It’s not easy to scale effectively while maintaining excellent customer service. Many businesses have found that investing in customer support outsourcing is an effective and low-risk way to do it.
Having a reliable and quality CS team can be a major element to a business’ success: 89% of customers are more likely to make another purchase after a positive consumer experience. Because it allows companies to offer top-notch customer service while freeing up valuable time for their in-house team, outsourcing customer service (CS) has become a major trend in recent years.
In this article, we will explore the definitions and benefits of outsourcing customer service, including how it can help businesses scale, free up valuable resources, and minimize hiring risk. But before we dive in, let’s clarify some industry terms.
What is Customer Support Outsourcing?
Customer support outsourcing refers to leveraging a third party to fill roles within the customer support function. Companies in the process of scaling or who are looking to shift away from a fully in-house customer service team to save on recruitment, training, or turnover cost, or management overhead, may find this option particularly attractive.
Outsourced customer service companies can be a valuable resource, providing access to talent quickly, while de-risking the growth and hiring process. A strong provider will help you through the process and connect you with a remote CS team member who is enthusiastic about your business, has experience or been through rigorous training, and has been extensively taught about your brand.
How Do Businesses Benefit from Customer Support Outsourcing?
Outsourced CS can have a great impact on your business’ bottom line, but if done in the wrong way, these teams can be detrimental: Over 40% of customers have stopped doing business with an organization due to poor customer service. That makes outsourcing customer service a high stakes project.
Hiring a remote CS team to be the outward facing voice of your brand is now a viable option: You’re no longer limited to CS teams that are near the office and employed by you. Bandalier knows that talent can come from anywhere – that’s why our diverse talent pool comes from towns and cities across the country.
Keep these three benefits in mind as you consider the pros and cons of outsourced CS services:
1. Scale your business while continuing to meet customer expectations
It’s a challenge to maintain high quality service as new customers come in the door, and your business is growing. Our best customers come through word of mouth, and we know poor reviews hamper growth.
Customer support may not be your business’s core function, and when you’re growing, inventing a new department from scratch can be time-consuming and costly.
Outsourcing allows you to hire faster, and customer care outsourcing specialists have already trained their reps on the blocking and tackling of the job. Rather than spending months trying to source, interview, and vet candidates, providers like Bandalier have customer service teams that are ready to start immediately. Pre-trained talent can get up to speed quickly on the particulars of your brand and your systems.
Companies that thrived during the pandemic often found ways to deliver empathetic, delightful customer service, even while dealing with new customer issues and unprecedented demand. It’s no surprise that caring for your customers continues to be good business.
2. Free up valuable resources & time
Instead of answering emails and phone calls from your customers, you or your core team can pass them over to your outsourced CS experts. With these responsibilities off your plate, you can focus on the projects that your in-house team is uniquely positioned to do.
A few ways an outsourced customer service partner can save your internal team time and money:
- Hiring a trained customer service representative can take up to six weeks
- Training and onboarding a small, new team is expensive; an outsourcing partner helps to shoulder that cost
- An outsourced team usually requires fewer overhead costs than a fresh in-house team member.
3. Minimize hiring risk
Hiring is always risky for two reasons:
- Until they arrive and start working, there’s no guarantee the new hire will be able to do the job.
- If your new hire doesn’t succeed, it can take an enormous amount of time, resources, and lost earnings to replace them.
With outsourced customer service teams, you can mitigate both of these risks.
Thanks to our teams’ participation in data-driven training and onboarding, every candidate in our talent pool is ready to ramp up quickly: We’ve seen their work firsthand, and know these candidates have what it takes to succeed. They’ll be positioned to serve your customers and represent your brand within their first few days.
Some providers, including Bandalier, also offer a window to ensure that you’re happy with your new outsourced team (ours is 30 days). If one team member isn’t the right fit, you’ll have a new person ready to jump on board within days.
Compared to the painful process of managing out a bad hire and finding their replacement, outsourcing customer service teams presents a significant time-saving opportunity.
If you want to learn more about the four steps you can follow to ensure you have confidence in your CS team, read this article for outsourced customer service tips!
Quality Outsourced CS Talent You Can Trust
Of course, not all talent providers operate the same way. Bandalier is not a traditional remote staffing agency or a customer support recruiter. Our customer service experts instead focus on truly understanding your business so that you can scale your business with confidence.
At Bandalier, we use a rigorous data-driven interview process to identify and develop untapped talent. This means that we enable customer-facing teams to grow faster and with less risk. We take pride in ensuring that our customer service team members are a great cultural fit for your brand and have a genuine desire to help your team succeed.
If you need to quickly build an amazing CS team while minimizing risk as your business grows, outsourcing customer support could be a great option.
See Real Results from Outsourced Customer Success
With an outsourced CS team, you can:
- Feel confident that your outsourced hires are low-risk.
- Focus on projects that your in-house team is uniquely qualified to do.
- Save money through reduced recruiting, training, turnover and management costs.
- Scale your organization with happy customers.
Discover why fast-growing companies trust our experts to meet their outsourced customer support needs, and how we can help your business succeed today!
