The Return on Investment for Outsourcing Your Customer Support Department

Every business move you make must make sense for the bottom line. However, sometimes it’s hard to figure out your return on investment (ROI). This is particularly true when it comes to outsourcing customer service.

After all, how do you measure the benefit of improved customer satisfaction? Sure, you can see how much money the move saves you, but the other benefits are less tangible.

In this article, we’ll look at all the benefits. This will help you better determine the ROI when you make this move.

Cost Savings

Running a support team is expensive and challenging. When you farm this function out, you don’t have to worry about:

• Benefits
• Housing a team
• Accounting for sick or annual leave
• Recruiting, onboarding, and training costs
• Equipment

Most outsourcing companies work in countries that have a low cost of living. Therefore, they can run their teams a lot less expensively than you can. Cost savings are one of the measurable options. Not let’s look at more intangible ones.

Enhanced Service Quality and Expertise

It’s pretty difficult to measure the impact of better customer satisfaction. If you win your clients over, they’ll be happy to promote your business. You won’t ever know that they’ve done this, but you’ll notice an uptick in sales.

Dealing with a professional firm means you get instant access to better customer support. Companies providing this service invest heavily in training their consultants. They also use the latest technology. Therefore, you benefit when you partner with them.

When you choose the right firm, you’ll notice better:

• First-call resolution rates
• Response times
• Customer satisfaction scores

You should also see an appreciable decrease in churn.

Focus on Core Competencies

Sometimes, companies can handle calls in-house professionally. They may choose to partner with outsourcing providers like supportyourapp.com so that they can focus on jobs that bring in more money, like:

• Product development
• Marketing
• Sales
• Innovation

Again, it’s difficult to work out the benefit to your bottom line.

Scalability and Flexibility

What happens when you need to upscale your operations quickly? Like when the holiday rush starts or you have a product launch? Or, what happens when your marketing campaigns are a huge hit and customers are pouring in?

At these times, you need to build your support capacity fast. This can be challenging with an in-house team. You’ll have to find the right recruits and train them, a process that can take weeks or months.

Most outsourcing companies build in extra capacity to cater to sudden upswings in demand. They’ll be able to supplement your team at short notice. Better still, you won’t have to worry about what to do with the extra consultants after the rush.

Data and Technology

Equipping a call center can be an expensive process. You need the latest communication equipment and relationship management software. Considering how many other licenses you might need for your business, this can be too expensive.

Companies that offer customer support facilities invest heavily in this area. They need to do so so they can maintain a competitive advantage. You’ll benefit through better data analytic tools. Your team can also help you identify trends and deliver personalized experiences.

They might do so with the help of AI-powered chatbots. These can be expensive to develop, so piggybacking off another company can save you a lot of money. These bots can:

• Answer simple questions
• Offer personalized recommendations
• Support a help desk team by suggesting the correct answers to questions
• Analyze interactions to identify trends
• Make recommendations to your management teams

Risk Mitigation

Running an in-house team poses logistical difficulties. It can be an unwanted expense when times are tough. It can also prove challenging to make sure that you have the right amount of consultants at all times.

Another issue is that you must always be compliant with privacy regulations. A professional firm should take extra care to understand all the laws in your country and their own. They’ll usually establish which rules apply and maintain compliance. Their reputation depends on this.

Conclusion

Making the decision to outsource your support department can be a difficult one. There’s no way to put a dollar value on all the less tangible benefits. If you partner with the right firm, you’ll see a dramatic increase in customer satisfaction. You’ll also experience significant cost savings. Both of these benefits can make the investment worthwhile on their own.