Customer support plays an important role in the growth of businesses in Africa. But the question is: Why do business organizations or companies outsource customer support? If it is such a helpful component for business success, shouldn’t companies handle it themselves?
The answer is very simple. Outsourcing customer service to a professional in Africa can give a company the extra push it requires to achieve a lot.
What Customer Support Outsourcing is
It encompasses hiring a BPO provider to deal with customer support functions. Large, small, and mid-level businesses entrust the following tasks to third-party contact centers or call centers for cost efficiency and increased speed:
- eCommerce support
- Live chat support
- Email support
- Technical support
- Voice-based customer support
- Management of social media
Advantages
Customer support functions demand client satisfaction, which is important to the success of businesses. Enlisting the services of a BPO is the way to go. Here are the benefits of doing so:
1. Cultural Nuances
African agents understand cultural nuances, tonalities, and idioms that can be lost by outsourcing customer support to other locations. This, in turn, ensures more conversations. In addition, a greater grasp of the Western culture allows for better connection and customer empathy.
2. Cost Savings
Partnering with external contact centers or outsourced call centers enables businesses to greatly minimize costs associated with labor, equipment, and infrastructure.
This great and cost-effective method allows companies to concentrate on their core operations while providing quality customer support via center services. With cost savings, businesses opt to outsource the service to service providers.
3. Access to More Specialized Skills
Training is an important component of successful customer support strategies. Customer service agents have the technical skills to deliver great solutions and navigate software to customers.
Subsequently, they need to follow the best practices in customer support to offer a unique and great experience. Training customer support agents in specialized technological advancement requires a huge employer investment. If you choose this route in-house, your business can suffer great losses.
However, outsourcing will allow your business to benefit from a specialized team without the need to pay upfront fees, which will be a huge win for your business.
4. Gain Loyal Clients
How you treat clients dictates whether you will be inclined to get repeat business, and partnering with a great service provider will improve customer retention and satisfaction.
Experts specializing in customer support functions are experienced and knowledgeable to eliminate friction points. This, in turn, resolves issues painlessly and quickly, ensuring that clients remain loyal to your business brand.
5. Improved Efficiency
Outsourcing customer support improves a company’s overall efficiency. This means you will not do everything yourself, and you will have more time to be more efficient and streamlined.
Likewise, outsourcing key areas, like customer support, minimizes business complexity. You will not have to deal with lengthy procedures, especially when setting up a new project.
The bottom line is that outsourcing customer support is a game-changer for businesses. The key to the success of outsourcing the function lies in getting a partner in Africa that understands cultural nuances and better aligns with your company’s objectives or goals.