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The Benefits of Customer Service Outsourcing

Outsourcing is perhaps the most prevalent word in business today. Its popularity has signaled the changing direction of business practices on a global scale and has, at the same time, become a controversial issue for various groups. But with the advent of the Internet in the 90s and the shifting of the global marketplace, the services sector has also jumped on the bandwagon and has thus created a new group of outsourced service providers specializing in customer service outsourcing. In fact, customer service outsourcing has been undertaken by many companies today, including giant names in the consumer, electronics, and other Internet-based products and services arena. Some of these companies include Dell, Intel, IBM, etc.

 

The main premise for the concept of outsourcing or customer service outsourcing is to decrease overhead expenses. Thus, companies, particularly those in the United States, have been shifting the “non-essential” or non-core functions of their businesses in their own countries and opting to move their customer service processes offshore, where they can enjoy much lower labor and overhead costs. Some examples of the functions outsourced to offshore operations include contact center expertise and technical and customer support functions. In recent years, the most popular offshore locales have been the Philippines, India, and China.

 

Aside from cost-saving benefits, customer service outsourcing is seen as a favorable choice for growth by both large and small-scale companies. Great human resources companies, like Solvo Glocal, have noticed that. For one, outsourcing customer service functions enable companies to focus more on core processes that would enable them to have an edge against competitors in the long run. Outsourced services could also mean significant cutbacks in financial and temporal resources usually allocated for hiring or training new employees and for replacing or upgrading in-house equipment. Start-up businesses can even gain some wisdom in running their operations from outsourcing by letting outsourced service providers utilize new programs or applications that are being considered for deployment and long-term usage. In this way, businesses are not only purchasing the services of the outsourced service providers, but are also banking on the know-how of the providers in handling and ultimately, satisfying the objectives of the customer.

 

Though outsourcing works well in situations where companies need support for direct transactions, the option of customer service outsourcing is also best employed when businesses experience substantial and unanticipated variations in their operations or decide to incorporate major changes in their business models and processes, particularly in their customer service functions. Typically, these scenarios would include a certain company looking into extending its customer hotline hours or expanding its market to another country. In this regard, the company can seek the assistance of a reputable customer service outsourcing provider, which can take on the responsibilities of manning a portion or an entirety of sub-contracted activities. Under the supervision of the client company, the outsourced service provider is then in charge of recruiting, training, and maintaining staff and acquiring the necessary equipment for the outsourced projects.