How to Outsource Customer Support in 8 Simple Steps

With labor wages continuing to get high in the developed countries, outsourcing is expected to achieve a market volume of 0.49 trillion dollars by 2029. 

You can measure the intensity of the market that by the end of 2023, HiredSupport (a company that works on outsourcing) was fully packed-up and refused to take additional clients in the last quarter.

Outsourcing isn’t a mystery to anyone in the age of globalization, but I have covered this article to let business owners know all the checks they need to maintain on how to outsource customer support.

This will help business owners to make better decisions and choose the right company before outsourcing.

1. Ask Yourself Why Do You Want to Outsource?

As a business owner, you always need to define your end goal before starting out anything? 

For example, when you start a business, you ask yourself why do I want to start a business, is it you trying to avoid a 9-5 circle, is it you want to make money or is it something related to your life purpose (in case of Elon Musk).

The answers that you get will start to define right choices and correct course of action. 

Outsourcing customer support is no different. You need ask the following questions:

• Do you want to save money while outsourcing?
• Do you want to improve the quality of service while outsourcing?
• Are you unable to handle customer support staff?
• Do you want to focus on your important task while outsourcing customer support?

Getting clear with priorities will help you to ask the right questions and choose the right provider. For example, if your outsourcing goal is to save cost, you’d choose countries like Pakistan, India and Philippines.

Moreover, if your sole purpose of outsourcing is to improve quality of service then your priorities will be different and you’d be focusing on the service provider’s Customer Satisfaction Score instead of being specific on the country.

2. Measure the Cost of Each Channel

According to Deloitte, 70% of the business owners outsource to reduce costs. And if you are the part of it, then your second step would be to measure the cost of every single channel that your customer support works on.

To help you with this, I have taken some assumptions that you can replicate in your business to measure the cost of your each channel.

For example, if you are a business owner and your customer support works on the following channels – email, chatbots, social media, and phone calls.

Now, let’s put this in the following scenario with a full-time in-house agent cost for 8 hours in the US. per annum.

Channel	Number of Agents	Agents Cost	Channel Revenue
Social Media	2	$201,484 per annum	$300,442 per annum
Chatbot	1	$100,742 per annum	$40,020 per annum
Phone Calls	4	$402,968 per annum	$700,456 per annum
Emails	1	$100,742 per annum	$20,8438 per annum
Total	8	$805,936 per annum	$1.2 million per annum

In the above hypothetical scenario of in-house, you spend $805,936 and get revenue of almost $1.2 million. This saves you around 32.8%.

Now ask your BPO provider to give you a breakdown of each channel, and how much they will save you.

For example, following are the savings you can make by outsourcing to the HiredSupport that starts from $7/hr.

Channel	Number of Agents	HiredSupport Agent Cost	Channel Revenue
Social Media	2	$29,574 per annum	$300,442 per annum
Chatbot	1	$14,787 per annum	$40,020 per annum
Phone Calls	4	$59,148 per annum	$700,456 per annum
Emails	1	$14,787 per annum	$20,8438 per annum
Total	8	$118,296 per annum	$1.2 million per annum

In the case of outsourcing, you will spend around $118,296  and get the same revenue of $1.2 million dollars. This saves you around 90.1%.

3. Compare Company’s Prices & Reviews

At this point you have completed two steps – you understand that you want to reduce cost by outsourcing and you have measured the cost of each channel.

Your next step will be to compare pricing of all customer support outsourcing providers. There can be an exhaustive list to find the right companies, compare all of them and then choose the right company.

To avoid the hassle, I have chosen the top 10 customer support companies, and compared their reviews and pricing:

4. Make Sure that Your Provider Covers All Channels

This is pretty straightforward. Before getting on-boarded with the provider, you need to ask your outsourcing partner if they provide customer support for all the channels that your customers interact with.

Some of the call centers do not cater all the channels, they may provide email support and may not provide phone calls.

In addition to channels, you also need to ask if they provide all the software integrations with your present customer support operations.

Getting your expectations clear from the early stages helps you avoiding conflicts and sets you to be in the right direction.

5. Measure the Quality of Agents

To measure the agent’s quality, there’s no better way than to analyze the past clients and company’s reviews.

You can visit the website of your customer support outsourcing provider and analyze their case studies or try to look at the third party websites to measure what people say about the company.

For example, HiredSupport has mentioned their case studies about how they have their past clients and stands at third in the customer outsourcing company according to Clutch.

Furthermore, you need to ask the following questions by your service provider to measure basic-fit of the agents that will be working on your business:

• Are the agents fluent in the languages your customers talk in?
• Do the agents work 24/7 to assist your customers?
• How do the agents handle the angry customers?
• How do they prioritize important chats?

The answer to these questions will get you very close to understanding the kind of agents you’ll be working with.

6. Provide Training Notes to Maintain the Brand’s Voice

Most of the customer support outsourcing providers ask you to provide them with the brand’s tone and its persona. 

However, even if they don’t ask you, you should ask your BPO partner to maintain a specific tonality in order to consistent with the brand’s persona. 

For example, if you operate in a financial niche and most of your clients are professional business owners then you may need to maintain a professional tone while talking with them. 

It’s important to note that maintaining the right tone helps you to retain the customers and establish empathy with the customers.

7. Analyze Data Security & Compliances

Some niches, for example financial and medical services, have to be compliant with the protocols set by the governments. 

For example, while operating in a medical niche, your customer support outsourcing has to be HIPPA compliant. And neglecting this part may cause you to face heavy financial and criminal proceedings that may harm you and may put your businesses at risk as well.

I’d suggest asking your provider if your business falls under some legal compliances while providing customer service and then assess how they maintain compliance with the protocols.

8. Analyze How Your Provider Measures KPIs?

Now that you have decided to outsource your customer support, it’s time to assess the KPIs they will follow to report back to you on a monthly basis. 

You spend money to outsource, and it’s the responsibility of your provider to make you feel satisfied with the quality of their service while saving the cost. For example, at HiredSupport, they try achieve 90+ CSAT (customer satisfaction score)

You can ask them to follow other KPIs as well – tickets closing rates, revenue generation from calls, or CES (customer effort score).

Conclusion

We have an overview on how to outsource customer support. If you still feel unsure about outsourcing, the best solution will be to run a free trial with HiredSupport.

They provide you a free trial for 7 days, and you can set the right expectations about how they will improve your quality of service and will save money. Zero dollars expense and you can set the right expectations!