Date: June 25, 2020
Category: Blog
Now more than ever, with the prevalence of e-commerce and 24/7 online service, customers want connecting with customer service representatives with ease, whenever they need, quickly and efficiently- and they want a fantastic experience.
Here are our top 5 reasons to keep your customer service onshore…
Communicate with Ease and Efficiency
Your customer service provider should be able to make changes (e.g. IVR’s, resource, times, contact channels etc.) extremely quickly to respond to events and your customers’ requirements.
If your customer service provider is working on a completely different clock, or there are language barriers, then it may be harder to push these changes through as quickly as you’d like, and this can have an impact on the customers’ overall experience.
Improved Customer Experience
Sometimes, it may be harder for teams located further away to provide as seamless an experience as perhaps teams closer would be able to.
For example, there may well be barriers in terms of technology (phone lines etc.) or there may be language barriers, making it difficult for both the customer and the customer service professional too.
A Walker study found that by the end of 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator, so it’s more important than ever before not to get left behind.
Supporting Job Creation at Home
Another fantastic reason for looking to onshore customer service solutions is supporting job creation at home.
Although it is extremely important to look to support economies from across the Globe, it’s also good to know that you’re selecting a provider who is contributing to local economies from across the UK and supporting fellow citizens with opportunities for learning and development.
Improved Security/Compliance
In other parts of the World, security and data compliance/regulations may look different to us here in the UK, and this may make it tricky for you to compare like-for-like and to be certain as to what is covered and what isn’t.
For this reason, it may be a simpler, clearer process keeping your customer’s data onshore.
Your customer contact provider should have well-known accreditations and in-house expertise to support all of your risk and compliance needs- be sure to look for these.
Hidden Costs
Finally, although offshoring may appear cost-effective upon first glance, once potential taxes, exchange rates and travel abroad to visit the contact centre have been accounted for, there’s a chance it may not work out that way.
And that’s without factoring the cost of potential customer dissatisfaction and the impact this could have on future sales, with PWC finding that 92% of customers would completely abandon a company after two or three negative interactions.
It’s certainly worth shopping around and approaching an onshore provider; you may be surprised at the value for money, especially in terms of additional services (training, compliance and security and management information).
If you’re looking to bring your customer service onshore, get in touch to find out how we can help.
