In today’s business culture, there is much discussion about the issue of outsourcing. There are those who believe it takes jobs out of the United States and there are others who believe it is an efficient and cost-effective way to handle certain business processes. Here at Centris, we tend to agree with the latter school of thought. We believe that outsourcing customer service offers great benefits to many industries, however, for this blog, we would like to focus on the specific benefits that outsourcing offers the retail and ecommerce industries.
OUTSOURCING BENEFITS FOR RETAIL AND ECOMMERCE
There are many benefits that outsourcing can provide, however we would like to focus on four that we feel are particularly beneficial to the retail and ecommerce industries.
- Outsourcing offers multi-channel customer support. Today’s contact center is designed to support every channel of communication that consumers use today such as phone, e-mail, live-chat and a variety of social media platforms. Because we can handle so many channels, the contact center literally becomes an extension of your retail or ecommerce business handling multiple customer queries across every available channel your customer uses.
- Outsourcing offers retailers flexibility and scalability. Retail tends to be a seasonal industry with certain seasons, such as Christmas, being extremely busy, while other seasons are much slower. During these busy seasons, when orders and customer queries are at a peak, retailers need additional support to handle the extra work load. Call centers can easily and quickly scale up their staff by adding temporary agents during the busier seasons. This is one of the greatest benefits that outsourced call centers offer; the ability to scale up and down with the fluctuating seasons. We can bring in temporary agents whom we can train and quickly bring up to speed. For a retailer to attempt this in-house is not only impractical to consider, but the cost of hiring and training new agents for peak seasons would significantly impact earnings at the most critical time of year. An outsourced call center can come in and seamlessly provide the additional customer support with far less cost outlay.
- Outsourcing provides Big Data Collection and Analysis. Call center technology provides clear metrics and data analysis in real time. Basically, this allows us to quickly provide feedback on data such as: which items are selling, questions related to a product, which items are being returned more frequently as well as many other metrics that would need to be measured. This type of data collection and analysis enables the retailer to adjust where needed, such as adding stock in anticipation of sales trends, or cutting prices to move items that are not selling well. An outsourced contact center can provide this type of information that is critical to retailers and can be the difference between a successful season or not.
- Outsourcing provides a better customer service experience overall. Because an outsourced call center is designed and equipped to handle a variety of customer issues, the process of customer service becomes much more efficient and the likelihood of customer problems or complaints being resolved quickly is much greater with a professional call center. When customers feel their issues are being resolved quickly, this tends to create greater loyalty between the customer and the retailer. Loyalty has a way of translating into future sales.
To illustrate this, let’s look at this and other statistics that further support the wisdom of outsourcing customer service.
A CLOSER LOOK
Customer Service Impacts Loyalty
- You’re 14 times more likely to sell to an existing happy customer than sell to a new customer.
- Each year companies lose an estimated $41 billion due to poor customer service.
- Customer service is very important or somewhat important in their choice of and loyalty to a brand for the vast majority (97%) of global customers.
- Poor customer service has motivated 62% of global consumers to avoid a brand or organization.
Taken from: 10 Surprising Customer Service Stats for 2016
Additional Factors
An article published earlier this year in Conversocial, had this to say about customer service across multiple channels:
- Customer service interactions over Twitter have increased 250% in the last two years.
- Answering a social media complaint increases customer advocacy by as much a 25%
- Speedy responses on social equal willingness for customer spend.
Finally, online shopping and ecommerce is a multi-billion dollar industry that is expected to grow an additional 8-12% in the next few years. Ecommerce sales in the US alone are expected to fall between $427 billion and $443 billion. Given these numbers, as well as the vital need for providing a high level of customer service, builds a strong case for outsourcing these processes to a third-party contact center.
Centris is a bilingual, near-shore customer contact and support center with experienced agents who can provide customer support across multiple channels. We can design a customized program suited to your retail or ecommerce business including programs that will enhance your customer’s purchasing experience. If you’re a retailer and considering outsourcing some of your business processes, contact us. We will take care of your valued customers.
