To outsource, or not to outsource?

That’s a common question that companies face, no matter the industry. In the world of customer support, there’s a more specific dilemma that organizations must grapple with: Should we outsource our chat support, or not?

Granted, there are some benefits in keeping your chat support in-house; for instance, an in-house solution allows for a greater degree of managerial control over the support team. However, there are several big advantages in outsourcing chat to a reputable 3rd party vendor. For instance, an outsourced solution will help you increase customer satisfaction. The following information will discuss 3 reasons why this is the case.

Increased Availability

Have you ever had to wait for a response from a customer service representative when you need an issue resolved now? The fact is, customers hate doing that. In fact, 90% of respondents from one survey said that when it comes to customer service, an immediate response is either important or very important. That’s certainly true of chat support.

The question is, what’s the best way to keep your average wait time down to reasonable levels? If you try to scale your in-house team to provide prompt support, then you’re looking at a huge investment. Consider some basic steps involved:

• First you’d have to hire the right personnel: candidates that buy into your vision and are willing and able to handle a large volume of incoming tickets.
• Next you would have to provide adequate training for your agents, which usually means developing a curriculum and hiring professional facilitators to support your new hires.
• Finally, you’d have to manage and maintain your in-house agents. We’re talking payroll processing, the allocation of HR resources, etc.

These and several other steps are often difficult to implement and could put a major strain on your company’s resources.

On the other hand, outsourcing service providers already have processes and systems in place to scale quickly with your business. They can grow the team to keep up with increasing demand and keep wait times within your pre-defined parameters. They can also scale back if needed, with minimal impact to your operations.

What’s the bottom line? If you outsource to a 3rd party vendor with the capability to handle your company’s incoming chat volume, your customers will receive prompt replies to their questions, and you won’t have to worry about availability issues.

Enhanced Coverage

In addition to increased availability, an outsourced solution will allow you to offer greater coverage to your customers. For instance, outsourced chat support can offer advantages in after-hours, weekend, and geographic coverage.

Language provides another outstanding example of the benefits that come from working with an outsourcing partner. According to the Harvard Business Review, 72% of customers are more likely to purchase a product once they’ve obtained information about it in their own language. Also, think of how much easier it is to resolve customer issues when the agent and the customer share a language in common.

It may not be feasible to staff your in-house support team with multilingual agents. However, by contracting with an outsourced chat provider, you can get this capability without making an enormous investment to recruit, train, onboard, etc. Moreover, specialized software from your outsourcing partner may enable you to provide coverage for “one-off” languages — e.g., languages that only a fraction of your consumer base uses.

Besides multilingual support, think of some other benefits that an experienced outsourcing partner could offer to your company. These could include more effective upselling techniques, enhanced scripts, in-depth product knowledge, and specialized agent training, just to name a few.

Reduced Costs

All right, so reduced costs don’t have a direct relationship with customer satisfaction. However, they have an indirect effect. How so?

When you reduce costs by using an outsourced chat support solution, you’ll have additional resources available to use on other aspects of the overall customer experience. For example, is your website in desperate need of a redesign? Should you invest in enhanced security to keep your customers’ confidential information secure? Could you streamline and optimize your fulfillment process, perhaps by developing an omnichannel strategy? These initiatives feed into customer satisfaction — and all of them require funding.

Simply put, you have a choice. You could spend your money on expensive contact center software, increase your payroll costs, and invest heavily in training… or you could pay an outsourcing firm to handle all of that for you, and focus your resources on other aspects of the business. Many companies have found that the second option results in far happier customers — and far fewer expenses.

Outsourcing Chat with an Experienced 3rd Party Provider

In summary, there are several key benefits that companies can gain from outsourcing their chat support solution to a 3rd party vendor. Three key advantages are:

• Increased agent availability, without the need for expensive investment in an in-house team, or the establishment of a chat support infrastructure from the ground up
• Enhanced coverage that encompasses a wide range of customers, such as those who start chat sessions after-hours or on the weekend, those who live in diverse geographic regions, or those who speak another language
• Reduced costs, which lead to a better customer experience in other aspects of the business, such as web design, order fulfillment, and so forth

The bottom line is that you should seriously consider an outsourced chat support solution to increase your customer satisfaction scores and bolster brand loyalty among your consumer base. Many companies who have implemented such a solution have found that the benefits far outweigh any associated costs. In fact, many leaders wonder why they didn’t pursue such a strategy sooner!

If you’d like to learn more about the many advantages of outsourcing chat, both in terms of customer satisfaction and business growth, reach out to our customer experience and chat support experts at GlowTouch today for more information. We’d be happy to guide you to the best solution for your needs.