Anybody who’s ever called a business seeking assistance of any sort knows how frustrating it can be to wait on hold for long stretches, or worse, to endure an unsatisfactory customer service experience.
In a lot of cases, an unpleasant experience is all it takes for somebody to “take their business elsewhere.”
According to a 2022 PricewaterhouseCoopers survey, 32 percent of respondents said they’d drop a company for providing inconsistent customer service. And 8 percent said they would stop buying from a company after just one bad experience.
To help avoid such scenarios and a negative attitude toward your brand, it’s crucial to have the personnel and processes in place to provide a seamless customer care experience. For many businesses, that means outsourcing all or some of their inbound customer service support.
But finding the right partner can be a challenge, especially with so many companies out there offering call center services.
So what should you look for from an inbound customer service support team? Here are five of the most important qualities:
1. Scalability
One of the biggest reasons to outsource your customer care needs might be your internal team’s inability to keep up with high incoming call volumes, especially during peak seasons. A retail business, for example, is likely to handle far more calls in November and December (and January when people have questions about returns), than the rest of the year. Having a partner that can quickly ramp up support by providing additional trained customer service representatives without any interruptions to your workflow is key.
On the flip side, there’s no reason to pay for support you don’t need during slower periods, so it’s beneficial to have a partner with the flexibility to scale up or down on short notice.
VSA offers both dedicated and shared agent models, allowing us to accommodate clients and call volumes of any size. Whether you’re a larger client that requires your own round-the-clock team or a smaller client that deals with a limited number of calls per day, we can develop a program that fits your needs—no matter how often those needs might change.
2. The right technology
Obviously, your partner’s call center software must eliminate as much aggravation as possible for your customers. This means sophisticated, easy-to-navigate Interactive Voice Response systems, convenient omni-channel solutions (for the 57 percent of customers who prefer to engage with companies digitally), pleasant on-hold music and messages, and calls that are quickly routed to their intended target.
But the best technology goes even further in impacting the success of your inbound customer service program. Among its many capabilities, VSA’s powerful omni-channel Contact Center solution allows us to monitor calls and coach or assist agents in real time, with no delays in service to the customer.
Sure, we’ve all heard the message that “this call is being recorded for quality assurance,” but the ability for a manager to provide feedback to an agent or de-escalate a heated conversation during the call itself can go a long way toward keeping the customer happy and achieving a quick resolution.
3. Robust reporting and full transparency
Outsourcing your inbound customer service needs can be a major financial commitment, and if your partner isn’t accurately and candidly reporting on the results of your program, it’s tough to tell if the investment is worth it. You can’t address issues such as high call abandonment rates and slow time to answer if you’re not aware of the problem first.
VSA’s platform allows for enhanced reporting, covering a wide range of performance data and metrics and enabling better insights and decision-making. You’ll never find us holding back or fudging results.
“It’s important for us to provide accurate trends,” says a VSA Program Manager who works with multiple inbound clients. “If the numbers aren’t good, the numbers aren’t good, so let’s figure out why and come up with a solution to the problem.”
4. Empathetic, highly trained agents
Your outsourced customer service team must be able to represent your business professionally and knowledgably. Ideally, your customers should have no idea they’re talking to a third party. That doesn’t mean the reps need to be definitive authorities on everything about your company, but they do need to be able to intelligently engage with customers and, of course, treat them with patience and respect.
VSA’s pool of U.S.-based, English-speaking customer service representatives undergo thorough, client-specific training during the onboarding process, and they continue to receive coaching through the duration of the program. Many of them have also called on VSA’s outbound lead generation and appointment-setting campaigns, so they’ve got plenty of experience with handling difficult conversations and thinking quickly on their feet.
“Whenever you’re engaging with a third-party call center, you want to make sure they have experienced, long-tenured agents,” says the VSA Program Manager. “It’s about them learning and knowing the material, obviously, but it’s also about them being able to clearly articulate their thoughts and always sounding professional.”
5. Service level agreements
Any call center partner can say that their agents will perform a certain level of service during interactions with your customers. But only a service level agreement (SLA) guarantees that they’ll meet this standard—or it will cost them.
An SLA is a set of guidelines covering such metrics as the percentage of calls answered within a certain timeframe, abandonment rates, and handle times. If the call center doesn’t achieve these agreed-upon standards, they must pay a penalty. This helps ensure that your company gets what it paid for, and that your call center partner isn’t making promises it can’t deliver.
VSA signs SLAs with all our inbound clients. In addition to daily or weekly reporting, we check each month to see if we’re meeting the guidelines outlined in the SLA. If your potential call center partner isn’t willing to do the same, you might want to look in another direction.
*****
If you’ve been thinking about outsourcing your customer care services, give us a call. We’d love to work with you to develop a program that’s right for your company—and that will help enhance your customers’ experience.