Recent news headlines are full of stories of a potential looming recession across the Eurozone, whilst the UK already appears to be heading for a prolonged downturn in economic performance. With worrying financial forecasts for the coming months, businesses across the UK and Ireland are looking at their operations to see how to drive efficiencies - and in some cases looking at cost reductions to prepare for an uncertain 2023.
In this blog we consider the top reasons why your business might look to work with an outsourced customer service partner to get the business in shape.
Enable resourcing flexibility and deliver efficiencies
Working with an outsource provider is one of the best ways to create flexibility in your resourcing. The provider will be able to scale teams to meet your requirements, whether that’s increasing headcount to meet high demands, or reducing FTE to suit your budget. Global providers often have varied offshore capabilities which can help you meet 24/7 support requirements or tighter budget constraints.
Outsourced service providers have extensive experience in delivering efficiencies through technology and different business practices, all whilst protecting customer service reputation. It’s worth asking how your partner can help deliver efficiencies for your business - as they will be able to suggest solutions.
Create cost savings
Many businesses outsource to reduce costs. Maintaining an in-house customer service or technical support team is a fixed cost to the business, and outgoings can include:
- Recruitment fees
- Additional training budgets
- IT costs and other Infrastructure expenses
- Overheads for managing operations
Working with an outsourcer streamlines your operations and your costs.
An outsource service partner could also make recommendations about utilising offshore teams at a lower cost, often for back-office processes, or create a hybrid on-shore/offshore model, all without impacting the quality of the service delivered to customers.
Keep your existing employees motivated
Many back-office processes consist of repetitive, low-value tasks. By outsourcing these to an outsourced customer service team you can free up your people to deliver high-value activity that is core to the business.
Drive a tech-first approach without the need for capital investment
Whilst a period of recession often mean revenue is challenged, it is also a great time to drive innovation through a business to create a leaner operation. But putting together the business case for investment in new technologies can be difficult when sales are down, even when it’s clear that it could drive efficiencies.
An experienced outsourced service provider will already have highly effective technology in place to deliver innovative customer service, which means your business does not have to go through lengthy and costly procurement and contracting rounds for the latest Software as a Service platform.
Continue to delight customers
There is never a good time to experience a drop in customer service levels or Net Promoter Scores (NPS), and customers are often the first to complain when cutbacks drive a poor experience.
As we’ve discussed above, partnering with an experienced and expert Business Process Outsourcer can help maintain and even improve customer service levels during an economic recession, as well as drive efficiencies in a business. Read how we partnered with a leading telecoms provider to deliver significant improvements in their NPS levels here.
