Creating an ideal customer support team is vital in cultivating a brand name and maintaining customer loyalty. Smart companies recognize this at an early stage and either establish their own plan or establish valuable partnerships in order to care for their customers.
In 2011, American Express conducted a survey to investigate the importance of customer service. The survey found that two out of five people surveyed stated that they would tell others about good experiences with customer service. Conversely, three in five customers in the survey stated that they would tell others about bad experiences with customer support. Individual interactions aren’t simply contained within themselves but have a wider impact on how a company is perceived in the long-term.
In some cases, opting for an in-house team makes sense if volumes for ticket, chat, or voice support are low. In cases where volumes exceed the ability of your team to handle, it’s often a smart decision to collaborate with a vendor to help you out with these tasks. But where should you begin?
The World Is Your Oyster
And the Philippines is a BPO pearl …oh man, this stuff writes itself!
There are a lot of countries that companies turn to in order to find a vendor to partner up with. For some, their goals are based purely around cost. For others, BPOs are excellent partners to quickly scale and handle talent. For most, it’s a combination of the two. We’ll talk about one of the biggest destinations for support centers in the world: The Philippines.
Companies from the United States, Canada, U.K., Australia, and even Northern Europe collaborate with companies in the Philippines to scale their support teams. Nearly half a million Filipino employees handle customer support operations for a range of different companies – from enterprise organizations to small startups.
One of the largest draws about the Philippines is that it is one of the top ranked countries for English proficiency in the world. In Asia, the Philippines is second only to Singapore. Combine this with low cost of labor and high quality of service and it’s no wonder why numerous companies operate out of this country.
What Kind of Support Do You Need?
Depends on your needs – but we can give you some suggestions.
Support services can be for voice, tickets (text-based things like email, social, or messaging through websites or apps), or live chat. Today, support through social media channels and apps is also becoming another important channel to focus on helping out your communities.
Consumers are increasingly demanding quick follow-ups and resolutions to their inquiries – It’s important that companies demonstrate their responsiveness. Whether a support ticket is submitted or a tweet is posted, quick turnarounds mean happier customers. Working with a vendor in the Philippines can ensure that you have 24/7 coverage for ticket, chat, voice, and social media coverage.
Whether you need help with one or all of the above, you can collaborate with companies like Process Ninjas to get the coverage and support you need.
Deploy a team of old-timey people to flip your switches! Or just read on…
What Are the Benefits of Working With a Vendor?
If you find a good partner, your headaches reduce significantly – emphasis on good since not all vendors are created equal. Make sure you choose wisely! There are a number of benefits to working with a vendor – especially if you have a small team or limited expertise with your business processes. Here are some things to consider below:
Easier Handling of Overhead and Management
Working with a BPO saves you on the overhead of having an in-house team. Hiring, onboarding, HR, and accounting are all rolled into the flat rate that you pay your vendors. Many outsourcing companies even offer solutions where management is included in the overall cost. Your main responsibility will be to provide the knowledge and delegate tasks that will help your team flourish. Working with an outsourcing vendor can pare down your tasks so you can focus on what you do best and only deal with issues when they absolutely must be escalated to your team. All of the other necessities of managing a team – scheduling, sick leave, holidays, accounting, and HR are taken care of for you.
Let Others Handle Scaling and Flexing The Team
When you work with an experienced vendor, you can delegate a lot of tasks to them in order to quickly scale your team up or down. With a good vendor, you can also build a remote team that has a wide range of talents that you need to handle all sorts of tasks. Companies that hand-off one business process to their vendor often explore opportunities to give other processes to them. You can start by collaborating with help-desk support operations and then expand into accounting services and data entry, community management and moderation, or even marketing and sales.
Take Advantage of Workforce Availability
Outsourcing is a huge industry in the Philippines. Working for a BPO is a well paid and highly sought-after job for a lot of Filipinos. Since the industry has matured over the past few decades, the Filipino workforce today has grown up with BPO positions as a viable career path. It’s easy to quickly hire a talented workforce that can help you out with whatever you need. Moreover, the cost of living is significantly cheaper in the Philippines than in many European or North American countries (and Australian :-D). The low cost of living means you can deploy a talented workforce at a fraction of the cost at home while still providing great wages to people you work with.
Leverage 24/7 Support Operations
Vendors – particularly those in the Philippines – have already established operations for 24/7 support. Working culture in these countries has developed around the expectation that good positions are available at night as well as in the daytime. With a customer service team in locations like the Philippines, you can reduce your SLAs by deploying agents at the right time and even provide 24/7 support coverage to deliver great service to your audience. In most cases, your only responsibility would be to deliver workflow and product updates and handle outlying cases that are escalated to your team.
Provide Benefits To Your Team at a Reduced Cost
Working with an offshore vendor to outsource your customer support operations has a lot of benefits, but there are also benefits to the people that work on your projects. You can pay a flat, low rate for services. These rates, if you work with a good vendor, are not going to be the bare minimum to just pay each member of the team. The flat rates you pay should also include health insurance, taxes, social insurance programs, as well as other benefits. In the Philippines, workers are also given a minimum of a 13th-month pay as a Christmas bonus. All of these benefits are built into your flat-rate cost.
Focus On Your Expertise
If you outsource non-core competencies, you can focus on growing your business. When you have more resources to dedicate to your expertise, you can cut down on top-heavy organizational structures and create a lean team that can shine through in what they are good at.
But We Can Do It Ourselves!
If you have the time and the money, then you can try to do everything in-house. You can learn what it takes to develop your processes or hire talent who knows what they are doing. However, you’ll also be sacrificing your energy, your time, and your money to develop this. Outsourcing a team can be a beneficial endeavor that will ultimately streamline your processes and provide focus to your operations. By shedding tasks that you don’t need to handle, you can develop a company that is a lean, process-oriented machine.