Customer Service
Enhancing e-commerce: The power of customer support outsourcing services
In 2020, more than 40% of customers discontinued their engagement with a brand due to subpar customer service, resulting in a significant loss of business opportunities. In the rapidly evolving landscape of e-commerce, where customer satisfaction reigns supreme, businesses increasingly turn to innovative solutions to streamline their operations and enhance their customer support services.
One such pivotal solution is e-commerce customer support outsourcing. As online shopping redefines consumer expectations, this article delves into customer support outsourcing services for e-commerce ventures.
Why is outsourcing vital for e-commerce organisations?
For effectively addressing e-commerce customer support requirements, it is essential to align with the needs of the business. Thus, numerous factors concerning e-commerce operations need careful consideration and are as follows:
24/7 Availability
While physical retail stores adhere to set operating hours, e-commerce operates round the clock, seven days a week, making customers expect constant access from your customer service teams. Establishing a 24-hour, full-service customer support team becomes vital in this scenario.
Diverse geographical presence
E-commerce often involves catering to multiple geographic regions, with customers speaking diverse languages and adhering to distinct cultural norms. By cultivating a versatile team of adept professionals, your outsourced customer service will be able to accommodate these linguistic and cultural variations.
Digital-centric approach
E-commerce patrons primarily engage with your brand through digital channels, frequently navigating directly to your website when encountering issues. While traditional phone support remains relevant, integrating live chat, email support, or even chatbots is vital to providing swift solutions to immediate online concerns.
Establishing trust
Online customers engage with brands without in-person interactions, purchasing products without seeing them in real life. Customer service interactions might represent the sole human engagement customers have with your brand. Prioritise addressing their concerns earnestly, delivering a seamless, efficient, and favourable experience.
The right time for customer service outsourcing
If any of the following five indicators resonate with your business, it might be an opportune moment to consider outsourcing:
Distracting Impact on Key Responsibilities
When customer support begins to divert your attention from more impactful tasks, outsourcing could provide a more efficient path for growth[3].
Excessive resource allocation
If your investment in managing and expanding your customer support team surpasses initial projections, outsourcing may offer a streamlined avenue for expansion.
Spatial constraints and hiring challenges
Running out of office space or encountering difficulty sourcing new hires within your locality can signal that outsourcing is a practical solution.
Expertise gaps in tools and workflows
In the absence of the expertise needed to select valuable tools, workflows, or metrics, outsourcing can provide access to specialised knowledge.
Global expansion ambitions
When you aspire to support customers across different languages and time zones, outsourcing becomes a strategic approach to cater to diverse needs.
Effective customer service outsourcing in five steps
Embracing the concept of outsourcing customer service is a strategic move that can streamline operations, enhance customer experiences, and drive overall success. In this exploration, we delve into the five essential steps that pave the way for mastering the art of effective customer service outsourcing:
Define clear objectives for outsourcing
Establishing a clear vision for your operation enables you to identify customer service outsourcing companies that align perfectly with your requirements. Opting for well-defined objectives and selecting a flexible outsourced customer service platform is pivotal in reducing complications and enhancing customer satisfaction.
Seamlessly integrate with reliable customer support-as-a-service software
Once you’ve identified the attributes you seek in a customer support tool, the next step involves outsourcing and automating your customer service operations.
Identify communication channels for customer interaction
In a landscape brimming with tools and channels for customer communication, it is important to discern the channels of your incoming messages. Diversifying the avenues through which customers can reach out grants them the liberty to connect in a manner that resonates with their comfort. Presenting customers with various contact options distinguishes your brand and underscores your genuine concern for those contributing to your business’s growth.
Formulate your brand’s voice and tone
Guidelines concerning your brand’s voice and tone help define your company’s communication style when addressing the world. When enlisting the aid of an outsourced customer service team, ensure they can accurately replicate your brand’s unique voice to engage with your clientele .
Prioritise quality training and performance evaluation
Quality assurance is the cornerstone of every thriving business. Once you’ve set clear guidelines for how your brand communicates, you can teach your customer support team the preferred interaction methods with your customer base. Then, you can gauge and improve how well they interact with customers to ensure overall excellence.
For organisations on the digital transformation journey, agility is key in responding to a rapidly changing technology and business landscape. Now more than ever, it is crucial to deliver and exceed organisational expectations with a robust digital mindset backed by innovation. Enabling businesses to sense, learn, respond, and evolve like living organisms will be imperative for business excellence. A comprehensive yet modular suite of services is doing precisely that. Equipping organisations with intuitive decision-making automatically at scale, actionable insights based on real-time solutions, anytime/anywhere experience, and in-depth data visibility across functions leading to hyper-productivity, Live Enterprise is building connected organisations that are innovating collaboratively for the future.
How can Infosys BPM help?
Amidst the ever-evolving e-commerce landscape, Infosys BPM’s Customer Support Outsourcing Services bring value by excelling in operations, resulting in cost reduction. We gauge customer satisfaction and comprehend end consumers, tailoring cross-selling strategies for client growth and addressing reasons for customer churn.
