The 4 neglected areas of outsourced customer support

Management team

One of the first things you should do is create a budget for their customer support team, finding out how many operators you can afford to bring on. However, management costs are often missed out. These costs cover those responsible for scheduling, answering questions on handling tickets, and ensuring tickets are pursued at the right time.

Without incorporating management costs, you could find yourself with a large team but poor-quality service. Depending on the provider, they may offer management staff, or it could be down to you to directly manage your team. The most important thing is that the correct management layer is in place to bring you the most productive and knowledgeable customer support operatives.

Training and development

As the team you onboard are not initially from your business, it’s vital they can become acclimated with your brand and its processes. Alongside this, we must ensure that they are always progressing in their roles to offer the best service possible. This can be challenging when dealing with various time zones, so it’s important to understand there’s time and planning that goes into bringing on team members. We must use a mixture of training methods to ensure that our teams are easily scalable, whether that’s instructor-led, shadowing, or independent.

Understanding requirements

Having never outsourced your customer service, it’s vital you’re tracking key metrics regarding customer enquiries. This can include factors like the number of tickets on your team’s desk each day and the average time it takes to tackle them. Without suitable data in these areas, you could be overpaying for an excessive team or stretching a small team too much and comprising quality.

Finding the right provider

The right customer support provider often depends on your circumstances, but there are ways to help find the best for you. It’s best to start with your typical checks of testimonials and case studies to see what they have provided to others. This can help you gauge an idea of how they work. If this checks out, then there is no harm in contacting a provider to find out more.

To get the most out of your enquiry, ask questions regarding their workforce and how they operate. For example, what do they look for when hiring their specialists? Or how does their management structure look? You could even ask to meet some of their team to determine if you could build a quality relationship and if they’re the perfect addition to your business.

If you found this useful, you may enjoy reading about The fundamentals of outsourcing customer service.