We now have more than 20 years of experience performing customer service work for external parties. We have made quite a few mistakes in those years and learned from them. Outsourcing customer service has a number of pitfalls. We list our most important lessons for you. If you are going to outsource your customer service, then you are prepared!
Customer service outsourcing pitfalls start with hazy exit punten. Het uitbesteden begint bij een duidelijk beeld van de huidige situatie. Hoe is e.e.a. nu ingericht? Hoe zou het idealiter ingericht moeten zijn? Op een bepaald moment ontstaat het idee om de klantenservice (gedeeltelijk) uit te besteden, anders las je deze blog waarschijnlijk niet 😊. Bepaal voor je mogelijke partners gaat benaderen dan eerst goed wat je eigenlijk zoekt. Zorg dat je zicht hebt op de klantenservice zoals die nu functioneert en wat er door een partner precies gedaan zou moeten worden. Vragen die wij in een eerste kennismaking vaak stellen en waar veel bedrijven niet direct een antwoord op hebben zijn vragen als:
Just some of the questions you should be able to answer when considering whether outsourcing customer service can add value. If ke want to avoid customer service outsourcing pitfalls, this is certainly important. So make sure you know exactly what you have and completely what you like. This is of course important in the process of selecting possible partners. So before you actually outsource.
It is important to mention all aspects of customer service work. We have come across it very often in practice: 'Oh yes, we forgot to mention that'. For you, everything might be very obvious that you do things the way you do them. An external agency only knows what you tell them or show them. It often does not benefit a partnership if, during the first weeks of a collaboration, things come up that were not thought of. A lot of the aspects are technical but there are also whole other issues we have come across in practice. Think of things that your partner cannot know about but that do come into play. Examples of things we came across in practice:
We try to tune, test and set up everything in advance. We can't be prepared for things we don't know about. Fortunately, with our experience, we now have such good onboarding that things like this don't happen anymore.
Technology is important and needs to be taken care of. It is also certainly not to be underestimated in terms of complexity. IT professionals always tend to indicate that everything should be possible. Yet linking systems in particular is far from simple. Things are often overlooked or the complexity is underestimated. We also often see in practice that more systems are used than previously assumed. For example, the shipping status of packages often has to be checked in another system after all, or it turns out that the chats come in in a separate programme. Outsourcing ICT is one of the customer service pitfalls, because often a lot is overlooked.
Good customer service is important in your customer experience. Customer service employees have an important role because they have direct contact with your customers. Customers take the initiative and you want to handle those customer contacts preferably right the first time. It makes no difference whether you outsource your customer service or not. External employees should also be an extension of the organisation and, ultimately, it should not matter to customers that customer service is carried out by an external agency. Proper initial training is important in this regard. After that, knowledge and keeping that knowledge up to date is important. To this end, we work with a self-learning first line. We will be happy to tell you in detail how we do it. customer service outsourcing pitfalls prevent. we can help with that!
A major pitfall we notice. Opaque, unclear and, above all, high costs. Make sure you know exactly what it costs you now and again exactly what it will cost you when outsourcing. This is a shared responsibility, by the way. It's pretty simple: The one who is going to outsource should give a clear, honest and realistic picture of all the work. The partner who is going to handle customer service has to match that with a clear, fair and realistic cost structure. Then everyone knows exactly where they stand and there can never be any ambiguity. It often happens that this or that needs to be done. An extra phone number, an extra day of training, a busier period that was not announced. Clear financial agreements are sometimes difficult but important. As an outsourcer, you do not want to feel that you are paying for things you did not know in advance and that you have control over the costs. As a partner, on the other hand, you want to be paid for the work you do and not expect additional work that was never agreed upon. Customer service outsourcing pitfalls are therefore also about costs.
It has actually come up more or less with all the other points as well: Transparency. The parties do not know each other but, if all goes well, they have a common goal: to provide excellent customer service. That sounds very stupid but if you enter into a relationship for the long term, it is best to do so on the basis of honesty, openness and sincerity. The pitfall, however, is that it is still fairly often based on mistrust or a certain level of distrust. Of course, the perception of just about everything depends heavily on the extent to which it is based on trust or mistrust. So only engage with partners who trust you from the start.
In short: Make sure you have a good idea of exactly what you expect. Share this with your partner and make sure you build a partnership based on trust.
We are SpangenbergGroup! And we can help you make your customer service a good customer service to make. Just good customer service where the basics are in order. Where customer contacts add value to the customer experience. We unburden you in the area we are good at (customer service) so you can concentrate worry-free on what you're good at. Sound good? Get in touch.
With over 25 years of experience in optimising customer contact and customer experience SpangenbergGroup can help you. The optimise customer service or outsource? Use the form or see our contact page.
Also with other questions about customer contact and customer service you can always contact with us!
Get in touch, we'd love to check it out with you!
