Customer service is a critical consideration for any business. It doesn’t matter what you sell or where you sell it, delivering the right customer service is essential for creating loyal customers. Unfortunately, delivering the kind of meaningful experiences your clients expect isn’t always easy.
Around 86% of customers say they’re willing to pay more for a guaranteed good service. Yet e-commerce companies rarely have the manpower available to generate growth through CX. Many online brands rely almost exclusively on things like live chat and self-service to aid customers.
While self-service solutions are popular these days, there are going to be times when your customer needs more help – particularly if you’re selling more complex solutions, like SaaS, or technology.
So, how do you make sure you’re serving your customers correctly, without breaking your budget?
Let’s have a closer look how outsourcing in e-commerce works.
What is it about?
Outsourcing in the e-commerce industry involves delegating specific tasks to trained individuals outside of your organization. When you outsource something, you leverage the help of another group or agency. Not only does this take some of the stress off your current team, but outsourcing ensures that you can access the correct skills to delight your customers.
Outsourcing customer experience isn’t just a process of handing customer service requirements off to someone else. There are around 2.14 billion people shopping online. Get just one experience with a customer wrong, and you risk damaging your brand reputation. Customer Experience (CX) and Customer Service are among the first things that many e-commerce companies outsource because it allows them to:
- Offer better customer service hours to suit their customers
- Deliver global support for people in different regions
- Access a branded team specifically trained to handle customer queries
- Address and monitor multiple customer service channels at once
- Scale their customer support as their business grows.
Why is Customer Service Outsourcing Important?
For years, customer service outsourcing solutions have been valuable investments for e-commerce companies. After all, the e-commerce market is rapidly growing. However, since the pandemic, demand for outsourced customer service assistance has been greater than ever.
The number of digital shoppers has increased significantly following lockdowns and social isolation in 2021. Customers are buying more products online, from groceries to telephony, and these customers expect the company they buy from to help every step of the way.
Customers expect to access support when they want it most, on the channels they want to use, from social media messengers, to live chat and audio calls. Yet most e-commerce companies are operating with minimal staff, trying to keep costs low in an unpredictable economy.
The Advantages of e-Commerce CX Outsourcing
Outsourcing your customer service strategy to a dedicated agency or professional team means you can deliver the kind of meaningful experiences your customers are looking for, even in an environment where CX and service are becoming more complex.
With an outsourced service team, you can hand the art of serving customers to a group of professionals trained to deliver excellent customer satisfaction and first-time resolution rates. At the same time, you get to ensure that your employees have more time to complete other important tasks, like planning future growth, managing inventory, and developing new products.
A customer service outsourcing strategy also:
- Saves You Time
Employing an experienced customer service team means you can spend more time on business development, and less time on training new employees. Outsourced teams already know how to follow the best strategies for sales, service management, and customer support.
More often than not, the right agency will know how to use the correct tools and software to generate faster outcomes for customers and better brand reputation. You can even find team members with specific skills depending on your needs.
- Helps with Scaling Your Business
E-commerce companies can grow quickly. Working with an outsourced customer service team means you can scale the number of experts you work with to suit changing needs. As your number of queries increases, you can onboard more outsourced agents to assist with everything from troubleshooting to answering customer calls.
Because you outsource your employees rather than hiring in-house team members, you can also scale your usage of various services back when you no longer need the extra support. This is an excellent way to keep costs low and ensure you can pivot in an uncertain environment.
- Guidance and Optimization Options
The great thing about outsourced customer care agencies, is they don’t just know how to handle customer conversations, they also know how to give you valuable insights about your target audience. The right employees will be able to use valuable tools and CRM systems to give you insights into the kind of service platforms your customers use most.
With the right outsourced team, you can strategically spend your money on the service areas that make the most sense for your customers and your brand. Your outsourced agents can even collect customer feedback for more granular data.
Finding the Perfect Outsourced Team for Customer Service
Finding an excellent solution for outsourcing customer service is easier today than ever. All you need to do is think about what you’re going to need from the right employees.
Try to think about your needs both now and in the future. For instance, just because you manage most customer service via phone calls today doesn’t mean you won’t want to offer live chat, email, and social media in the future.
Look for a customer service specialist that can scale according to your company’s needs, and work in the time zone that makes the most sense for your organization. Ideally, you’ll want a service team that’s flexible enough to help you reach your goals, as well as one that shares the customer service philosophy of your brand. When interviewing a potential provider think about:
- How quickly they can start working for your brand and helping your customers
- Which technology needs they can deliver, especially when it comes to the channel of choice
- How they interpret quality and how they can improve your customer service
- How flexible they can be when it comes to delivery of service hours, languages, automation
- How scalable they are especially in e-commerce typically peak-times
If you need help creating the perfect outsourced customer service team, reach out today! We can help you build the right strategy for the future of customer experience.
