“When you do things right, people won’t be sure you’ve done anything at all.”
– God Entity – Futurama
Little did we know that the God Entity was actually talking to Bender about companies outsourcing their support operations. There are so many cases where you reach out to a support rep, trying to find a solution, and it’s painfully obvious that they have no idea what they are supposed to be doing.
When you communicate with a great 3rd party customer service representative, you don’t even know that you’re communicating with one. One of the concerns for a lot of companies is that outsourcing their customer support would be anathema to their customers.
In reality, it’s really only bad customer support that drives you to seethe with anger and curse the very foundation of the company you are dealing with. Bad customer support can just as easily be in-house as it can with a vendor.
There are a lot of cases where better customer support is derived from the experience of a third-party vendor that specializes in it. A lot of the time, an external support representative can really deliver some of the best experiences to your customers.
Cutting down on costs isn’t the only reason why you should outsource processes like customer support. In a lot of cases, work can be done more efficiently by a third party. Whether you don’t have the resources for dedicated staff or if you need to scale effectively, you can lean on your outsourcing partners to help you out. Let’s take a closer look at the reasons behind outsourcing customer service and why this might be a good idea for you.
Identifying When You Should Outsource
One of the first steps you should take on your journey is to figure out whether or not you will benefit from working with a vendor. Let’s take a look at a few of the questions you might want to ask yourself:
1. Do you have any experience with these tasks?
Company founders and team members are phenomenal at understanding their product and the intricacies of their own operations. Yet, knowing your product may not mean that you can deliver your knowledge to your customers as efficiently as a vendor that specializes in streamlining workflows for the purpose of customer support.
By working with a third party, companies can lean on their expertise to establish an organizational structure, triage content, establish deflection techniques, and build a knowledge base in order to properly serve their brands.
In many cases, core team members that are not specialized in support operations may not even know what kind of tools would be ideal to use or the best processes to follow to ensure that they are maximizing their efforts.
2. Are you clear on the growth and evolution of your business?
Successful businesses today are able to evolve and shift priorities in order to adapt to the markets where they are operating. While major changes and sudden expansions are great for business, they lead to challenges in maintaining effective operations.
By outsourcing your support or any of your other operations, you’ll be working with companies that, by their nature, are required to adapt and change to their client requirements. Companies can find immense value by working with vendors who can provide feedback through the evolution of a company’s growth.
Companies can benefit by using the expertise of outsourcing vendors to understand the productivity of a support team, the challenges they encounter, and the feedback that users are delivering.
In many cases, outsourcing isn’t just about saving money. It’s about finding partners who can lend their talents, capacities, and experience to your own team.
3. Do You Need to Improve Your Coverage?
It’s important to be clear that outsourcing support does not mean you will completely remove your entire internal support team! Companies need to have a strong internal support team for a few different reasons. Naturally, they will be the final point in a conversation when an issue needs to be escalated. These teams have a close relationship with all other members within the organization. They can find answers, push for changes, and provide feedback to both their own team and their outsourcing partner.
Internal teams should act as the keystone of a strong support network. It’s important to note, that when a company expands to a certain point, they won’t be able to cover everything while maintaining the key performance indicators that they would want.
In many cases, establishing a partnership with an outsourcing vendor can fill in gaps in coverage and maintain or improve response times for support teams. These vendors are not just independent operators that work on their own. They act as an extension of your in-house support team.
4. Do you need seasonal coverage or quick scaling options?
Throughout the year, many companies see an ebb and flow of their business. Whether these changes are stimulated by seasonal events or company-driven promotions, they necessitate the ability to quickly scale the size of their teams. These seasonal deployments can be a challenge for internal teams but are normal practice for outsourcing vendors.
The entire process to hire, onboard, and deploy an agent places more pressure on members of an internal team. When a company works with a vendor, those processes are taken off the shoulders of internal support teams so they can focus their attention on other demands in preparation for the seasons.
How To Outsource the Right Way
A vital part of outsourcing is maintaining a strong relationship and method of communicating with your teams. If you outsource your customer support, you need to provide support to these teams to ensure that they have all the tools they need to represent your company and protect your brand. It’s not enough to just hand off a few operational documents and guides – you need to participate.
1. Find an outsourcing partner that is compatible with your company.
Outsourcing companies have their own strengths and weaknesses, just like any other organization. It’s important to understand their specializations, their challenges, and their achievements. You may have simple, repetitive tasks that need to be done at high volumes by a lot of people. You may have complex workflows that require intensive training and in-depth knowledge of your product. It’s important to speak with a few different vendors to understand whether or not they are a good fit to join your team.
2. Understand all benefits of a partnership
Consider the total cost of keeping an employee – is it only their salary that you’re looking at? You should also be looking at the additional costs that come from hiring, training, utilities, HR, and accounting related tasks that are associated with keeping an employee. One direct benefit is that the cost of outsourcing a team is a flat rate. You pay a single rate for services in which your vendor has already incorporated the operational cost that comes with such a project.
In some cases, you may have complicated workflows that don’t seem as affordable as you expect. Remember that you are working with your vendor to ensure flexibility and reduce other overhead associated with deployment.
3. Review security and legal obligations
If you’re going to be working with sensitive information, you need to know what kind of legal obligations you have to ensure data is secure. Check with a legal expert to understand what information can be shared with a third party and what must remain interna. In some cases, you will only be able to outsource certain tasks due to the laws of where you are doing business. When you sign a contract, make sure you review it with a legal professional and come to a clear understanding with your partner.
4. Establish and adhere to clear timelines and schedules
When you start working with a vendor, it’s important to understand schedules and timelines to perform actions. How long does it take to onboard full-time or seasonal staff? How long does it take to update the team on guidelines? How much notice do you need to provide before making changes to the operational contracts?
Remember that your outsourcing partner will always try to adapt to your needs as quickly as possible, but you need to provide enough notice for them to prepare. Remember to set your team up for success.
5. Communicate clearly and quickly
Clear communication and responsiveness are integral in maintaining an effective team, whether they are internal or outsourced. If you find your vendor is asking a lot of questions about your product or process, you may want to revisit whether you have given them the information and tools they need to do their job.
How long does your vendor need to wait before you get back to them with a response? Do you forget to follow up with them after they request information? On the flip side, are you encountering any of these issues coming from your outsourcing vendor? These are important things to consider when identifying how a partnership is going.
6. Spend time on training and quality assurance
As we mentioned before – set your vendor up for success. The time that is spent on training, workflow updates, and quality assurance processes will deliver returns that will greatly improve the overall operations of your teams. You know what is important for customers, make sure your team is clear on these things too. Train your team, set the bar, and keep an eye out. You’ll see how well things go.
7. Convey your language and tone clearly
If you outsource a team from abroad, you will naturally encounter differences in culture and language. Make sure that you are clear about how you want your team to communicate. First, take a look at how you normally communicate with your customers and with your team. Then, create appropriate guidance for your team to follow. You should regularly monitor the tone, language, and overall demeanor that your agents are using.
8. Make sure your internal tools are streamlined
A lot of companies use their own internal tools for certain tasks and processes. Make sure that the functionality of the tool is intuitive and without errors. Ask your vendor what works, what doesn’t, and what they suggest to make things better. What seems useful to your dev team may not be useful to the people who are working on the tool. Lastly, make sure you continually monitor and audit your internal tools to be sure that everything is up to scratch.
9. Monitor trends in your support queries
While you may implicitly trust your vendor to take care of a lot of your processes, you still need to keep a finger to the pulse of these processes. Remember, your outsourcing partner is an extension of your team. They are not a singular entity that adopted this side of your business full stop.
You should keep an eye out to see if the inquiries that are being handled by your team are appropriately managed. Are escalations streamlined? Do you triage content appropriately? Do you know what the current challenges are and what the most common inquiries are related to?
These are important things to consider.
Seriously Consider Support Outsourcing
With the evolution of any company, your departments will be under constant scrutiny to run efficiently and effectively. You should understand the value that your team provides, whether they are internal or external. Working with a vendor can help you better manage the unique skills of your in-house team and leverage the capacities that can only be brought to the table by an outsourcing partner.
Consider what your future holds and always keep an eye out for new opportunities to adjust your operations. You may not think you need a vendor right now, but it’s good to know what your options are so you can make the right choice at the right time. If you have any questions, you can always reach out and get the answers you need.