Reduce staff turnover
By outsourcing your customer service, you can adjust your staff numbers as needed, which is incredibly beneficial in supporting your e-commerce efforts. For example, during the hectic days leading up to the Christmas shopping season, you can add agents to your customer service team, and when the holiday season winds down in January, you can scale your customer service team back to its original size. To put it another way, outsourcing provides a more cost-effective model for companies whose staffing needs vary from time to time. Outsourcing customer service also means that your internal staff turnover will be reduced, and that you won’t have to expend as much energy on recruitment (or worrying about covering sick leave).
Streamline processes
Outsourcing also allows you to streamline company processes and frees up time you may not currently have so that you can analyze your customer service work. By taking on a partner, you can also get help with mapping which cases are the most common among your customers and what they value most.
For example, an external supplier can offer self-service customer solutions, which can streamline much of the work that customer service does today. This also makes it easier for customers to avoid calling in or emailing, and instead enables them to solve problems themselves. For example, if a customer has a question regarding payment of an invoice, it is a good idea to have that information available directly on your website. It also allows you to keep the costs associated with customer service interactions down. An FAQ page on your website reduces inquiries that usually go to the customer service team.
Why are costs getting out of control?
By analyzing your customer service activity, you can reveal how long an individual case takes and how many calls each employee takes per hour. This analysis may reveal that you are not working as efficiently as you could and that there is room to improve your processes. But if you do not have information on how long a typical case takes, it is not possible to determine the efficiency of your customer service team.
If you choose to outsource, you no longer have to worry about these issues, you can hand everything over to a partner who is a specialist in the field. It is easy for costs to get out of control when you do not keep a close watch on your routines and structure, but for a partner who specializes in customer service, these things come as second nature. It is a given that everything needs to work as efficiently as possible, and when you have plenty of experience, you know what works best.
Transcom works tirelessly to create insight into the most common issues facing an organization that seeks our assistance. This allows us to develop the solutions you need to generate greater profits. Maybe we will discover that your ten most common customer cases can be effectively eliminated by providing clearer instructions on the website – which means that you can significantly reduce customer service costs. Essentially, it is about educating the customer so they can handle as much as possible on their own!
A satisfied customer is not only loyal, but will gladly recommend your product or service to their friends and family. Since your customer service team has the most contact with your customers, they are important for your brand's reputation and a tool for increasing your turnover.