It’s no secret that in order to successfully grow your business, you need to be able to not only make sales, but to also establish a loyal customer base.
While sales can be considered to be the lifeblood of any business, a loyal customer base is what’s going to sustain your business as well as help it grow.
There are many ways to gain a loyal customer base, but none that are as personal and as effective as good customer service. It’s human nature, after all, to want to interact more with the people and businesses that are able to provide us with more than just results, but with convenience.
But, therein lies the problem. There is a limit to the patience of a single person. Imagine a scenario where you don’t just handle the production (or rendering of services) aspect of your business, but also the customer service aspect, which often entails that you have to deal with customer complaints.
And the truth is that listening to customer complaints and questions all day can be a very draining experience, especially when you also have to worry about running a business. It is for this very reason that businesses partner with outsourcing companies like AnswerFirst to do it for them.
But what makes the difference between creating a cash drain with minimal results and actually building a loyal customer base? When is the best time to outsource your customer service?
Business Size
The size of your business affects the volume of customer interactions that you’re going to get in a day. Bigger businesses tend to handle many more transactions daily than a small business. It can almost always be assumed that a big business, like eBay, is going to need to outsource its customer service. The exact opposite is true for a small business where an in-house team will be able to handle the workload, although this also depends on the future growth of the business.
Seasonal Spike In Volume Of Customer Interaction
Holiday seasons also mean that most (if not all) retail businesses are going to have massive sales. As you might expect, this also brings an increase in customer queries. A lot of retail businesses get their annual sales from these events. The more questions they’re able to answer, the more sales they’re likely going to get. It’s for this reason that it is a sound financial move to outsource your customer service, especially during the busy seasons.
The Need For 24-7 Support
Global businesses tend to fall under this category because not all their customers are in the same time zone, and it’s not uncommon for inquiries to pop up outside of the business’s regular hours. It’s going to be very difficult to establish a 24-hour support system in-house, especially when you consider that this could easily cause your operational expenses to spike. Outsourcing allows you to establish an after-hours team to take care of your customers at any time of the day.
Complexity of Scenarios
This is especially true for businesses that have a heavy focus on taking technical calls. When you have a product that’s very technical, it’s best to refrain from outsourcing your customer service because third parties may not have the technical knowledge required to resolve customer problems.
