How to Outsource Customer Service the Right Way
One of the biggest questions clients ask is, “Why outsource customer service?” It’s a common misconception that outsourcing customer service to a BPO company can lead to feeling disconnected from your customers. However, this cannot be further from the truth.
Outsourcing customer service work to an agency can help you listen to your customers better. A call center can help you provide better customer service for your clients while noting their complaints and helpful on a secure platform for you to see. These agencies are staffed with highly trained personnel who know how to help your clients.
Partnering with a call center is an investment that you, your team, and your clients will see value in over time.
What is Outsourcing Customer Service?
Outsourcing your customer service means hiring a third-party service provider to take care of your clients. With a partner BPO, you can have a team that’s solely focused on addressing any concerns your customers may have.
Hiring a call center can also help you manage inbound calls, email responses, and live chats. They also make it possible for your company to be available for your clients 24/7.
What are the Benefits of Outsourcing Customer Support?
Companies of various sizes have taken to outsourcing their customer support services to a trusted BPO. Why? Because of the many benefits that these outsourcing companies can provide for their business such as lower operating expenses, better customer satisfaction, and increased revenue.
Learn more about the benefits of outsourcing customer support below.
Lower Expenses
Outsourcing your customer service can lower your operating expenses because you won’t need to worry about hiring personnel, purchasing equipment, and paying for software subscriptions. You simply need to pay the set fee that your BPO company has quoted you and you’re set.
Better Company Stability
With a BPO at your side, you’ll never have to worry about having to hire more personnel because of the influx of customers. All you need to do is reach out to your service provider and tell them and they can easily add more people to your dedicated team.
Enhanced Customer Satisfaction
Having a team that’s committed to answering your customer’s queries and problems can help lower turnaround times and increase customer satisfaction. This is because your clients are getting the help that they need at a much faster rate.
Time to Focus on Business
By automating your customer service, you gain time. Time that can be spent helping your business grow in new ways by allowing you to focus on the critical aspects of your company. You can spend this time planning your company’s next moves, improving products, and fine-tuning services.
What Customer Service Functions Can I Outsource?
Different agencies can offer a variety of services. Here are some of the most common services that companies outsource to BPO agencies:
Chat Support
Live chat support is one way to address your clients’ concerns from your website or social media channel. Your team of dedicated agents can easily answer any questions or concerns that a customer may have as soon as it appears.
Email Support
Email support is one way for your clients to file complaints and raise concerns, but this method will usually require 24 to 48 hours of waiting before a response can be given. Clients will not receive an instantaneous response to their queries, which can lead to delayed problem resolution and client frustration.
Having a dedicated team focusing on answering your emails is one way your company can stay on top of your customers’ emails, which can minimize email turnaround time and improve customer satisfaction.
Technical Support
Having a technical support team is an excellent way to give your clients the support they need to navigate their devices.
A dedicated technical support team can also monitor your digital assets and ensure that they’re up and running to provide your customers with a hassle-free experience with your brand.
Booking and Order Taking
Sometimes clients may not have the resources to book and order their needs on your online platform. When this happens, you may receive inbound calls on your hotline to know more about the services and products that they want to purchase or book. However, if your team is not prepared to handle these kinds of calls, you may lose out on possible sales.
When you have a support team ready to answer these inbound calls, you won’t have to worry about losing out on a sale or being unable to help your client, because your outsourcing team can handle the job.
Inbound Calls
Customers may call your hotline to get immediate support about a concern of theirs. This could be because they want someone on the other line ready to assist them in troubleshooting their product in real time.
With the help of an outsourcing company, you’ll have the manpower you need to man the phones and answer every problem that your client may have with your company’s products.
How to Outsource Customer Service the Right Way?
There is no one answer on how to outsource your customer support team, it will take a lot of work to get there. You’ll need to understand what kind of customer service functions you should outsource, how big of a team you need, and what are your goals for this partnership. Once you have all of these down, you’ll need to start looking for a BPO agency that can help you.
You can ask your network for referrals, or you can look through the internet. You just want to make sure that the BPO you’re considering has the following things down:
- Industry proficiency
- Equipment
- Certifications (Ex. HIPAA, PCI DSS)
- Personnel
The four things we mentioned above will help you narrow down your outsourcing company choices, especially because there are thousands of options online. From there, you can get in touch with these agencies, and they can give you more information about their services.
Some agencies will be open to providing a customized plan that suits your requirements, while others will not be as accommodating. It’s best that you find an agency that’s flexible enough to scale your dedicated team according to your growth.
Finding a team that you can trust can be difficult, but you can always look toward more established outsourcing companies to help you, like SixEleven.
SixEleven is one of the Philippines’ fastest-growing BPO agencies. We’re committed to helping our clients succeed by providing them with a solution that fits their needs. Our team invests in our personnel, hardware, and software to give the best possible service to all our clients.
Reach out to us today and know more about how we can help you with your customer service operations.
Why Six Eleven?
History honed us to who we are today. A team with solid focus – “Exceeding client and customer expectations by maximizing workforce potential to deliver high revenue and satisfaction rates.”
Innovation & Analytics
We combine the skills of our agents with the latest technology for a smoother, more efficient transaction.
Ability to scale
We can help you scale employees more depending on the demand of your tasks.
Stability
Secured cloud backups and encryptions are prepared for your accounts to ensure continuity of operations.
Continuous improvement
We constantly train staff and motivate them to upskill to keep up with the needs of the industry.
Operational excellence
We make sure your employees operate on a high degree of compliance for your business.
Loyalty
We value our clients’ trust and maintain a long-term partnership with them.
5 Steps Easy Deployment
From dedicated SEO strategists to creative web designers, we have the people who can plan and execute the right plan for your company.
1. Client's Job Recruitment
The company ensures the quality of services it offers will align to the client's standards and requirements.
2. Tailor Fit Hiring
Agents were assessed thoroughly to ensure that they match and fit the client's standards perfectly.
3. Easy System Integration
Our IT team is equipped with all the tools needed by each client.
4. Training
All agents will undergo a minimum of 2 weeks training regarding the clients project. This period shall be non-billable and free.
5. Production
As part of the Company's management, Team Leader and Program Managers will be in-charge in managing and coaching the agents to be productive and perform well.
Most Popular Questions
1. Is 611 open to guaranteeing a Service Level Agreement (SLA)?
Yes we are. At the onset, most people try to settle on pricing and terms. Once this is agreed upon in principle, we can work more on a more defined SLA for your program. This could range from number of sales, percentage of conversions, service uptime, drop call ratio and so on depending on the clients business. This negotiated SLA can be added to the contract and a compliance rate of 90 percent or more is expected.
2. Where is 611 located or where will my program be placed?
611 currently has three offices. Our main office is located in Davao City. Our expansion office is located in General Santos City. Our 3rd office in Davao Mabini. The choice where to place a particular program largely depends on the type of program and the skill set present in the talent pool of the existing office when the program is signed or depending on client preference.
611 currently has three offices. Our main office is located in Davao City. Our expansion office is located in General Santos City. Our 3rd office in Davao Mabini. The choice where to place a particular program largely depends on the type of program and the skill set present in the talent pool of the existing office when the program is signed or depending on client preference.
5. What redundancies are in place?
All our computers and servers are backed up by industrial ups with a capacity of 30 minutes or more depending on load. We also have a backup onsite generator to protect against power outages. We have 3 ISP lines with the top 3 Telco providers in the Philippines w more than 200mb of dedicated 1:1 ratio Internet capacity per site.
4. Do you have a disaster recovery plan?
We operate in 3 geographically different offices strategically located in segments. It is about a 2-hour drive from each facility to the next. We don’t oversell our capacity and always maintain an allowance for overflow. Thus in an event of a major disaster, calamity, or equipment failure, we have readily available capacity at proximity to be able to transit agents in and out during a “recovery” situation.
3. Do you do background checks on employees?
We have a third party agency duly accredited by the Philippine government who conducts such on behalf of our company. This assures that the check done is both independent and reliable. Furthermore, every employee is required to submit an NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) clearance before they are accepted towards our company to certify that they do not have any existing civil or legal encumbrances.
6. What is your approach to keeping employee morale high?
We have a lot of initiatives to engage our people. We offer them free meals daily so they avoid skipping meals. We offer them HMO (health card) so they are covered in case of any medical needs. We also have several different activities in our office ranging from team activities, developmental training and also team building and bonding activities. Please see our company’s Facebook page for some samples: https://www.facebook.com/SixElevenGlobalServices/
7. Do you do performance reviews?
We normally have a weekly commission scheme for our reps, this is to reward and acknowledge exemplary performance for the week and do a mini-performance review w each representative. We also do performance reviews every quarter to assess the growth and progress of agents and equally compensate them for such if it merits such.
8. Do you allow client visits or audits?
We have an open-door policy with all our clients. They are welcome to visit us anytime at any frequency to conduct audits, training or just plain checking. We encourage such visitations, we want to establish client confidence and also build a relationship so we are open. Clients can also do audits anytime they prefer w agents but as far as network infrastructure goes, it has to be duly scheduled to avoid any possible service disruptions towards other clients.
9. What are the security measures in place to protect the employee and also the client’s areas?
All our employees have to pass through a fingerprint authenticated turnstile system before they can enter our facility, and we also added physical barriers and door authentication software. Other systems may be added upon client request to control and regulate specific areas to make it dedicated. Further, all areas are monitored by CCTV cameras and we keep video logs of all activities for up to six months or longer upon client request.
10. What are the data security measures in place?
We are duly attested and certified as a PCI compliant organization. We follow best practices as mandated by the PCI council. We follow the password string parameter, idle boot time, also password changing every certain interval. We have a strict policy of people needing to use their credentials as this can be traced in case there is any illegal activity.
11. Can 611 ramp up fast in case there is a high call volume?
We do several non-committal projects. Outbound sales, SEO, Back office, etc. We have a pool of people we can always tap just in case there is an anticipated major overflow because of certain holiday’s or occasions. We just need to be given sufficient notice to cross-train and prepare people at no extra cost to the client, we only bill during live hours and not during training.
