Outsourcing for Customer Service Work
How to Outsource Customer Service
There are some major considerations when determining how to outsource customer service for a company, or any other business functions. Many managers become quite enticed by the potential savings of shifting work to less expensive labor markets and cutting staff. However there are some considerations to think about before making this move, and here are 3 of the less commonly considered ones:
1. Technological: Will the provider have a good phone provider, or will your customers experience odd call delay?
2. Metrics: How will you measure, monitor, and be billed for your outsourced customer service, and can you build in performance incentives to keep the new staff motivated on quality customer service?
3. Learning Curve: Make no mistake, there may be a long-term cost benefit to outsourcing customer service, but in the short term, the new folks need to be trained, and you will pay for that additional learning curve, especially if it’s enhanced by cultural differences or by language/terminology issues.
I recommend a provider called ODesk, who are an American company who can find you CS reps either here or overseas, and who have very intensive competency requirements as well as monitoring capabilities.
To read more about customer service outsourcing take a look at this featured article: Outsourcing Customer Service for Your Business
