Customer service outsourcing is a serious commitment.

But is your business ready for it? 

In this article, we’ll examine some pros of outsourcing customer service and see how you can leverage those for a profitable business, along with the cons of customer service outsourcing to avoid unnecessary risks.

Top 5 pros of outsourcing customer services

Bring onboard global talent at an affordable cost

The market is red hot with opportunities, and that’s why one-third of employees are moving to a better prospect within 6 months of joining. 

But for a business, it can be a big blow to productivity, time, and money. 

Imagine how much you can get done when you don’t have to worry about hiring, training, and attrition. 

Since the workforce isn’t on your payroll, you don’t have to bear the cost of individual salary or benefits. Neither do you have to spend resources on their background check and training.

Outsourcing takes away these pains and gives you access to a global talent pool at a cost much cheaper than hiring full-time employees.

Get specialization with flexibility 

Running a business isn’t always fun. Along with the thrill of closing deals or the satisfaction of supporting a customer comes the tiring tasks of data management too. 

Outsourcing allows you the flexibility to hire someone for even a week and use their expertise for a particular task like data entry and management.

You can outsource banal or skill-intensive tasks like data entry, knowledge base management, or customer service by call, chat, or social media. 

Scale easily, anytime

When it comes to customer services, time is of the essence.

One of the significant advantages of outsourcing customer service is that you don’t have to wait for your HR team to provide you with vetted resources. 

You can serve your growing customer base and stand up to their expectations by asking your outsourcing agency to add suitable extra agents for your processes. All of this can be done in less than an hour, and a trained team of professionals will be ready to handle your customers without any hiccup.

Boost productivity of full-time employees

You hired your full-time employees to do more than fill out excel sheets and answer customer queries. You invested in them to gain a strategic advantage and improve your processes. 

But when your team is occupied with tasks that aren’t part of their KPIs, it can affect your business output and burn out your employees. 

You can outsource the manual, repetitive tasks so that your team can focus on their core tasks. It can also decrease your attrition rate and boost your team's productivity.

Serve with better skills & infrastructure

A company with a good product but lousy customer service can’t be anyone’s choice. Customers expect to be heard and served at all times and their expectations can be met with a chat service company like AM2PM Support offering 24/7 live chat assistance.

The outsourced teams run on clearly defined performance metrics, making them an ideal option for customer service operations.

Each action is executed keeping your goals in mind. That means your customers get a faster response, proper support, and better solutions.

And since outsourcing agencies work with their own equipment and infrastructure, that’s another win for your bank account. 

But all these benefits don’t mean that it’s the solution to all business operations. Let’s take a look at the other side of the coin too.

Top 5 cons of outsourcing customer services

Maintaining brand connection

When you outsource services, your customers shouldn’t feel that they are talking to an altogether new organization.

That’s because often, an outsourced agency misses the brand voice and company values that attract a customer to any organization. 

Solution: 

• Explore the outsourcing agencies and see which one holds similar values to yours. 
• Schedule a discovery call to understand how they work and if they can comprehend your expectations.

Thorough research is better than handing over your customers to the wrong agency in haste.

Protecting confidential data

When you outsource the team, you’ll have to provide them with the necessary information for a better work process. 

But is it safe? What if they misuse the data?

These are some of the questions a company mulls over while outsourcing. And valid ones too.

Concern about confidential information is why many companies shy away from outsourcing. 

Solution: 

• Seek the proper security certifications of the outsourcing agency. 
• Understand their data management and security methods.
• Sign a legal agreement with a detailed clause over data security and use.

Controlling the process quality

It might become tough to assure quality performance when you don’t have an in-house team working on the customer processes. 

How to see what they’re actually doing? 

In such a case, ensuring that your customers are getting what they were promised can be a challenge. 

Solution:

• Ask if the outsourcing agency has accurate reports and analytics for evaluation purposes. 
• Opt for scheduled daily or weekly reports to track the result and critical metrics.
• Agree on bi-annual or quarterly meets to review the outsourced team’s performance.

Boosting in-house team’s confidence

Announcing that now your team’s work will be done by someone else can ring alarms and raise unwarranted doubt. 

It can impact their morale and confidence in their work. 

Solution:

• Communicate clearly the factors behind the decision.
• Outline the responsibilities outsourced and what new your in-house team will work on in the future.
• Inform in detail about the positive and negative (if any) ways the decision might impact your team.

Training for company product & processes

Training is required to walk the team through your product to handle the customer queries better, but it’s a one-time activity that many companies fear will lead to constant hand-holding.

And the truth is…it might be if you have outsourced a company that’s not capable. 

Solution:

• Consider the onboarding time of the companies you have shortlisted. See how quickly they can take over the processes.
• Next, analyze their success rate. Ask data for how many companies they have helped and delivered the required results. Case studies are a helpful way to gauge this.

So, is customer service outsourcing right for you?

Circling back to the question we started with earlier, we hope that now you know how to go about this decision.

Overall, outsourcing is a great business strategy that can complement your team and satisfy your customers. But the key to this is choosing the right outsourcing services.

See if AM2PM support can help you with your chat, call, email, or ticket processes. Our team has professional and trained members and comes with 24/7 support and automatic performance reports. All this and more, wrapped in a neat and affordable price plan. 

Don’t outsource just because everyone else is doing it or not. Talk with industry experts and explore how outsourcing can benefit your business.