Outsourcing The Customer Service Department
To outsource customer service means to move a company's customer service department in another country, for the sake of saving money, as this will be a country in which the salaries are much lower.
The raw fact about outsourcing a customer service department is that there is a thin line between saving money and loosing quality. Obviously, if you are the manager of your firm, you would like to reduce the costs as much as possible and at the same time increase the quality of the provided service. But is that really possible? These are two completely opposite things, but customer service outsource might be the answer for you.
To outsource customer service department is to have the entire support team in another country. But that doesn't involve relocating your native workers, on the contrary - hiring new ones.
The companies that really do well with outsourcing are the web hosters. A lot of web hosting companies have outsourced their customer service, whether in India, or Eastern Europe. India and Easter Europe (Bulgaria, Romania) are the most popular choices when it comes to picking the new spot. Reasons are clear - in these countries, the average salary is around $500, which is what a member of your support team in the United States makes in a week at most. So the money saving potential that comes from customer service outsource is huge. Nevertheless, there are some problems related to customer service outsource. The first one is building the new infrastructure. You have to rent or buy a new place, then you have to buy new equipment (computers, machines, depending on the nature of your business), or transport the existing one. Next problem is to hire the right people and create good training programs to integrate them in the environment. This process works best if you send a few of your best man in the given area. They will be your eyes and ears there. Give them and highest possible positions so that they can lead the team with their experience and knowledge. A real problem related to customer service outsource comes from the language barrier. I bet you have probably called a given customer support number and end up speaking with a person who barely knows English. This is the downside of outsourcing - sometimes the quality of provided service can decrease drastically, especially if you hire the wrong people. Working in a foreign country is never easy, so you have to investigate the market, and send down your best men to make things work. If you are in the IT sector, consider buying help desk service solution, such as Remedy. Versions for linux are also available.
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