Customers deserve the best experience when interacting with your business at all touchpoints. Satisfied customers are a guaranteed source of future business to ensure you can stay operational and achieve your growth ambition.
As a business function, customer service requires intensive human and technological investment. For most companies, doing this in-house is expensive and can often slow down productivity without plausible results. Outsourcing to the Philippines is an excellent option for such businesses to ensure they are maximizing customer satisfaction.
The Philippines is the top destination for American businesses looking to automate their customer service function. This blog post reviews how outsourcing customer service to a Philippines call center can help your business maximize customer satisfaction and give you a unique competitive advantage. We also detail what to look for in a call center partnership.
Why Customer Satisfaction Matters In 2023
Customer satisfaction refers to how your business, its products and services, and overall customer experience rank in the eyes of the customers interacting with your business. Customer satisfaction is very important for modern-day businesses to prioritize for many reasons, including the following.
a) Boosting Customer Loyalty
It costs twice or thrice as much to attract new customers compared to retaining your current customers. Prioritizing customer satisfaction ensures that your customers have a positive experience when interacting with your brand. This experience positively affirms their approval of your brand and enhances their loyalty in the long run.
b) Attract New Customers
New customers who hear or read positive reviews about your business are more likely to explore your offerings and convert if they get a feel of the customer experience and it satisfies them. Hence, customer satisfaction ranks highly as a reliable way of attracting new customers to your business.
c) Reduces Customer Churn
Every business loses some of its customers—customer churn. The key is ensuring that your business can reduce this turnover to a minimal level. Customer satisfaction is the secret weapon that helps convince all customers to continue being regulars and not consider other offers.
d) Collect Feedback
Your business approach towards customer satisfaction is a dependable way of collecting customer feedback. Using surveys, questionnaires, and other feedback collection methods can give you an idea of how your customers view the experience they get when interacting with your business. The data generated from this exercise can help your brand identify ways of improving the product and service on offer and the general customer experience.
Challenges In Maximizing Customer Satisfaction
Maximizing customer satisfaction is not always a straightforward process and, therefore, calls for a team of professionals to help strategize and execute a plan that ensures customers have the best to say about your business and its products and processes.
a) Understanding Customer Needs
Each customer is unique and requires your business to go the extra mile to understand their needs to satisfy them fully. Most businesses find the process of learning about their customer a time and cost-intensive process that often limits how they can maximize customer satisfaction.
b) Personalizing Customer Service
Generic bot-generated messages do not cut it in the age of the enlightened customer. Businesses need to go a step further and personalize each interaction with the customer. However, the precision and expertise needed to achieve this is not always available to all businesses.
c) Handling Dissatisfied Customers
No business will satisfy the needs of all types of customers to the letter hence, it is necessary to have a crisis management plan if you are looking to maximize customer satisfaction. This requires agents well trained in customer service and empathetic to the customer’s situation to help resolve the problem they are experiencing and enhance their experience with your business.
d) High Technological Investment
Exceptional customer support is about the team behind it and the extent to which they are empowered technologically. Most businesses push back from maximizing their customers’ experiences and satisfaction levels due to the investment needed to ensure available and professional agents that can help the customer.
Outsourcing Customer Service For Your Business
Outsourcing customer service refers to delegating this function of your business to a third party who caters to all customer service requirements while your in-house team prioritizes other value-generating aspects of your business.
Outsourcing customer service refers to delegating this function of your business to a third party who caters to all customer service requirements while your in-house team prioritizes other value-generating aspects of your business.
According to Exploding Topics, at least 24% of all small businesses outsource their customer service to a BPO outside the mainland US. This number continues to grow as the business scene becomes more competitive and customer satisfaction rises to the top of business priorities.
Some benefits that outsourcing customer support brings to your business include access to professional customer service agents to talk to your customers. These individuals are highly trained and know how to approach different situations with customers at different touchpoints with your business.
Outsourcing customer service is also crucial for ensuring the business can have a fully functional customer support wing that is always available without developing one in-house.
Why The Philippines Is The Best Destination To Outsource Customer Service
Customer service outsourcing and the Philippines is synonymous with businesses looking to improve operational efficiency, mitigate costs, and maximize customer satisfaction with best-in-class customer support.
The Philippines did not become a top destination for US businesses outsourcing customer service overnight. The meteoric rise in prominence was sparked towards the end of the 20th century with the establishment of the first call center in 1992. From this point, the industry has grown from strength to strength to become one of the major backbones of the Philippine economy.
The government offers several incentives that support locals and foreigners to set up call centers in the country. Moreover, the Philippines has one of the best internet connections in the world, with a tech-savvy population that is highly literate and fluent in English.
Combine all these with the fact that up to 1.3 million people are employed in the industry in the Philippines to conclude that the Philippines is the number one country to outsource customer service functions.
Reasons Why You Should Outsource Customer Service To The Philippines
You should consider the Philippines as your go-to option for outsourcing customer service for many reasons, including the following.
i) English Fluency
English is the official language of the Philippines, and it is also widely taught in schools. Filipinos grow up learning to speak English in everyday conversations, greatly improving their fluency and making them ideal candidates to work in a call center. Contracting a customer service BPO like Loop Contact Solutions guarantees your customers will not notice that the customer service is outsourced. Our agents have the perfect accent and will communicate clearly and politely with your customers.
ii) Cultural Affinity
American culture is widely adopted in the Philippines, with most citizens followers of American events and way of life. Such an understanding of the American people and their lifestyle makes call center agents at Philippine call centers the best extension of your business. They will relate to the problems shared by the customer and understand where they are coming from to find a better way of resolving their issue.
iii) Cost-effectiveness
As highlighted above, businesses refrain from catering to customer needs with a fully-fledged customer support wing because of the costs involved in training and setting up the facilities. Outsourcing to the Philippines, where costs are less than 50% of what it is in the US, is an excellent way of ensuring customers are satisfied with your business without emptying your bank account.
iv) Flexible And Scalable
Philippine call centers have flexible service offerings suitable to your business needs, size, and budget. By negotiating with a company like Loop Contact Solutions, you can get a deal that supports your business from its infancy to exponential growth while keeping customers fully satisfied.
v) Time Zone Advantage
The Philippines is in an advantageous time zone that allows its call center companies to have agents to attend to customers globally around the clock. This ensures your customers can get the assistance they need anytime, keeping them satisfied and loyal to your business.
What To Consider When Outsourcing Customer Service
Not all Philippine call centers are the same, hence the need to partner with one with the same goal as you when maximizing customer satisfaction.
Top of the things to consider when getting into an agreement with a provider is their familiarity with your business. Customer support teams with prior experience in the industry in which you operate your business will serve your customers better in the long run.
A call center that invests in the latest technology, upskilling resources, and routinely hires more customer support agents is a better option than one that doesn’t. Ask to be given their technology and employee development plans to understand better whether they suit your needs.
Lastly, consider the budget. Different call centers will charge differently according to your business needs. It is important to look for a provider like Loop Contact Solutions, offering flexible pricing options to serve your business as it grows.
In Conclusion
Customer satisfaction is at the heart of a business’s success and longevity. Customer service is a crucial business function that ensures everyone is satisfied when interacting with your business. Loop Contact Solutions is a Philippine call center offering custom customer service packages designed to take your business to the next level. Contact our sales team today to get a quote.