Every business aspires to consistent growth and expansion, ensuring maximum success – productivity, revenue generation, and profitability. However, with an increasing customer base, companies also have to deal with increased customer engagement challenges. The volume of customer inquiries, grievances, and complaints increases with customers looking for instant resolutions to all their problems. As a result, businesses must find a way of dealing with these increasing customer support needs without causing any hindrances to their core operations. This is why most businesses opt to outsource inbound contact center services in the US, handing over their customer support functions to a third-party BPO company for professional service deliveries.
Now, you can hire a BPO company in the United States for onshore customer support outsourcing or outsource your customer support to an offshore BPO company in Asia (widely considered the most popular outsourcing destination globally). Hiring a contact center in India, the Philippines, or Indonesia will allow you to enjoy several benefits that a BPO company in the US won’t. These benefits include reduced costs, customized solutions, and many more, enabling you to maximize customer support outsourcing for increased productivity and profitability. However, you must also be aware of the many risks associated with customer support outsourcing. This will help you mitigate any obstacles to your operations or brand reputation and ensure that you are prepared for all eventualities.
So, let’s look at some of the advantages and disadvantages you may come across when you choose to outsource contact center services in the Philippines, India, or even in the US. We will also look at some of the best practices you can follow to ensure that you hire the right contact center company for your company.
Advantages of choosing a third-party BPO company to outsource inbound contact center services in the US
By overseeing all customer communications, including call handling, surveys, and all other customer support functions, you can free up resources for your core business operations. Hence, by choosing to outsource inbound contact center services in the US, you will have more time, money, and other valuable resources to dedicate to essential business operations, including marketing, sales, product development, etc. Some of the other advantages of outsourcing your support functions to a third-party BPO company are:
- It reduces your operating expenses
If you were to set up an in-house customer support operation, you would have to spend a lot of money on infrastructure, human resources, and miscellaneous expenses. You must also reserve a portion of your budget for regular infrastructural updates to ensure that your customer support deliveries are up to date. These expenses could easily amount to a lot and take a massive chunk out of your operating budget. As a result, you might be forced to cut corners with your core, business-critical operations. However, if you choose to outsource inbound contact center services in the US, you will be able to save massively on your operating expenses.
The BPO company you hire will already have the contact center infrastructure to provide efficient customer communications across multiple channels. Moreover, contact centers are obligated to regularly update their infrastructure to stay current and continue delivering up-to-date call center services. As a result, you do not have to bear the costs of setting up or maintaining an updated infrastructure. At the same time, the BPO company will also deal with recruitment and training to get call center operatives ready for your customer support operations. This will enable you to save big on all hiring activities. All you need to pay is a standard per-agent fee and deliver superior-quality professional customer support.
- It ensures professional customer services for better CX management
This is the primary objective why most businesses worldwide choose to outsource contact center services in the Philippines or other popular outsourcing destinations. By opting for a top BPO company, you will have access to flexible and round-the-clock customer support, which will not limit your customer interactions to within your operating hours. By choosing a third-party contact center company, you can dedicate agents to handle customer interactions at all hours. Hence, regardless of your business’ operating hours, your customers can reach a call center operative 24X7 and discuss their queries and issues. This will help you improve customer experiences and build brand loyalties with your customer base for increased retention.
In addition, professional call center operatives can also ensure superior customer engagements and deliver personalized solutions. Unfortunately, regardless of the expertise of your core staff members, they don’t have the necessary resources to deliver superior customer engagements. On the other hand, call center operatives are trained to ensure empathic and compassionate interactions with customers and improve their overall experience with the brand. Using AI-powered technologies to provide quick responses and immediate resolutions, you can improve customer engagement by opting to outsource inbound contact center services in the US. This will, in turn, help you improve CX management and ensure increased brand loyalty that will contribute heavily to your revenue generation avenues.
- It improves brand popularity & improves customer acquisition
In the current marketplace, superior customer support is the ultimate currency determining customer relationships and brand loyalty. If you cannot offer satisfactory customer experiences on every interaction, you will likely have a difficult time retaining your existing customers. The problem, however, is that depreciating customer experiences might also impact your new customer acquisition and sales. If your company has a reputation for delivering poor-quality after-sale customer support, your target audience is most likely to overlook your brand and purchase from a competitor. Regardless of how much promotion you do for your products, getting customers would be a massive challenge for your brand. Hence, you must focus on delivering superior customer support and engage a top BPO company to outsource inbound contact center services in the US.
You must design customer-centric solutions to help customers find personalized resolutions to their issues. This will help you develop a reputation for being a customer-centric brand and attract more customers to your brand. In addition, this will add to your widening customer reach, as even your current customers will be recommending your brand to their friends and family. The best aspect of this word-of-mouth promotion is that you do not have to spend an additional dime for your customers to promote your brand. By simply taking care of your customer support responsibilities in the best way, you get to enjoy the bonus of free customer referrals that can add great value to your business and revenue generation channels.
Potential risks of choosing a third-party BPO company to outsource contact center services in the Philippines
Even with all the advantages of hiring a BPO company, many businesses hesitate to outsource inbound contact center services in the US. This is mostly due to a few potential risks that can cause major hindrances to your customer support responsibilities and, by extension, your core business operations. So, let’s look at some potential risks you must prepare for to deal with them in time.
- It minimizes control & oversight
With in-house customer support operations, you will likely have complete control over your agents’ performances. However, when you engage a third-party BPO company to outsource contact center services in the Philippines, this control and oversight get reduced significantly. Of course, the contact center you hire will provide you with periodic reports on the agents’ performances. However, you may often find it challenging to regulate the practices within the call center and ensure superior quality control. Also, you cannot dictate the quality of customer service deliveries as the BPO company will recruit the customer support agents working for your brand. Of course, you can provide a guideline for the agent profile you seek. But you do not control the agents hired and tasked to handle your customer support operations.
- Possible miscommunications
Since the third-party BPO company does not share the same brand ideology as you, it is possible that they may fail to comprehend your vision entirely. This often breeds miscommunication that could eventually lead to gaps in customer support deliveries. As a result, your customer support representatives may not be able to deliver the quality of customer engagement you desire. It would be quite challenging to ensure satisfactory customer experiences and develop positive customer relationships when that happens. In the end, you will find it difficult to retain current customers and acquire new ones, hindering your brand’s reputation in the marketplace.
You can easily avoid these potential risks by being careful about the BPO company you choose to outsource inbound contact center services in the US. If you can manage to find the ideal fit for your company’s requirements, you can circumvent these challenges and maximize the professional services of the BPO company for superior outcomes.
Best practices to follow when hiring a BPO company for your customer support operations
You must identify the right BPO company for your business before you hire it for your customer support deliveries. Discussed here are a few of the best practices you can follow to identify the ideal BPO company to outsource inbound contact center services in the US.
- Hire a contact center company that can customize its services to your needs.
- Engage a BPO company with adequate expertise and prior experience in your industry.
- Do not focus solely on the cost of the professional services. Instead, determine the value they add to your business.
- Communicate with past clientele to determine the quality of services on offer.
- Examine the contract well before signing the dotted line.
