Whenever companies begin to outsource customer support, there’s a chance of workers panicking. They may feel they’re becoming redundant and worry that there’s no future in the organization for them.
This uncertainty is why outsourcing your customer service to improve company culture might initially seem controversial. However, the SupportYourApp team makes a compelling argument for why company culture can improve when you customer support outsourcing.
Take five minutes out of your day to explore this fascinating concept.
Why Outsource Customer Support?
Forty years ago, entrusting client queries to anyone outside the company was absurd. So, too, was the idea that you could have a handheld phone that was as powerful as a computer.
With the technology available today, it’s simple for companies to access the services of customer service firms globally. By doing so, they can:
- Reduce their costs.
- Access skilled personnel at a moment’s notice.
- Have access to a broader skillset than is present locally. For example, multi-lingual consultants.
- Offer clients premium quality 24/7 support.
- Scale up or down operations according to peak and off-peak times.
- Improve customer satisfaction drastically.
- Improve employee satisfaction over the long term.
How Does Outsourcing Improve Employee Satisfaction?
Let’s assume you operate like most small to medium firms and cannot afford a dedicated customer service division. Instead, your receptionist handles incoming calls, or your customers dial consultants directly.
The Downsides of Handling Calls In-House
Having a receptionist on hand is the ideal option. However, there are challenges to address:
- The receptionist must split their time between answering calls and dealing with walk-ins or appointments.
- Most reception staff also handle administrative tasks, like banking and deliveries.
- Receptionists can answer basic questions but must refer to more complex issues.
- The receptionist has no control over when consultants will answer the calls they forward.
- Incorporating a customer management system into the receptionist’s workstation is an effective but expensive solution.
- As they juggle many tasks, the receptionist cannot give anyone their undivided attention.
Having clients call consultants directly addresses some of these issues but introduces new ones:
- Calls interrupt the consultant’s focus.
- The consultant may rush the call if they have too much other work with which to deal.
- Calls may interrupt consultants while they’re dealing with a client.
- Splitting their focus between calls, walk-ins, and daily tasks makes it more difficult for consultants to provide the right level of care to any job.
- It’s easy for a consultant to lose a message or forget to call a client back.
In short, handling customer service queries becomes stressful unless you have a dedicated call center at your firm. In addition, the company culture may suffer due to employees shifting blame for lapses.
Even without errors, the challenges that employees face make answering calls stressful. Employees are more like to feel pressurized and may feel demoralized.
Outsourcing Helps Employees Focus on Critical Tasks
By opting to move your call center functions offsite, you free up your employees to focus on your business. As a result, they can better complete their daily tasks and meet their sales targets. This helps renew their sense of purpose and relieves job stress.
Employees enjoy better job satisfaction without having to answer the same boring questions several times over. Likewise, when you outsource customer support, your team will feel more relaxed, focused, and satisfied with their work.
Outsourcing Improves Customer Satisfaction
The knock-on effect is that happy clients improve employee satisfaction because there are fewer complaints overall. Also, as customers can get the answers they require from the call center, the employees deal with better-informed clients.
Having a Call Center Insulates Your Team
While your team members are consummate professionals, there is a big difference in the support professional call center agents offer. When you outsource customer support, you improve your client’s service level and insulate the team.
They receive less exposure to demoralizing complaints and unrealistic clients. Therefore, they are more likely to feel motivated during their day. Team members have more time to work cohesively and enjoy team-building experiences.
Outsourcing Makes Sense on Many Levels
When we look at such a skillfully made argument, it does seem clear that outsourcing can improve company culture. You can make great strides in enhancing morale by reducing the team’s excess workload, insulating them from trivial queries and complaints, and allowing them to focus on their critical work.
