When scaling your business, you require quick, cost-effective access to skills and resources. Outsourcing provides the perfect blend of the two. By delegating generic business functions, you’re able to focus on what makes your business unique, without sacrificing service delivery.
In this post, we’ll focus specifically on customer support. We’ll discuss how an outsourced service desk can help you to scale your business.
How Can Service Desk Outsourcing Help You to Scale Your Business?
What is Service Desk Outsourcing?
You make use of service desk outsourcing when you hire a professional BPO provider like SupportYourApp to handle customer support on your behalf. The company you partner with may deal with:
- All calls, or the overflow of calls from your switchboard
- Emails
- Instant messages
- Comments on social media
- Tickets on your internal client portal
You’ll decide how much support resides with your firm. Most firms, however, hand over the monitoring of all service channels. It’s the best way to ensure that clients receive consistent service.
The Benefits of Using Outsourced Service Desk Providers When Scaling Operations
An Outsourced Service Desk Makes Sense Financially
Running an in-house call center gives you optimal control over service. This control comes at a significant price.
Assuming that your consultants earn the minimum wage, you’ll pay $5,292.5 per month to keep one person on the line at all times. If you consider that the average American customer service representative earned $16.69 per hour in 2019, the cost rises to over $12,000 per month.
Consultant compensation is only one part of the equation. Other costs associated with an in-house call center include:
- Agent Recruitment and Training: According to Glassdoor, it takes, on average, 24 days to hire a new consultant in the United States. It costs around $4,000 to complete the process and training.
- The High Attrition Rate: The typical attrition rate for call centers is between 30% and 45%.
- Office Space: It’s not necessarily practical to allow your consultants to work from home, so be prepared to rent a space for them.
- Equipment and Software Costs: Providing clients with a high level of support requires up-to-date equipment and software. You must factor in the costs of acquisition and maintenance.
Using outsourced service desk providers means handing over the responsibility for these factors. You only pay for capacity, not all the ancillary costs associated with it.
Capacity as and Where You Require It
This flexibility is one of the biggest advantages when choosing to outsource. You may increase or decrease capacity as necessary. Should the expansion go better than expected, you don’t have to wait -three weeks for a new hire to get up to speed.
When you require less capacity, it’s just as simple to scale down. You may downgrade your support package with little notice.
Good BPO providers tailor their packages to your needs. They’ll ask you about peak periods, upcoming product launches and promotions to better customize your support. A great firm learns as much as possible about how your business operates to make the transition seamless.
Access to Support Professionals
No business would trust its tax returns to a brand-new hire. It seems almost insane that they’re less careful with something as vital as the customer relationship. When scaling up your business, it’s more important than ever to keep your clients happy.
The business of a professional support firm is to do just that. Their entire focus is on service delivery and support, leaving you free to build your business.
The highly trained team is capable of dealing with a range of clients adeptly. They employ tact, empathy, and great communication skills to soothe frayed nerves and frustration. Being highly versed in your products and services, they’re able to provide clients with efficient assistance.
Your clients leave the experience with a positive impression of your firm.
Makes International Expansion Easier
Operating globally is relatively simple today. Providing customer support when there’s a language barrier is not. Outsourcing provides you with access to consultants from across the globe.
It’s a simple way to add multilingual support, and this gives you an advantage when expanding into a new market. Clients not only find it easier to make a connection with the agents, but the process moves more efficiently.
Improves Office Productivity
Support centers take the pressure off your administrative and creative consultants. The consultants will deal with all but the most technical issues. By doing so, they reduce the number of interruptions your team deals with, improving productivity overall.
Your consultants are also spared the tedium of answering the same questions over and over again.
Final Notes
Expanding your business is often challenging. It entails taking on extra risk with no clear guarantee of reward. Partnering with a professional support provider is an excellent way to minimize the risk and maximize the reward.
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