Top Reasons Companies Outsource their Customer Care Departments
Why are some companies or corporations choosing to outsource their customer care departments? Is it simply for money or do they lack the necessary resources to keep and maintain a client service department by themselves?
But first, what exactly is outsourcing?
The simple definition of outsourcing says that a company may choose an area of its business – in our case the customer care department – and transfer its attributions and responsibilities to another company that is specialized in providing that particular service, usually a call center company.
Though it may seem like a good idea for a company to outsource its client service department in order to reduce overall costs, recent studies indicated that companies which benefit from outsourcing services have additional advantages too, such as the ability to focus on other important areas of development and marketing.
Is it therefore a good idea to outsource your company’s customer care department? Let’s find out.
5 Good Reasons to Outsource your Company’s Support Services
1. Increase profit margins by choosing to outsource
It is the number one reason most companies quote when mentioning why they take the step to outsourcing their companies’ client service departments. Though it may depend on the volume of work involved, a company always has to compare the price of creating its internal customer care department versus choosing the outsourcing option.
So, if you want to determine how much your company pays for the internal customer care department, so that you may then compare with an external party that could take the responsibility of keeping the contact with your clients, don’t forget to take into account the following factors:
- How much are you paying your employees? If you are a large company that hired a good number of engineers and developers with big wages, this means a high salary grid is imposed on your organization, which leads to large compensation packages for the other employees too, such as the customer care representatives. If this is the case and your company needs to save some money over a difficult period of time, choosing to outsource your customer care team could prove to be a smart move.
- How much are you investing in your employees’ training sessions? Let’s make this clear, it is not a bad thing to invest in your people, but the question is: How much are you willing to invest and is this the main department you want to train for the future? Maybe it would be better for your company to invest in other vital teams, such as the Sales and the Marketing teams. If you are choosing an external partner for outsourcing your department, it is their job to have the best team available in the market, so investing in training is just part of their everyday routine, not an unexpected spending.
- Do you have the necessary resources and the necessary gear for your client service representatives? Keeping a high operational unit that maintains a permanent connection with your clients is not easy to accomplish. A well-equipped customer care department needs reliable phone connections and fast Internet connectivity to maintain chat support and the classical e-mail ticket applications. We should not forget that client service representatives are many times working during unusual periods of time for which they need transportation means and bonus compensations. Are you ready for these extra-costs? If not, maybe outsourcing to a call center company could prove to be a good idea.
- Do you have the space for your client service teams? Large corporations and international companies that need customer care departments have to employ a large number of representatives, from commercial service to technical support. However, hiring a large number of people means that companies need to secure large rooms in order to make sure their employees have the necessary space and the needed infrastructure to do their jobs. Do you have the space for them? Are you ready to pay extra-costs to rent a larger building for your company?
2. Access specialized support provided by skilled representatives
Your company may require a commercial or a technical service support and in order to do just that, they would have to hire a large number of individuals to secure those positions.
However, choosing a call center company means to have access to specialized support that is provided by skilled representatives, no matter we are talking about commercial, technical or any other nature of client service.
We have to remember that call center companies have many years of experience in offering the necessary support for a great number of companies, from various areas and industries. Thus, they already have dedicated teams with knowledge in different technologies and they can be easily allocated to the new projects for a period of time.
Finally, addressing your needs to those companies leads your corporation achieve superior quality and the highest proficiency in customer care service.
3. Make your customers happy with better support
The 3rd reason a company should contact and outsource their client service department to a call center company resides in the fact that better support leads to happier clients and greater revenues.
How can you make your customers happy without professional support from dedicated people?
As we were saying in the previous number, making sure clients have the necessary support from skilled individuals should be a priority for any company interested in keeping customers happy. Numerous examples in the industry have indicated that many times a single dissatisfied customer can provoke a lot of damage to a company’s image and reputation.
Making sure customers are happy is part of every CEO agenda and every business owner should not treat this aspect lightly.
4. Focus on your company’s essential departments
For many corporations with large budgets establishing multiple departments and business divisions across the world may seem like the normal run-of-the-mill.
However, it is easy to observe that the task of establishing a customer care department supposes that a company should be able to hire a large number of individuals with commercial and technical backgrounds and secure the necessary infrastructure to house such an enterprise. Not to mention the mandatory equipment, the training sessions and the general maintenance of the various teams.
All of the above require extensive efforts and hard work in order to be integrated into the company’s long-term strategy, so that the customer care representatives may actually become true voices of the company.
Is your company prepared to face the multiple challenges involved by the creation of a customer care department without sacrificing the necessary attention that should be offered to other essential departments that cannot be outsourced, such as Sales, Marketing or the IT development?
Choosing to outsource your client service means for many companies more time and more attention to the departments we mentioned previously, even though a call center company is able to offer assistance in those areas too.
5. Improve your Sales with Call Center support
Choosing to outsource client service to a call center company can prove to be a great idea for increasing your Sales revenues.
By choosing the appropriate call center company that hired and trained the right customer service representatives, a company is able to improve various metrics, from faster resolutions to increasing customer satisfaction.
Even more, there are many opportunities into a company’s life to run various marketing and sales campaigns, cases where a call center company is more than appropriate to contact customers and even deliver goods.
For instance, our company is used to run various optimization activities, such as:
- Door to Door services: this service is used to initiate the contact with those customers that are looking to purchase various products while making sure they arrive as fast as possible;
- Direct marketing: We coordinate direct marketing campaigns in order to communicate directly with our existing and potential clients, and to promote our services by phone, chat, e-mail and SMS.
- Database administration: This activity takes time and resources and many of our client companies request our assistance, especially when our operators have been well trained to cover many activity areas from multiple industries.
Conclusions
We understand that taking the decision to outsource your customer service department is not something large companies do every day, so it is a step that must be taken after serious consideration and a serious in-depth analysis.
In case you are about to go on this path, we recommend that you find the right people to maintain the connection between your business and the call center company.
Employing the correct individuals to maintain the dialogue and improve the communication channels is vital, since the new business relationship is established for a long period of time and there will be many unexpected occurrences along the way. The selected individuals should be great communicators that can help prevent any possible confusions by setting the right expectations on the necessary training sessions, performance requirements and technical procedures.
In the end, you have to understand that customers expect that you provide a great customer service and choosing a specialized call center company can only improve your market reputation and increase overall satisfaction.
Blue Point is a call center company offering customized solutions for outbound (telesales, telemarketing, surveys, etc.) and inbound (customer support, helpdesk info line and technical support, loyalty programs, cross sell upsell & inbound) services. The most popular clients assisted by our company are ING Bank, Metropolitan Life, Heineken, Hochland, Reader’s Digest, Ţiriac Auto, Vodafone and Xerox.
