Frederick Jace
Customer experience outsourcing refers to when an organization handles the responsibility of dealing with the customers to a third-party provider. The outsourcing partner can be onshore (in the same country), nearshore (in a nearby country), or offshore (in another country with a different time zone).
There can be multiple reasons which cause the company to outsource its customer services. Maybe it’s because that the company is relatively new and has limited staff and budget. Or it may be because the organization wants to focus on the core areas of their business.
Whatever the reason be, customer experience outsourcing can be a highly flexible proposition. It is your choice to outsource entire customer experience service operations or only a few aspects of it, such as your call center, chat support inquires, technical inquires, peak time support inquires, or any others.
Pros and Cons of Customer Service Outsourcing
The following are some of the pros and cons of customer experience outsourcing.
Pros of Customer Service Outsourcing
Let’s discuss some of the pros of customer service outsourcing.
· Reduces Cost
Most companies consider cost reduction as the primary objective when it comes to outsourcing customer services. Cost-effectiveness is amongst the most compelling advantages of customer service outsourcing.
By outsourcing your customer service, you cut down your costs on hiring, onboarding, infrastructure, training, giving salaries, and providing other benefits to the employees. That’s how the organization saves money and spends it on other services. Reports claim that IMB reduced its cost by 97% by outsourcing its customer support.
Organizations can outsource their customer service to a partner offshore where the cost of living, wages, and operational expenses are much lower than your home country.
· Reduces Workload
Handling customer services can be a challenging task. It’s a time-intensive endeavor that requires you to work tirelessly on building a meaningful client relationship with your customers.
As a business owner, if you are looking to scale abruptly, managing customer service in-house may overwhelm you. You may experience difficulties and find it difficult to focus on your primary business.
That’s where customer experience outsourcing comes in handy. It can take a giant load off your back and leave you with more time and resources so that you can invest in the core aspects and enhance your chances of growth.
· Allows Flexible Coverage
The best part of outsourcing customer services is that it allows you to avail yourself of the option of providing 24/7 support to your clients. Customer service centers are also open on weekends, which means your clients will get premium support whenever they need it.
That’s why outsourcing customer service might be considered a good option, mainly if you have limited staff but want to make sure you are available for customers beyond your working hours.
Furthermore, customer support provides the flexibility of scaling up your customer service, especially during peak times, and scale it down when the customer inflow drops. All this happens without any hassle.
Cons of Customer Service Outsourcing
Here are a few cons of customer experience outsourcing.
· Limited Knowledge of Your Product and Customers
No matter how good your outsourcing partner is, they won’t have the same level of understanding of your brand and customers as you have.
As they aren’t aware of the functionalities and operations occurring in the organization, they will certainly lack depth, context, and nuance, which makes the customer experience very delightful.
Poor customer service can ruin your brand reputation and result in customer dissatisfaction. Hence, you must closely monitor each customer interaction and ensure that agents follow your company’s set rules and regulations.
· Data Insecurity Concerns
Most companies have to deal with sensitive data, which poses severe risks if misused or lost, especially when a third party is involved. In the worst-case scenario, any tampering of customer data can pose issues for your business as well as your money.
Outsourcing providers mostly have robust protocols and security systems to ensure the security of sensitive data. Furthermore, the concept of transferring data to your outsourcing partner poses a high-security risk and increases the likelihood of your system getting hacked.
