companies, you only pay for the time you use. You’re billed by how many minutes customer support members are interacting with your customers. This provides you with much more budgetary flexibility, compared to hiring full-time staff members.

In addition, hiring an outsourced customer service company allows you to save on other costs associated with full-time staff members, such as:

  • Recruiting and interviewing potential staff
  • Training, onboarding and HR costs
  • Equipment purchasing (computers, phones, etc.)
  • Benefits (vacation, healthcare, PTO, sick days, etc.)

Because of this, hiring an outsourced customer service company can be extremely beneficial if you are on a tight budget, or you don’t yet have a full-time staff of customer service representatives.

Don’t Fall Behind in the Customer Service Game

If you can give the customers the support they want, by using outsourced customer service, your company will be rewarded – and there is proof!

7 out of 10 U.S. consumers say that they’ve spent more money to do business with a company that offers fantastic service. Increasing customer retention by just 5% can boost profits from between 25-95%. 64% of consumers believe that great customer support is more important than a low price.

By providing a truly stellar customer support experience, you can boost customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, and profitability – and become more competitive in today’s global business market.

Of course, you may not have the budget to hire a full-time staff, or add more staff members to your customer support team. But that’s where outsourced customer support can help. By hiring an outsourced team of support representatives, you can provide your customers with a fantastic product experience – without breaking the bank.

Not sure where to start? Don’t know how to choose a high-quality outsourced customer support company?

We’re here to help. With simple answering service billing, 100% US-based customer service, and a team of highly-qualified customer support representatives, we can help you get the services you need. Just browse our services page now to get started, and see how AnswerFirst can help you boost profitability and customer satisfaction.

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