Table of Contents
How Customer Experience Outsourcing Can Boost Your Sales and Revenue
Customer experience is one of the key factors in driving sales and revenue. However, providing exceptional customer service is challenging. Small and medium-sized eCommerce businesses often lack the necessary resources and expertise. The best solution is customer experience outsourcing.
The service is new but growing rapidly. Thousands of small eCommerce companies recognize this type of outsourcing as the perfect option to delegate customer experience tasks.
In this article, we’ll explore how customer experience outsourcing will take your business to the next level.
What Is Customer Experience Outsourcing
Customer experience outsourcing is partnering with a company specialized in handling various aspects of customer service. Usually, customer service companies deal with customer inquiries, specific and common complaints, and support.
The outsourcing provider has a team of trained professionals who specialize in delivering outstanding customer experiences.
The goal is to maximize customer satisfaction, experience and loyalty and ultimately drive business sales and revenue growth.
Customer experience outsourcing is becoming increasingly popular among businesses of all sizes, and it is a cost-effective way to enhance customer service while reducing operational costs.
Outsourced Customer Experience: Pros and Cons
Here’s a table outlining the pros and cons of outsourcing customer experience:
| PROs | CONs |
| Cost savings: Outsourcing is more cost-effective than training and paying an in-house customer support team. | Loss of control: You have reduced control over customer service quality and delivery. |
| Scalability: Outsourcing allows businesses to scale their customer support operations up or down based on demand without the need for hiring or layoffs. | Language and cultural barriers: Outsourcing customer experience to a different country leads to language barriers and cultural differences, potentially impacting customer satisfaction. |
| Specialized expertise: Outsourcing companies have specialized knowledge and tools to handle customer interactions efficiently and effectively. | Data security and privacy risks: Sharing customer data with a third-party vendor raises concerns about data security and privacy breaches. |
| 24/7 availability: Outsourcing customer support to a global partner provides round-the-clock availability, ensuring customers receive assistance anytime. | Lack of company-specific knowledge: Outsourced agents lack a deep understanding of the company’s products, services, and internal processes, potentially leading to providing inconsistent or incorrect information. |
| Focus on core competencies: You’ll have more time to focus on strategic initiatives rather than allocating resources to non-core functions. | Lack of advanced support: The partnering company often lacks the knowledge and specialists for more complex problems and questions. |
The Benefits Of Outsourced Customer Experience For Growing Businesses
Outsourcing your customer service tasks will also reduce operational costs, allowing you to invest your savings in other business areas. The outsourcing provider provides round-the-clock support at a fraction of the cost required to maintain an in-house customer service team, freeing up valuable resources.
The greatest benefit of outsourcing your customer experience tasks is the amount of time and money you save. You will redirect new resources toward growth-oriented activities such as product development, marketing, and sales.
Prices Estimate: Outsourced Services Vs. In-House Customer Team
The cost of an in-house customer service team can vary depending on several factors, such as:
- number of employees,
- salaries,
- benefits,
- training costs.
Training costs are not negligible given the high employee fluctuation. The average tenure for a call center representative in the United States is under two years. The turnover rate is caused by job dissatisfaction, low pay, lack of career advancement opportunities, and challenging work conditions.
In general, it takes 2-6 weeks to train a customer service representative. They are trained in the following:
- product knowledge,
- communication skills,
- conflict resolution,
- company policies and procedures,
- delivering outstanding customer service,
- active listening, and
- effective problem-solving.
According to a recent study, the average fully-loaded cost of an in-house customer service representative in the United States is between $20 and $25 (18€-23€) per hour.
Full-time monthly salary is between $3500 and $4500.
To provide 24/7 support, you must employ at least four agents and one supervisor.
Cost Of The In-House Customer Experience Team
| One employee | Five employees | |
| Daily | $20-$25 | $100-$125 |
| Monthly | $3500-$4500 | $17.500-$22.000 |
| Annually | $42.000-$53.000 | $211.000-$264.000 |
As you can see, you’ll spend a quarter of the million dollars annually just for one agent per shift. The turnover rate will be higher than average. One person on such a stressed job wouldn’t last longer than a year. Add the equipment, rent, utility expenses, and other costs.
You can’t have a good in-house customer experience service for under a quarter of a million dollars annually. And that sum covers only 5 employees!
Cost of the Outsourcing Customer Experience to a Specialized Company (Abroad)
The prices of outsourcing customer experience services to a specialized company vary significantly depending on several factors:
- scope of services required,
- complexity of the customer interactions,
- location of the outsourcing company,
- reputation and expertise of the vendor,
- pricing model (per-hour, per-interaction, monthly retainer fees)
- the duration of the outsourcing contract.
The cost of outsourcing typically ranges from $1,000 to $10,000 a month.
IMPORTANT:
Do not calculate just the difference in monthly costs. There is one more, much larger factor to consider when deciding whether to outsource your customer experience services.
If you outsource your customer service, you’ll have to decide what to do with employees. Should you redistribute or fire them? We suggest keeping all of them.
You’ll have five employees with a deep knowledge of the pain points your customers experience. Distributing them to sales and product development is a very smart move. There, they will contribute significantly.
Adding employees with such valuable knowledge and training will generate enormous momentum in the sales department. They’ll provide ideas for changes that will launch your business to the top of the market.
If you decide to fire workers, you’ll have extra money to invest. Instead of paying $250.000 as an expense, you’ll be able to finance new products, sales channels, services, etc.
Examples of Outsourced Customer Experience Services
The practice of outsourcing customer experience management is increasingly becoming a popular strategy among businesses.
According to a report by MarketsandMarkets, the global customer experience outsourcing market size is expected to reach $21.5 billion by 2024, growing at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 7.4% during the forecast period. Several factors are driving this trend, including:
- the need for cost savings,
- access to specialized knowledge and technology,
- the capacity to scale operations quickly.
Outsourcing customer experience can be particularly beneficial for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), which often lack the resources and expertise to manage this critical function in-house.
One example of a company that has successfully outsourced its customer experience operations is Airbnb. The home-sharing platform partners with customer support provider TaskUs to handle customer inquiries and complaints. TaskUs employs around 30,000 people worldwide and provides Airbnb access to a large pool of skilled agents who respond to customer queries in multiple languages.
Even AirBnB, a company worth over 80 billion dollars, is outsourcing its customer services.
Here is the list of some of industry giants that also outsource their customer service:
- Apple Inc.
- Delta Air Lines
- Expedia Group
- IBM
- Microsoft Corporation
- Procter & Gamble
- Samsung Group
- Uber Technologies Inc.
- Walmart Inc.
In conclusion, when you compare both pros and cons of outsourcing and consider the steady growth of the practice, you should consider accepting the reality.
The greatest benefit for your brand reputation is your future strategy. If you invest the money saved on in-house customer service into
- increasing your brand awareness,
- improving the fulfillment process,
- enhancing product portfolio, and
- optimizing overall customer experience ecosystem,
the sum of all benefits for your brand reputation will increase your profit multiple times.
Customer Experience Management Outsourcing: Key Criteria For Selecting The Best Partner
Selecting the right partner for outsourcing your customer experience management is critical to the success of your enterprise. With a plethora of options to choose from, carefully consider the following factors:
- Industry expertise: Successful customer service management requires specialized knowledge in different industries. Choose a partner that has extensive experience in your specific niche. Customer service representatives must understand your business, products, and services to represent your brand properly and deal with customer inquiries and complaints without damaging your reputation.
- Range of services: Your preferred outsourcing partner should offer a broad range of services, such as technical support, online chat support, email support, and social media management. An omnichannel customer experience and the suite of services will ensure your customers have seamless communication across all touchpoints.
- Availability is another important factor to consider when choosing an outsourcing partner. Your business may operate in multiple time zones or have customers who require assistance at any time of the day. Try to find a partner that offers 24/7 support. Your buyers will appreciate that. Trends show that negative reviews decrease by over 75% when a company provides 24/7 customer support. Simply said, to get customers leave positive reviews, be available always.
- Scalability: As your business grows, you’ll need an outsourcing partner that can scale operations quickly to meet your changing needs. The partner should be able to match the growth trajectory of your business and provide support during peak seasons such as holidays and promotions.
- Technology capabilities: Choose an outsourcing partner with advanced technology tools such as data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, and automation. These technological advancements affect efficiency, reduce response times, and improve overall customer experience.
- Cost structure: Consider two sides of the money you will pay monthly to the outsourcing partner. The first side is obvious – monthly and annual costs. It won’t be difficult to calculate your possibilities and maximum budget. The second side is often neglected – the money you will save on in-house customer service. If you are a small eCommerce business, do not forget the time you spend (waste) answering repetitive queries.
- Cultural fit: Choose an outsourcing partner that shares the same values and company culture as you do.
10 Outsourced Customer Experience Services You Should Consider
We’ll list the 10 most often outsourced customer service activities to help you make an optimal decision. If you do not conduct some of the tasks listed below, you should start immediately.
Why?
Recent studies, latest eCommerce statistics, big data analysis, and future trends strongly indicate that the ten listed activity groups are becoming mandatory in modern eCommerce. Perform competitive analysis to check what your competitors do and where are industry leaders in your eCommerce niche. If you lag behind competitors, your sales will drop, and your eCommerce business will not be successful. As long as you work in your business, you do not work on growing it.
Your growth business strategy should focus on customers and ever-growing expectations. Technology is developing rapidly. Modern online stores can not survive without introducing all-new practices.
Here are ten new tactics to stay ahead of competitors, grow your business, and achieve a steady profit rise:
- Omnichannel customer experience support via phone, email, chat, or social media
- Technical support and troubleshooting for products or software
- Order processing and fulfillment
- Complaint resolution and escalation management
- Back-office support services such as data entry and administrative tasks
- Customer retention, post-purchase and loyalty programs
- Customer online survey and feedback collection and analysis
- Quality assurance and performance monitoring
- Multilingual customer support
- Social media management and engagement
If you do not want to outsource, consider introducing automation to your everyday operations. Some of the listed tactics might be replaced with apps and eCommerce SAAS. For example:
- Technical support and troubleshooting for products or software can be avoided if you optimize product descriptions. Utilize video, 3d images, virtual tours, and interactive FAQs to eliminate the need for human support.
- Order processing and fulfillment can be automated with supply chain software and order tracking apps like TrackMage and similar apps.
- Data entry and administrative tasks are handled automatically as part of the automation process when you integrate modern utility software into your eCommerce website.
- Customer retention and loyalty programs can be automated through CRM applications such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk, Isightly, etc.
- Customer feedback collection and analysis can be automated with Mailchimp, Markup, Hotjar, Reevoo, etc.
- Social media management and engagement Sendible, Hootsuite, Buffer, eClincher, Social Pilot, etc.
Final Thoughts
Outsourcing your customer experience management is a strategic investment that will significantly benefit your e-commerce business. Partnering with the right outsourcing provider will strengthen your customer service capabilities, enhance your brand reputation, and increase customer loyalty and retention.
Selecting the right outsourcing partner requires careful consideration of several key factors, including industry expertise, range of services, availability, scalability, technology capabilities, cost-effectiveness, and cultural fit.
As your business grows, choosing an outsourcing partner that can scale operations to handle increased demand while maintaining the highest levels of customer satisfaction is essential.
Leverage advanced technology tools and outsource repetitive tasks to a specialized partner to navigate the complex landscape of customer service management. That is the only way you’ll deliver exceptional omnichannel experiences for long-term success.
