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Jordan Brown - ContactCenterWorld.com Blog

Outsourced vs. Managed Customer Service

As your small business begins to attract more customers, you may feel as though the workload is becoming overwhelming. Greater volume also means it can be difficult to keep up with service requests and offer your customers the best experience possible.

Don’t worry — you’re not alone. Many small and growing businesses don’t have the time or resources to provide dedicated and high-quality customer service at all times.

How can you continue to grow while reducing the stress on yourself and your team?

You are likely familiar with the term “outsourcing” and may have heard it referred to as “managed services”. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably which isn’t entirely correct.

Although the two terms share some similarities, there are key differences separating them to enough degree it’s important to gain a deeper understanding of their proper meanings.

Today we’re going to examine the differences between outsourcing your customer service and receiving comprehensive support from a managed customer service company. While both options have their benefits, we believe managed customer service is ideal for small businesses looking to grow and optimize their customer service experience.

What is Outsourced Customer Service?

Your business has planned and existing activities that need to be completed on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Outsourcing is assigning some of these activities to a third-party organization for a price in order to take some of the workload off of your team.

Outsourced tasks tend to be fairly narrow and do not involve overall strategy or new business development. When you think of outsourcing, think of basic tasks like data entry, editing documents, translating, or transcribing.

In the context of customer service, outsourced tasks might include sending incoming calls to a call centre or having a third-party reply to incoming messages.

The outside organization simply takes care of the task, sends the work back, and bills your company. The nature of the relationship may be temporary — the third-party’s primary goal is to finish the job in front of them and getting paid. They are unlikely to offer any long-term solutions.

Depending on the complexity of the task, outsourcing can be cheaper than completing the work yourself. Another benefit of outsourcing is that they can work after hours when your staff on hand may not be available.

Although this work can normally be completed in-house, outsourcing may save costs on things like equipment, salaries, or rent — it also allows your team to focus on the high-level business activities that really matter.

As we mentioned above, outsourcing and managed services are terms that are often confused as being one and the same — which isn’t the case. Let’s take a look at what a managed customer service approach looks like.

What is Managed Customer Service?

Managed customer service offers greater engagement with your customers through comprehensive packages catering to your business’ specific needs. While outsourced customer service companies typically only take on routine tasks, managed customer service providers offer a proactive approach to problems.

What does it mean to take a proactive approach? When your customers are actively looking to make a purchase, a managed customer service provider will engage with them without being prompted. It means they can be directed to where they need to go without needing to ask or search for themselves.

Managed customer service providers can also assist with higher-level strategic functions, improve upon systemic issues, and drive revenue through long-term customer satisfaction.

Typically managed customer service providers operate on a subscription based model as opposed to being paid-per-job. As a result, these companies are forward facing and have a desire to see your business grow for years to come.

In short, it is in their best interest to provide premium quality service to increase your revenues and foster a lasting business relationship.

Managed customer service providers also offer scalable solutions to fit seasonal or growing demand needs.

Depending on the nature of your business, you may only need an entry level package for a portion of the year — but when the holiday rush comes around, a managed service provider can improve your customer service experience by altering your solution to match your current situation.

Why Choose Managed Customer Service Over Outsourcing?

Both outsourcing and managed customer service have their place depending on what you hope to achieve. You may also make different decisions based on the work that needs to be done or the time of year.

For one-off tasks with narrowly defined answers, it may be best to choose to outsource the work. These types of tasks are repetitive and can often be completed by someone with limited knowledge of your business. Outsourcing is a good option if you hope to save a bit of money in the short run and are not looking for ongoing support.

Outsourcing can also be difficult during peak periods. Depending on where you outsource your work to, they may find themselves unable to take on the extra tasks during their busy periods as well.

Managed customer service offers ongoing support with the goal of increasing your revenues in the long run. Think of managed customer service as a business partner — these companies can provide valuable insights into your customer service strategy in addition to solving day to day customer concerns.

Using tools like chatbots, data analytics, self-service pages, and taking a proactive approach to your customer service strategy, a managed customer service company can help you streamline your business practices and increase customer satisfaction.

Additionally, these services can be brand integrated. When you choose a managed customer service model there is a meticulous onboarding process to ensure your customers expectations are met and exceeded.

Customer requests and questions can build up quickly — let a managed customer service provider improve your customer experience, reduce your workload, and raise your bottom line.

Omnie Integrated Services

If a managed customer service model sounds like it is right for your long term goals, Omnie can help. We believe that every interaction is an opportunity to build your brand with your customers — with our team supporting your customers, you’ll have more time and resources to focus on creating innovative products and services.

We offer a wide range of services to suit your industry, customer preferences, and budget. Learn more about our managed customer service solutions or speak with one of our team members who can walk you through which service may work best for your business — contact us today.

Publish Date: October 26, 2021 12:18 PM


How Does Technology Improve Customer Service?

How quickly is your team able to respond to customer service requests? Is your customer service team overloaded with common questions?

Customers today demand more timely service than ever before — smartphones have entirely changed the game when it comes to responding to customer inquiries. With people spending more of their time online, businesses need to adapt to the digital world. 

Cost-effective and easy-to-implement technologies can help you respond with better answers, faster. 

Depending on how your customers interact with your business, even 1 minute can make all the difference. Responding to and following up on every customer interaction can make or break a sale.

Are you currently capitalizing on new technologies to ensure your customers are being taken care of? 

If you’re not implementing these strategies right now — don’t stress. Many of these technologies (like live chat, self-serve, blog posts, and email lists) are inexpensive, easy to implement, and most importantly, profitable.

The term “new customer service technologies” sounds much more daunting than it actually is. With the support of Omnie, you can significantly increase customer satisfaction at a reasonable price point — and ultimately raise your bottom line.

Cutting edge businesses make every effort to support their customers after a sale. The majority of any business’ sales (approximately 80%) come from a small number of loyal customers so it’s absolutely vital to keep those loyal customers happy. 

The reason being, loyal customers offer long term repeat business, and speak positively about your business to friends and family — leading to new leads and more sales.

Leveraging new and developing customer service technologies is incredibly important considering the rapidly changing age of smartphones. You’ll gain valuable advantages and insights over your competition which directly translates into growth.

Customer Service Technology

By implementing the following customer service technologies, you can provide new and loyal customers with a superior experience than your competitors. In a perfect world, your business should offer customers multiple ways to interact with your customer service team.

Let’s examine a few customer service technologies and how they can vastly improve your customer service experience.

Email

Email is the bare minimum — if you’re not currently using emails to communicate with your customers, that needs to change today. It is inexpensive, convenient, and simple to set up. 

More importantly, customers demand the ability to interact with businesses via email. 

Email is an excellent tool because it gives you some time to respond to customer requests and ensure you find the right response to their question. With that being said the best practice is to reply to emails within 3 hours of receiving them. The faster your reply, the more likely you are to convert that customer. 

It’s also important to keep your emails concise — hopefully you can answer the customer’s question within 2-3 paragraphs. Anything longer and it may warrant a phone call. 

If you can, add a personalized touch to your emails to better show the customer you genuinely heard their concern. It can be as simple as mentioning their name or briefly reiterating their concern. 

Emails are an excellent starting place if you’re currently developing your customer service channels. Another great addition to your website is live chat. 

Live Chat

Have you ever visited a website and had a live support window pop up? 

These windows connect you directly to an agent who may be able to answer your questions within minutes. Live chat is a perfect solution for frequent questions that your team can respond to easily. 

Live chat is a superior messaging tool when compared to email — which can take several hours to receive a response, even for simple questions. 

It is a powerful tool to increase your customer service satisfaction score — according to Zendesk, customers leave happy approximately 85% of the time when using live chat. 

Live chat also offers your team the opportunity to engage directly with customers in real-time. Although many people are looking for easy answers, some customers may require more thorough support — a conversation that may have taken days via email can be compressed down into minutes if live chat is an option.

A customer who knows they can receive instant and quality support is much more likely to make a purchase and recommend your business to their social circle. Live-chat can also be partially automated, freeing up even more valuable resources. 

Automated Bots

For your most frequent and commonly asked questions, it’s possible to get a bot to respond and interact with your customers. As long as these bots provide the right answers to common questions, they can leave customers equally satisfied as talking to a live agent. 

Many bots review the customer’s inquiry and deliver a preprogrammed answer while more complex ones may actually learn to create sophisticated responses. 

These bots take some of the weight off of your customer service team by responding to the most frequent, simple requests. Bots also don’t need to sleep or vacation so they’re available to your customers 24/7. 

Bots vastly improve the customer experience by reducing response time — they’re an excellent way to start helping your customers help themselves. 

Self-Service

Lastly, creating ways that your customer can solve their problems without the support of an agent can lift a significant burden off of your business. Some examples include chatbots, blog posts, customer forums, and FAQ pages. 

Although self service channels require time up front, they pay significant dividends by allowing the customer to do the work themselves. The good news is that many customers prefer to use self-service support channels — rather than sitting on the phone or waiting for a reply to an email, the customer can seek out the answer on their own. 

Additionally, customers are often hesitant to reach out, for a variety of reasons, but happy to conduct a quick search of a business’ website. If they can’t find the answer they’re looking for, they may not submit a request at all and you’ve just lost potential revenue. 

Self-service options generate more conversions, customer inquiries, and referrals. Let your customers help themselves and you may be surprised at the results!

Impacts of customer service technology

Omnie Integrated Services

You may have already seen some of these technologies in action here on our website. 

This article is just starting to scratch the surface about customer service technologies with the four channels listed above. The key learning for today is that technology can greatly improve your customer service experience and ensure you never miss an opportunity. 

Implementing new technologies can seem daunting with all the other tasks running a business demands — Omnie can guide you through the process. Get in touch with our team via live chat in the bottom right, or contact us directly to learn more about customer service technology.

Publish Date: September 8, 2021 1:45 PM


How Data Analysis Improves Customer Service and Drives Growth

Growing businesses can carry a lot of bad habits into their growth phase. They didn’t have the financial or people resources to implement strategies used by large organizations. One of the most important tools large organizations leverage in today’s competitive environment is data.

Large organizations easily filter valuable information to gain insight, review customer service performance metrics, and increase revenue. Effective data management is one of the main reasons larger organizations stay ahead of the competition. Today, there are inexpensive and powerful technologies readily available to everyone — meaning small and growing businesses can leverage these same tools to grow their revenues.

What are some of the most popular tools every small business should be using?

The Omni(channel) Advantage

Organizations should strive to provide different methods of communication to meet their customers on their preferred channel. However, these channels are not always linked to one-another.

If a potential customer emails your support team, then calls your business directly, will your staff be aware of all previous communication from this particular person?

Separated channels leave organizations with an abundance of data spread out on different platforms. An omni-channel platform pulls data into one place to close these gaps — streamlining and improving the customer experience.=

Actionable Insights

An integrated customer service platform, with access to multiple channels, allows you to unlock opportunities and discover potential gaps in your customer service strategy. Your customers have questions you may not be answering — and their inquiries can be turned into quality actionable insights.

There are likely new features or fixes your team has not considered. In other words, problems that can be solved by your team — with the right information.

Upsell & Increase Loyalty

Information is the key to upselling and loyalty.

When you deeply understand how your customers interact with your business (including communication styles, buying preferences, past purchases, and more) you can adjust from a reactive to a proactive customer service approach — delivering more value with each purchase and fostering a loyal customer base.

Agent Productivity

Customer satisfaction is a direct reflection of the support team. Data analysis can be used to set internal performance goals and provide incentives for proactive customer service standards. This data also provides the basis for ongoing training programs to ensure customer service levels are exceeded.

Data is Your Friend

Small and medium size businesses no longer have to struggle to keep up with large organizations who have in-house IT teams. Your business can outsource branded digital support while collecting data on your customers and generating reports that allow you to take action. Every connection with a customer is a revenue opportunity – don’t leave your service strategy to chance.

If your company isn’t leveraging the above tools get in touch – we’re always happy to talk and provide insight. Click here to get in touch.

Publish Date: June 30, 2021 6:51 PM

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