A Better Answer Blog

Fierce competition in today’s economy means a small business owner must be a few steps ahead at all times. While your business may be offering the same products or services as another, you can still differentiate yourself.

The best way to stand out from the crowd is to provide excellent customer service.

While that plan may appear overwhelming, a small business owner must understand that great customer service doesn’t have to be in-house.

The Benefits of Awesome Customer Service

The fact is, it is impossible to grow a new business without customer service. Every business provides it but there are many, MANY, stories of those who aren’t good at it. The nail in the coffin for a small business could be a bad reputation and, unfortunately, bad news spreads fast.

On the other hand, awesome customer service means:

• Repeat business
• The ability to charge a higher price
• Marketing that speaks for itself
• Looking more appealing than your competition

Creating a relationship with your customer is what keeps them coming back for more. But is there enough of you to go around?

The Cost of In-House Customer Service

Let’s consider the cost of a full-time customer service staff operating an in-house call center. From the 10,000 foot view, a call center requires experience, training and patience to offer prize-winning customer service. More than likely, you may have products and services knowledge but do you have a solid comprehension of the equipment, the software, call routing and other experience required to run a call center? Do you have the time to learn?

There are also additional costs:

• Call center equipment
• Recruiting, screening and hiring (Do you have a Human Resources department?)
• Training time (that takes you away from what you do best)
• Paying the call center representative for 24/7 availability (if needed)

Outsourcing your customer service allows you to focus on what you do best while continuing to grow your business and keep your customers happy.

Why Hire a Call Center?

Call centers are already set up to handle a high volume and a plethora of different types of calls. Call representatives have the training and experience to make sure the customer experience is positive, the workable hours needed to answer the phones and the equipment knowledge to technically handle the call correctly. With minimal training time, scripts and procedures can be documented and learned so that a caller’s experience with the call center appears as a seamless part of your business. Another benefit to hiring a call center is that call center management will offer continued learning and training opportunities to their representatives. This means that they will have the support and additional training to become even better at customer service… which can only make your customers happier!

Hiring a call center is much like hiring an employee and should still be a good fit for your company. If you have any further questions, Contact Us directly to answer any questions.