What are the Benefits of Outsourcing Customer Service?

The benefits of outsourcing customer service to the Philippines are numerous and well documented. There is a reason behind why the world’s best companies outsource their customer service to the Philippines.

Fun fact, did you know that outsourced customer service teams make up about 70% of the entire Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry in the Philippines?

After all, there is a reason why the Philippines is affectionately referred to as the “Call Center Capital of the World”. Every day, well over a half a million Filipinos are on the phones, delivering their trademark brand of friendly and excellent customer service for companies of all shapes and sizes all around the world.

Many companies from the United States, UK, Australia, Canada and Scandinavia have chosen outsource their English language customer support to the Philippines for this exact reason!

In this day and age, outsourcing your customer service means more than just sticking a group of people in a room to answer phones all day. The advent of the on-demand economy where all you have to do is push a button to have food delivered, have a car pick you up or order a massage means that customers have grown accustomed to instant gratification and the same goes for their expectations of what good customer service is, they want their issues resolved quickly and they want it now! Regardless of which channel they choose.

Customers are becoming more and more demanding by the day. Leave the hard work to the experts at STAFFVIRTUAL. We’ll make sure to keep your team updated with weekly reports while escalating the important issues to your internal team so that you’ll never miss a thing.

• Added Flexibility
  Outsourcing is not necessarily about saving money or sidelining support. Instead, it’s a way for companies to give themselves the flexibility to add extra support capacity quickly, when they need it, without committing to hiring full-time employees as this can take a few weeks, at the very least.
  Having this kind of flexibility can be a game changer for many businesses that face seasonal spikes of volume, like e-commerce for example but don’t want to worry having to let people go when the queues are quiet.
• Access to a large and qualified talent pool
  Unlike most countries in Asia, English is the number one spoken language in the Philippines and outsourcing is the number one industry. Companies can hire a ready and willing workforce quickly and easily.
  Universities churn out tens of thousands of skilled and trained workers every year. If you’re looking to build a team a team abroad, you’ll enjoy having access to such a large talent pool that speaks great English, at a fraction of the cost when compared to back home. Simply, it’s much cheaper and easier to get talent that you need in the Philippines.
• Outsourcing can save you a lot of time (and money)
  It’s no secret that working in customer service can be a high stress job, which is why providers spend a considerable amount of money ever year in maintaining employee happiness to keep customer satisfaction scores high.
  Recruiting and managing people who are customer minded, can handle difficult people, can retain information about your product or service, is a full-time business. Keeping all that in mind while trying to run and grow your business would be overwhelming for anyone.
  As an added bonus, since outsourcing requires that you document and analyze your workflow in order to train and get the best out of your offshore workforce, this will give you the nudge you need to take a good hard look at your SOP’s (Standard Operating Procedures) and improve upon them.
• 24/7 Coverage
  In the age of increasingly high customer expectations, when customers want to be able to contact you whenever is convenient for them, It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the potential benefits of providing 24/7 coverage is HUGE.
  Chances are, you sell your products and services on the internet and since the internet never closes, so the same principle should apply to your customer service team. If you’re not there to answer questions or solve problems the arise when they’re shopping, they’ll just go someplace else, it’s that easy for them.
  

You can’t just tell your customers to “be back tomorrow!”, unless your organization can reliably offer 24/7 coverage, outsourcing your customer communicate to an experienced provider is your best option if you want to stop leaving money on the table.

• Greatly Reduced Exposure to Lawsuits
  Year in, year out, many companies and top level executives in developed countries have to deal with lawsuits (sometimes frivolous) from their in-house staff. However, when outsourcing, the legal risk is borne entirely by the outsourcing provider so dealing with lawsuits or in-house politics will be a thing of the past.
• Dramatically Reduced Healthcare Costs
  If you build a team abroad, you will not be responsible for providing health insurance, benefits, taxes and other expenses that can cost a business owner an arm and a leg. The cost is absorbed entirely by the outsourcing partner.
• Drastically Reduced Management Headaches
  If you chose the right BPO provider, they will have an experienced and professional HR and management team who will ensure your team performs at their absolute best.
  While you are still responsible for training and task allocation, you can forget about ensuring your workers turn up on time, dealing with vacation and sick leave reporting, tax returns etc. All of that will be done for you, so that you can focus on doing what you do best.
• Increased Focus
  Let’s face it, most company founders have never run a support organization, and don’t know the first thing about how to set up processes, which tools to use, or even what great customer service looks like.
  Outsourcing your non-core competencies like customer service, to an expert will allow you to focus your valuable time on just developing and growing your business. You can work on the stuff you actually enjoying doing, like innovating your products and conducting sales, rather than dealing with petty office problems and operational necessities that don’t add anything to the bottom line and distract you from the main goal.

In a nutshell, the benefits of outsourcing your customer include cost reduction, access to a larger qualified talent pool, flexibility and reduced exposure to lawsuits.

Leaving your customer service processes to the experts is the best way to make your brand more accessible, and this is the first step towards building a positive customer experience and can be one of the most reward decisions your company will ever make.