Outsourcing Customer Service- What You Need to Know

When analyzing the most successful businesses, you will notice that they all have one major thing in common. Regardless of their size or industry, the companies that thrive are the ones that put a major focus on customer service.  

Today’s customers expect service that’s personalized, prompt and seamless. To help deliver great customer service on a consistent basis, many businesses outsource to live answering services. Below we will answer and discuss the following questions to provide insight on how to outsource customer service the right way.

• What is outsourcing in customer service?
• Why do we outsource customer service?
• Should I outsource customer service to a live answering service?

What is outsourcing in customer service?

Outsourcing is common practice in the business world. Yet, for a relatively new business owner or manager, the practice of outsourcing customer service might seem a little odd or even mysterious.

Outsourcing in customer service means contracting with a third-party vendor such as a live answering service to handle several key tasks including answering inbound phone calls, responding to text messages and monitoring email accounts for important messages.

Why do we outsource customer service?

With 81% of consumers saying that a positive experience increases their chances of making another purchase from a brand, delivering great customer service has never been more important.

Aside from wowing more callers, here are some other reasons why businesses choose to outsource customer service to phone answering services:

• You won’t have to recruit, hire, or train. Recruiting is a time-consuming process and it’s not always successful. Even after hiring a new employee, you must train and manage them. When you outsource customer service, your answering service partner will handle the recruiting, hiring, training and management of its professional live agents.
• You won’t have to invest in expensive technology. Providing great customer service isn’t something most businesses can do with a single phone line. In most cases, it calls for dedicated (and often pricey) technology in the form of a multi-line phone system, multiple computers, and sophisticated software that can integrate with your existing systems. The best answering services offer the latest call forwarding technology and software that integrates with your CRM and other platforms.
• You can focus on growing your business. Customer service, while deeply important for a business, is often a distraction for employees with other responsibilities. Shifting those tasks to an answering service frees up your in-house employees to focus on tasks that support growth.
• More bang for your buck. Outsourcing offers 24/7 support for a fraction of the cost of in-house employees. It eliminates payroll, training costs, office space costs, and technology costs in exchange for the cost of the service.

Should I outsource customer service to a live answering service?

While some companies prefer to handle customer service in-house, you should consider outsourcing to a live answering service if:

• You need support during non-business hours. Ninety percent of customers rate an “immediate” response as important or very important when they have a customer service question, and they’re not always going to reach out during regular business hours. An answering service can provide live agents who are available 24/7/365.
• You and your staff are sick of wasting time dealing with telemarketers and junk callers. Our live agents will screen calls before routing them to you and your team, weeding out telemarketers and spam callers.
• You want to be more productive. An answering service frees you up so instead of struggling to keep up with a constantly ringing phone, you can get more done.
• You have needs that you’re not able to easily manage in-house. Whether it’s bilingual live agents, HIPAA compliance, or responding to incoming text messages (in addition to a ringing phone), an answering service has got you covered.