How Customer Service Outsourcing Can Help a Business

Jun 17
09:20

2007

Louis ZW Zhang

Louis ZW Zhang

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Customer service outsourcing - pros and cons of business process outsourcing. Call center outsourcing and the impact on customer relationship management.

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In recent years there’s been a growing trend in big business. Companies are seeing the potential in customer service outsourcing. This is not only a cost effective method of providing quality customer service to clients,How Customer Service Outsourcing Can Help a Business Articles but in many cases, it results in a better experience for the customer too. Customer service outsourcing is actually something any large business should consider.

The notion itself is very innovative. Traditionally businesses would hire individuals to work on site in providing one-on-one customer service. Although this was a great method of providing customer care it could become costly for the business. Not only did they have to pay for the salary of each customer service representative but they’d also be responsible for the overhead that came with having an on-site call center.

Outsourcing customer service is simply a more economical approach. Many businesses utilize this type of system now including banks, credit card companies as well as computer technical departments. Paying an outsourcing company tends to be much less expensive than going the traditional route.

Customer satisfaction should still be very high on the list of a company’s goals even when they use an outsourced customer service call center. This is one of the reasons it’s good to interview several different companies to discuss your needs in detail. The importance they place on customer satisfaction is typically a good indicator of how they will treat your current and future customers when representing your company.

There are different outsourcing companies that handle different areas of business. For instance, one call center may actually be responsible for providing the customer service to several different financial institutions. In this case the call center employees would all be handling very sensitive financial information and for this reason, the financial organization would want to be very prudent about the qualifications of the provider. Obviously there could be serious legal ramifications if customer’s personal and sensitive information was mishandled.

Contacting several different customer service outsource providers seems to be the best approach to finding the right fit. Their experience in the required field along with their knowledge should both be considered as important deciding factors. It may actually be more prudent to use the company on a short-term, trial basis to see how they perform and whether or not they are indeed the right firm to handle your customer satisfaction issues.

There are obviously some drawbacks to using a customer service outsourcing firm. Many of these firms are located in other countries which can cause both understanding and language issues. Another problem that some companies who utilize one of these services face is a hire turnover rate within the call center which means more training which can increase their costs.