Customer service is fundamental to your brands reputation. It can be one of the more difficult assets to manage, so the question is, to outsource or not?

Cutting costs and saving time

Customer service outsourcing is certainly a way to free your business from the time and expense required to run an effective customer care centre. Organisations that run their own contact and fulfilment departments, often find that they experience higher costs. When you outsource your customer service, you do not need to invest large amounts of money on employee training, extra staff or purchasing expensive technology to get the best out of your customer service. Outsourcing your customer service can also help you save on time, which means you can focus your talents on other areas of your company while concentrating on its long-term, strategic processes. This will allow you to have the advantage of progressing and staying ahead of your competitors.

Dealing with peak volumes

At Christmas time customer service can be flooded with enquires and complaints. When the volumes are far from steady, outsourcing your customer service can be extremely beneficial. If you find that for three-quarters of the year you need 20 members of staff on the phone but for the final quarter you need 100, then this is the type of model where outsourcing could become increasingly beneficial. 

21st century call centres

Forget your view of call centres being run by inexperienced, uninterested people who live on the other side of the world. We are in the 21st-century where customer service has improved dramatically and in recent years there has been a marked shift away from the offshoring of contact centres.

Here at Ntouch, we provide our talented staff with thorough training. This helps us provide you with meaningful dialogue with your customers, which provides you with longer and more profitable lifecycle.

More options and technology

Outsourcers often work with a wide range of services which means that they could have access to options and technology that you do not.

Here at Ntouch, we provide several services. These include consumer helplines, complaint management and brand protection, online retail support, social media response, customer insight data reports and fulfilment services such as running competitions.

Customer Service Outsourcing to Suit Your Needs

There is no "one size fits all" customer service outsourcing solution. There are significant differences between companies in a certain industry as well as significant differences across industries. Every company has its own culture and brand image it wants to portray.

Ntouch’s range of services enable us to provide service outsourcing capabilities that fit your company’s requirements.

Creating an environment where customers feel appreciated improves satisfaction and loyalty, and the best way to achieve this is through actions rather than just words. Here are some simple do’s and don’ts from Deborah Ellis for making your customers feel valued:

Do listen. It is impossible to provide the customer with an answer without understanding the question. Let customers finish telling their stories before trying to solve the problem.

Don’t pass people to others. A one stop service is the best because it saves the customer and company time. If you need to refer the customer to another colleague, explain to the customer why someone else has to be involved.

Do show respect. Good manners are easy to have and go a long way. Ensure that your team are polite and respectful at all times.

Don't forget that your service reflects your brand. Your customers can find what they need elsewhere, but if you make the customer feel appreciated, understood and cared for, the end result is simple but powerful - a strong connection to the customer that goes deeper than the normal company-customer relationship.

Do ask people how you can serve them better. Use the feedback to create customised service experiences. When people feel understood and appreciated, they keep coming back.

Don’t ask people for feedback if you are not going to do anything with it. They’ll wonder why you wasted their time.

Do manage customer expectations effectively. It is important that you let your customers know what is going on. For example, if a plane is delayed and the message shows that the plane will be departing in a few minutes, then it’s a few more minutes and so on. This will only frustrate customers more than if you were to say the plane will be departing in twenty minutes.

Halloween gripped the Ntouch office last week with our annual Pumpkin Carving Contest. Have a look at some of the brilliant Ntouch entries for this year’s competition.

Which one gets your winning vote to win?

You could go for the pretty glittery one or the spooky skeleton leaking blood……eugh!

As usual our entirely impartial judge Andrew Lane was raised from the grave to do the judging!

In joint second places comes…BOO! A great attempt by Andy and the skeletons face by Christine.

And the winner, drum roll please, was the lovely Jessie’s with the amazing haunted house carved pumpkin, complete with spooky spiders and someone trying to claw their way out! I wonder who she put in there and how did she do it….. Witchcraft?........ I wonder if there’s an Ntouch ducking stool!

As usual lots of thought, fun and effort has gone into this year’s pumpkin competition, it’s a wonder how the team still manage to provide great customer service and find out what people think about brands! As the saying (sort of) goes, ‘you need to be mad to work here, but at least we are happy!’

Whether they are criticising or praising your products or brand, customers are online and louder than ever!

Not just loud, consumers can amplify their message in a multitude of ways.

Facebook and Twitter provide the main platforms for airing thousands of uncensored opinions – any one of which could have serious consequences for your brand.

Many businesses have found social media hard to monitor and regulate efficiently, consequently customers are either ignored or not responded to correctly.

There is a huge and rapidly growing group of your customers and consumers who exclusively use social media when they want to talk to you – what is your strategy for answering them?

Ntouch have developed some cost effective solutions.

Firstly we looked at the best way to manage social media and we have now developed an effective strategy and can now offer this to you as a service.

To further improve cost efficiency we are also developing ‘Social Media Radar’ application. This innovative service constantly sweeps your social media platforms for key words and terms, spots service issues to ensure a swift and professional response is provided to your customers.

Data gathered can be analysed to provide the frequency of particular questions or problems, which may have been overlooked in other areas of customer contact.

Why not give us a call today to find out how we can help you manage consumer contact from social media, email, phone calls and even old fashioned letters.

We are here to provide the human voice in a digital world.