While customer support is, at first glance, an area that many think of as being fairly simple – this is far from the truth.
Choosing a good customer support/ outsourcing partner is like getting married.
You need to connect with them and feel that they are going to be good for your business. You need to be able to communicate and you need to feel that they understand you. Then, of course, there are those equally important aspects of trust, speed, and quality of service.
So how do you choose the right customer support/ outsourcing partner? Here are some points to consider.
In this blog post, we’ll discuss some of the key things you need to think about when choosing a customer support partner.
What is Customer Support Mean?
What does customer support mean to you? This is a question you have to ask yourself before contacting anyone.
It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that customer support is just about answering questions but the truth is that customer support involves a lot of processes that are not directly related to answering the calls of customers.
The purpose of customer support is to ensure that your customers are happy. When your customers are happy, they will keep coming back to you.
There are many ways to ensure that customers are happy and they can be divided into three main categories: Technical Support, Sales Support, and Customer Support.
No matter what size your business is, you will always need customer support. This is a fact that cannot be avoided, or even ignored for that matter.
With the number of complaints about customer service increasing daily, companies have started realizing the importance of providing good customer support.
With the help of customer support, companies have not only been able to build a good image, but also maintain a good rapport with their customers. The importance of having good customer support cannot be overemphasized.
- A positive experience can work wonders for a company.
- A positive experience can make a company grow at a faster rate, as people tend to share positive experiences.
- A positive experience can make a company differentiate itself from the competition.
Customers don’t just look for products, they look for excellent experiences. People want to buy from companies that can offer them excellent customer support. Statistics show that many customers go for a product – because it comes with excellent customer support.
Types of Customers
There are three main types of customers that businesses must contend with: Internal Customers, External Customers, and Partners.
- Internal Customers: Internal customers are people who work for the company or organization itself. These customers usually have close ties to the company and understand its needs intimately.
- External Customers: External customers are people who do not work for the company or organization itself. These customers may be consumers or business partners.
- Partners: Partners are people or organizations with which the business does business in some way. These partners may include distributors, resellers, and others.
Some important considerations when choosing a customer support partner include the following:
- Do you have a shared vision?
- How well do they understand your customer base and nature of business?
- Can they provide the needed level of support?
- Do they have the resources necessary to provide the requested level of support?
Considerations When Hiring a Customer Support / Outsourcing Partner
Choosing the right customer support/ outsourcing partner can be a long and frustrating process. You have to consider a lot of factors, including the experience, the technical skills, the culture, and the vision of the support provider to make sure that you find the right partner.
Here are some key points to keep in mind when choosing your customer support partner:
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- Understanding the Nature of Your Business: Your customer support partner must be in tune with the industry, and your pain points and offer a solution. They need to be ideally suited to providing the service you need and aside from their expertise they should also be able to communicate well. At DialDesk, we have what it takes; relevant experience, knowledge of solutions, and expertise in the same field as our clients – leaving you free from stress!
- Type of Support Required: Next, you need to decide what type of support you require. Do you need 24/7 support? Do you need support for specific products or services? If so, then you will need to determine what resources your provider has and whether those resources are available around the clock.
- Cost: One of the biggest factors to consider when choosing a customer support partner is cost. When choosing a customer support provider, do not neglect the competitive cost factor. Always look for a company that does not use vanilla-based BPO operations, but one that brings to you advanced solutions by inducing technology that can help cut down your costs.
DialDesk offers cost-effective and customized customer support solutions that can help you boost your sales and reduce customer churn.
- Technical Expertise: Another key factor to consider is the technical expertise of the company you choose. If you have complex software or hardware requirements, it’s important to choose a customer support/outsourcing partner that has experience dealing with those kinds of issues. Likewise, if your customers experience technical difficulties, it’s important to choose a partner that can help them troubleshoot those issues quickly and efficiently.
- CSAT Ratings: Another important factor to consider is Customer satisfaction ratings. Unfortunately, not all companies offer feedback on their customer satisfaction ratings, but it’s important to do your research and look for customer support solution providers with good ratings. This will help you make a confident decision about who to work with. One can also reach out to their existing customers for their feedback and find out how, as their CS Partner, the company is helping them address their challenges.
Download this in-depth template that should help you come up with an effective CSAT strategy.
- Flexibility and Scalability: A call center should work as a balloon approach. You should be able to keep it big, but also let it shrink depending on its usage. Flexibility and scalability take priority over stability in this instance because you want the business to maintain expansion capacity while still retaining a stable mindset.When searching for a customer support/ outsourcing partner, it’s extremely necessary to have a company that provides flexibility and scalability as well as agility – otherwise, you’re making the wrong choice.
- Recruitment Strategy: One of the most important things to take into account when hiring a customer support/ outsourcing partner is the company’s growth strategy, because if they don’t have a scalable, reliable team to back you up – how can they help you grow your business? In addition, the staff must be well-trained. The blood of a good contact center is a strong and quality team that has enough work/life balance in place.
- Business Continuity Plan: One way of finding a good customer support/ outsourcing provider is to look at their BCP (Business Continuity Plan). Customer Support can be a frenzy during an outbreak and it’s particularly important to understand that. While you’re finding a good partner, it’s extremely crucial to know their business continuity plan which is an assessment of how well they deal with crisis scenarios. Were they prepared for this scenario? Could they survive it if this happened again?These are all questions you can ask to find out how well your potential new partner was able to implement their business continuity plan. While looking for a BCP is helpful, knowing that your potential partner will be able to handle any problem as they arise is even more important! You need reliable people by your side when things go wrong.
- Availability of Resources: Make sure that the customer support provider has enough resources to provide the kind of service you require. Does the company have a team of expertly-trained customer support representatives? This can be crucial because experienced staff will be able to communicate your message or products more effectively than less knowledgeable individuals.Having these experts on hand can also help prevent customers from losing faith in your business and being willing to look elsewhere for similar goods if too much time passes without word from customer support, for instance. In addition to highly-trained staff, necessary software and solutions should also be available, like relevant antivirus or encryption software, special tools that may not come standard with basic operating systems, etc.
- Security & Compliance at Par: Last, but not least, security and compliance are of utmost importance at a call center. Your customer support partner must follow security and privacy standards to win the customer’s trust. As your trusted provider of CX solutions, DialDesk helps you meet data privacy and cyber liability standards. Our company adheres to the highest security protocols and is compliant with various regulatory bodies. We are ISO:27001 certified.
In a Nutshell
Although we’ve given you some tips to make sense of things, in the end, it’s always your choice to look for a partner that meets your requirements and provides what you need. Consider the points mentioned above when making an informed choice about who to hire as your customer support partner!
DialDesk offers world-class customer support so that our clients can reduce churn and grow revenue all while reducing costs. Depending on what you use your platform for, you don’t want to lose a single customer or potential one when you can engage with them directly instead!
Author Profile
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Varuna Raghav
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As a CX and marketing specialist, Varuna Raghav has more than 15+ years of experience in her name. Her enriching input has been valuable to the brands and organizations she's worked with.
🔗 Tags: How to Choose Your Customer Support Partner?, Quick Tips to Choose Your CX Partner