.jpg)
If you’re at a pace where your business is facing the good problem of growth — when the revenue is up, but so is the workload — then this article is for you.
Scaling brands know that growth comes with both opportunities and challenges. In fact, the Forbes Business Council highlights key aspects of scaling that largely impacts businesses, including, but not limited to:
- increased revenue AND expenses;
- the need for better production and service quality;
- the added expense for hiring new team members;
- the demand for more streamlined operations; and
- the number of options available with regards to scaling.
While these business challenges may seem different, they are quite connected to each other. At a time where your business is entering far more competitive markets, you need a strategy across both your customer service and sales functions that can efficiently match the growing demands of the business. Far from cost-cutting, the goal is now to make a move towards a more strategic, streamlined approach to your overall business operations.
In this article, we’ll discuss the solution that most thriving businesses across the USA, Australia, Canada, and Europe have been adopting over the past couple of years: customer service and sales outsourcing.
Read on to learn why outsourcing customer services and sales is the best move for your scaling brand.
What is customer service and sales outsourcing?
Let’s start by talking about the solution: what exactly is customer service and sales outsourcing?
In essence, this is the process of hiring external teams, whether directly or through a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company, to manage both your customer support and sales functions. Rather than hiring customer service representatives and sales representatives in-house, call center outsourcing allows you to delegate these functions to an outsourced team.
Where would your outsourced customer service agents and sales agents come from? In theory, you can outsource to any external company: you can outsource locally (also called nearshore outsourcing) in New York or in the San Francisco Bay Area, or build an external team through nearshore outsourcing, say, in Toronto, Canada.
More commonly, though, businesses outsource to low-cost countries (LCCs), such as the Philippines in order to get top-tier customer service and sales professionals, but at a fraction of the overhead costs.
Which aspects of customer service and sales operation can be outsourced?
Outsourcing customer service and sales allows you to delegate the following functions to an outsourcing partner:
- taking inbound customer calls,
- handling outbound sales calls,
- managing live chat support and email inquiries,
- providing support, and
- overall complaint resolution among others.
When outsourcing, you have the option to outsource your entire customer service and sales process or keep some of the functions in-house while delegating bottlenecks in your sales efforts to sales professionals across the globe. At the end of the day, it’s just a matter of finding the right solution that will work for your scaling brand.
Other than the tasks, businesses also often wonder which customer support and sales roles can be outsourced. Here are the top 10 most outsourced roles in customer service and sales:
- Customer Service Agents
- Sales Representatives
- Technical Support Specialists
- Quality Assurance (QA) Specialists
- Customer Service Team Leaders
- Gaming Support Agents
- Finance Support Agents
- Hospitality Support Agents
- eCommerce Support Agents
- Social Media Support Agents
When should a business outsource customer service and sales?
Having an outsourced customer service and sales team can make a major impact for businesses of all sizes across industries. It’s especially helpful when businesses are:
- getting more traction, and consequently, more customers,
- drowning in customer calls which may be overwhelming to internal teams, or
- looking to expand operations and need to boost sales efforts,
- among many other key reasons.
As a scalable and flexible solution, customer service and sales outsourcing services can be tailored according to the specific needs of every business. As such, much like any other outsourced business process, organizations can take advantage of it to truly meet their overall growth targets.
Let’s illustrate that further. Say, you have a small business in finance — you have the option to outsource one sales rep and one customer service rep to aid with customer interaction for both existing and potential clients. If, for example, you are managing a multinational company in tech that already has a strong sales pipeline, you may need outsourced sales solutions to scale your sales operation effectively through B2B sales outsourcing.
Now that we have clarified the what and when of customer service and sales outsourcing, let’s talk about why businesses are choosing this solution to scale their operations and stay ahead of the competition.
Top 10 reasons why customer service and sales outsourcing is a smart move for scaling brands
1. Outsourcing customer service and sales reduces workload.
One of the key indicators that a brand is growing is a natural increase in workload. Businesses often notice that as the number of customers increase, so does the amount of work required to meet their demands while still maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction.
It’s during these situations that outsourcing comes in handy.
With an outsourced team, you can effectively delegate customer service and sales functions like responding to phone calls, answering inquiries via email, or even following up on leads through outbound sales calls. This way, as you scale, you are still empowering the team to focus on their core functions and minimizing the risk of your internal staff being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of new tasks brought upon by the growth of the business.
2. Customer service and sales outsourcing companies help you save costs.
Another key reason why smart businesses across the globe — from Chicago all the way to Singapore — are choosing offshore call center services is the significant cost savings that they get, while still getting high-calibre customer service and sales professionals.
When hiring customer service reps and sales reps offshore, the cost of labor is typically lower as opposed to domestic talent. The fees of an outsourcing company also often typically includes admin costs such as benefits, office space, and equipment; so everything comes in as a single invoice. Because of this, outsourcing reduces overall operational costs by roughly 70%, a huge amount that can be invested back into the business.
In essence, outsourcing customer service and sales is a way for businesses to get maximum value for money with minimal effort.
3. With sales outsourcing, you can reach more markets, faster.
With a dependable team for sales support, you now have more manpower, making the sales process faster and far more efficient. With a larger, more cost-effective outsourced sales team, you can reach more potential customers in a shorter time frame.
Beyond the speed of having more team members, however, outsourcing is also an efficient sales strategy if a business is expanding globally. With an outsourcing provider from a country that speaks another language, you can now take advantage of multilingual capabilities and tap into markets that would not have been available to you otherwise. So, far from just saving costs and supporting your internal team, sales outsourcing can also be leveraged for expansion.
4. Working with an outsourcing partner gives you access to advanced tech.
Since a customer service and sales outsourcing company typically specializes in this niche, they all invest in systems that make sales services (as well as customer interaction) more streamlined and efficient.
So, on top of finding top-tier customer service professionals, working with an outsourcing provider also allows you to take advantage of the latest tech and CRMs, without the overwhelming initial investment or the risk of adopting innovation only to find out that the money will go to waste as it doesn’t exactly match your needs.
5. Outsourcing helps you utilize multiple channels.
Customers today are everywhere. And so should your brand.
On a daily basis, businesses get inquiries through phone calls, emails, social media platforms, live chat support, and other available channels. To maintain high levels of customer satisfaction, a business needs to be responsive across all these platforms, all at once. This is understandably overwhelming for growing businesses who have to deal with other ongoing business changes, too.
By outsourcing sales and customer service, having an always-on, omnichannel presence is much easier to achieve. With a dedicated team focused on managing customer inquiries — wherever they may be reaching you — you can ensure that every customer interaction is carried out thoughtfully and professionally.
6. If you’re testing a new strategy, an outsourced team is ideal.
As the business grows, it’s only natural for teams to explore new options. Management might want to adopt new tech, a brand new sales process, or explore a new approach to customer care. While the intentions behind these decisions may be good, it must be acknowledged that launching company-wide initiatives are costly risks.
What’s an alternative? Starting with a test-run with your outsourced team. With a smaller scope but the same level of involvement in the business, an outsourced team is ideal for being the first ones to try out new initiatives on a smaller scale, before eventually adopting new solutions for the business as a whole.
7. With an outsourced team, your internal team can focus on core tasks.
Customer service and sales are tedious and high-volume tasks. Now, if taking calls is taking up too much of your core team’s time, then that is a sign that it’s time to outsource.
When you utilize inbound and outbound call center services, you are effectively delegating the time-consuming tasks that may be holding your team back. When they are not drowning in the volume of inquiries, they can focus on other business initiatives that will push forward the business’ ongoing growth and subsequently, improve overall customer experience.
That’s a win-win scenario for the business and your employees.
8. A more streamlined CX and sales function gives you better insights.
Established BPO companies in the Philippines have been offering outsourced sales and customer service solutions for decades now. This experience in the field allows them to leverage industry best practices, including expertise in collecting and analyzing customer data.
An outsourced team can gather the insights that will tell you why a sales effort failed or why customers keep calling post-purchase. This data will empower your team as you (re)organize sales training efforts or adjust your customer service and sales strategy.
9. Having an outsourced team helps with business continuity, too.
Picture this: there is a power outage in your main office. So, all your systems are down, and customers may be struggling to reach you. Business, then, will have to wait until the outage is fixed. But, what if you have a separate team halfway across the globe that can keep the operations going because the outage doesn’t affect them?
That’s an incidental benefit of outsourcing customer service and sales functions. With different teams operating across various locations, it’s much easier to ensure that inquiries won’t pile up and that support queues will keep moving, even and especially when there are challenges that may affect the operations in your main office.
10. Outsourced sales and customer service allow you to scale smarter.
Overall, outsourcing is the best way to scale business operations, minus the admin burden and excessive overhead costs.
If you’re in urgent need of 5 sales reps and 5 customer support agents to support your product launch, the best way to utilize resources is to work with an outsourcing provider. As opposed to the budget and time that you would have to allocate to hire in-house, outsourcing is an end-to-end solution that allows you to hire the best talent, without going through the tedious and costly recruitment process.
With all these key reasons cited here, it’s not a surprise that customer service and sales outsourcing is now a go-to solution for businesses across key cities including New York, London, Toronto, and Sydney.
So, if you’re looking for a smart way to scale, customer service and sales outsourcing is the solution that your business needs.
Outsource customer service and sales with KDCI today.
At KDCI Outsourcing, we are for empowering businesses across the globe with customer service and sales solutions that will support the overall growth of their brand.
We build tailored teams that match every company’s unique goals — from augmenting existing teams to outsourcing their entire call center operations to trusted experts in the Philippines. As your trusted outsourcing partner, we at KDCI handle the admin load of hiring sales and customer service staff, so you can focus on building your overall sales strategy.
Want to learn more about scaling faster and smarter with outsourcing? Talk to KDCI today.
