Customer support falls under customer service. Yet it prioritizes customers who have trouble or require assistance. It has a major role when it comes to the success of startups and is a big stepping stone for some big companies. Customer support is a part of a larger customer service department that answers product-related questions and troubleshoots problems. In short, it saves the owner from stress and problems on how to solve the customer’s needs and wants. It also represents the resources within your company. Depending on the industry, support teams also guide with electronic equipment, software, and apparel, among other products that can be used in terms of needs.
Customer support issues in startups
It is also important to know that customer support is not always perfect to the very core of it. Some issues are still attached to it but then, easily get discarded. Tackling it can help anyone who wants to know about outsourcing and the problem that start-ups face as they are the new image of big companies in the future. Some are listed below:
Money
Those five letters might just be a name but it’s a big factor when you’re new in the business industry. You need it to start a capital to fund software or for the development of your product. So plan it all out before you start, lest you find yourself halfway through and suddenly, you’re falling out.
Lack of planning
As future entrepreneurs, you should always make a plan of what your business will be in the next couple of months, in a year, or a decade after. It’s amazing how startups falter because they forgot to plan. Or they did plan but they just didn’t cover all the bases. You need to plan every single thing because events can take an unexpected turn opposite to what you expect them to be. As the saying goes “if you fail to prepare, prepare to fail as well.” So it’s important not to leave out a single thing. Even if it will not go according to plan, you’re pretty sure you have a backup plan as well.
Finding it difficult to manage your time
As a start-up, there is not enough time. There are a million decisions to make at once. Finding no time for everything can make your business go down as well. So start by eliminating distractions and just focus on the goal that you set for yourself and your business. Cut the noise and focus on the things that move you step by step.
Knowing how it’s organized can help you understand customer outsourcing. But it is also important that you will know things or issues that you may face once you start doing it. Just always remember to focus on your goal no matter how many failures and nuisances you will encounter along the way.
How customer support is organized in start-ups and small companies?
Knowing how customer outsourcing is organized in certain companies and small businesses is a must. It helps the customers to understand it clearly and knows how it functions as well. So here’s some glimpse of how customer support is organized in start-ups and small companies but always remember that what works for some companies doesn’t work for others.
Active when your audience also does the same
The hours your audience is talking about your brand have a big impact on the hours you need to be active. Always do some research when your community is always active and decide what to do or what support they need during those days and on the weekends as well.
Providing Back-up During Peaks and Crisis Situations
There are always times when an unexpected event might occur and conversations might not be enough. Make sure you can call on extra help when your social media team is out during crises.
Business Hours will Never Equal Working Hours
Stress is always commonplace. Whether it is in a business or customer service environment. The high volume of messages needed to be dealt with promptly if brands want to meet their targets. Therefore, misconception always occurs that social media team members should start working at the same time your official business hours start. Brands should also create work schemes in terms of workload and not in terms of business hours. Mental health should always come first before any others. So have your social media team start the day half an hour earlier to easily catch up on the messages that filtered into the inbox during the night.
Communicate Clearly About the Service they Offer
They always say that communication is the key to any relationship to make it stronger. Communicate well with your customers so that they will know what to expect from the service you provide. The way you describe and communicate to others about your business says a lot about how you do business with others.
Why do start-ups prefer customer support outsourcing?
First-time business owners don’t have much time since they are busy sorting out other matters in their business. That’s where customer support outsourcing comes to mind. It is also fast, becoming acceptable with recommended growth strategies. By doing such, they can get some benefits out of it that are listed below:
More time managing the Business
Being a first-time business owner, everything starts from scratch. From your employees to your furniture, to the business establishment itself, but as it grows, your needs grow as well. Along with it, are your obligations as an owner of a rising establishment.
Your business might grow, but not the number of employees since it did not grow at the same pace as the business. In this way, outsourcing comes very helpful because non-core tasks can be delegated to the third-party provider, while the employees are doing their job at their best.
Decreased Operating Costs
As a start-up, the budget might be tight or just enough for your business expenses since it’s your first time opening something that might get big as time goes by. Outsourcing can cause a reduction in your profit, as well as saves you time and energy.
One of its best advantages is the huge cost-saving benefit because outsourcing startups do not need to invest in additional equipment, office space, training, salaries, and benefits for newly hired employees. All of these investments will be taken care of by the outsourcing company, giving the startups a bigger room for their capital.
Much more scalable operations
As the business owner ventures into outsourcing, they soon realize that it permanently frees them from hiring staff that they may not need on a long-term or continuing basis because hiring full-time employees is such a huge investment and might take time for start-ups to recover. Outsourcing allows startups to work with extra, professional hands-on on a per-need basis, allowing them to be flexible with lesser labor costs.
Greater Efficiency
It helps start-ups move and make decisions faster because outsourcing providers already have everything they need. It contributes greatly to greater efficiency and better customer service for startups.
To sum it all up, customer support outsourcing is a strategy worth considering because of the amazing benefits it offers. Everything starts from scratch, even in business. Truly, some famous business tycoons once started outsourcing, which allows them to save much more profit for their business as well.
Financial Reasons, More Time Managing the Business, Decreased Operating Costs, Much more scalable operations, and Greater Efficiency are just some of the many benefits startups gain from outsourcing.
How to choose the most flexible customer support outsourcing service.
Choosing what’s best for you is one of the most important elements of success. As your business grows, it’s guaranteed to cause a lot of change. The first thing to do is to choose what’s best for you, and your business. Be smart enough and wise enough to choose the most flexible and competitive company that can help you along the way to becoming something big someday.
It wasn’t just a play or second guessing when choosing customer support outsourcing. You should also ask these questions below yourself while doing so.
Should I pick remote work or a physical call center?
Picking up the best call center can give you the most amazing experience with benefits. Although remote work is a growing phenomenon, one should also be aware of the benefits and challenges that come with remote work. These benefits and challenges come into mind when considering what type of outsourced call center you will like to work with.
A BPO that uses remote support agents brings some benefits that include:
- Talent sourcing
They have access to the best talent that they can find. The BPO’s recruiting and hiring pipelines aren’t limited to physical location only but beyond that and more. - Redundancy
You can easily know that the weather or power outage won’t affect your ability to support your customers since you rest assured that you’re working with the best and most competitive team and are good at what they are doing. - The happiness of the Employee
Remote work always correlates with things. One of those is a higher level of employee wellness, fewer unscheduled absences, and much greater employee loyalty.
Using a BPO with a physical call center means you lose with all of these benefits mentioned, but it can often solve one large challenge of using a remote team: creating camaraderie and connections. Using a remote customer service team, make sure to bear in mind to put extra effort to create connections among the outsourced team members and your internal employees.
- International or Domestic?
One of the biggest advantages of outsourcing internationally is it’s always cheaper and it allows you to recruit top-tier support professionals that can help with your business. Meanwhile, domestic outsourcing also brings benefits. The first one is cultural familiarity because the agents will understand the issues and concerns, and the last one is perception. If you’re a firm believer that your customer base would particularly be upset that you’re shifting work overseas, then domestic outsourcing might be the best option for you - What location should I choose?
One of the best things to consider when choosing an outsourcing location is what your business needs. What you need comes first before anything else. If you need any other languages, you should consider outsourcing to another country, but for general outsourcing in English, the Philippines is a great option. It has millions of college-educated call center professionals who are fluent in English with a very limited accent, and in addition, agents in the said country can serve in any timezone, so it’s a great choice if you’re aiming to build a 24/7 working relationship with your customers.
Customer Support Outsourcing indeed has many benefits not only to the employer but to the employees and customers as well. But to sum it all up, what does Conectys have to do with all of these? - Do I want dedicated or shared agents?
Agents support multiple companies, so it’s common for shared agents to struggle as well. They are still humans in the first place that can get tired and need rest. Meanwhile dedicated agents are solely focused on providing support for your business, and this brings some advantages:- They can focus on becoming familiar with your product and brand as well as the culture in your place
- They can easily interrogate your team so that they can provide or give advice on what your product needs and if you’re lacking something.
- They can understand your company much better since they’re only focused on it.
To conclude it all, customer service outsourcing is something you should think about multiple times and ask yourself at least these four questions listed above to know what you want so you can get it to the company that you are willing to choose. There are multiple companies that you can choose from, but not all deserve to be chosen.
Conclusion
To sum it all up, customer outsourcing is not just only about assisting and prioritizing the customers and businesses who need a helping hand, it’s also all about relying on clients to make their business successful in the future. Just bear in mind that customer experience outsourcing has also its advantages and cons as well. In the end, researching and planning out what you want to achieve has a greater impact on the steps that you’re taking. It may be small simple steps, but that can help to make you rise among the others. Choosing what’s best for you, always comes from you.