With the proliferation of chatbots and help desk software, email can seem almost quaint, yet email remains the backbone of customer support. US-based surveys show that 64 percent of people use email for support, making it the most widely used customer service channel.
Email support is relatively easy to implement, but getting it right comes with some challenges. Good email support needs to strike a balance between being quick and being thorough—and many businesses find that the best way to do so is to outsource email support.
Outsourced email support is an effective way to improve overall customer satisfaction without adding much of a financial or administrative burden. With a fairly small investment, it can prepare your business to better respond to customer’s needs and create opportunities to further develop your customer experience.
Let’s explore more about outsourced email support, including everything you need to know to get started.
- Email support balances prompt responses with comprehensive information. Done right, it’s quick enough to meet customers’ preferences while freeing them up from staying on the phone or at their keyboard.
- Outsourcing email support makes it quicker and more reliable, while keeping costs low. It’s also a great way to scale your support capacity to match your company’s needs.
- By implementing a few high-level improvements, your team can further amplify your outsourced CSRs’ efficiency. These improvements include preparing support material, helping outsourced staff stay on brand, and consistently monitoring performance.
Making the Case for Email in Customer Service Processes
Conventional wisdom holds that speed is the most important aspect of customer service. Email, as an asynchronous channel, may then seem like an odd choice. But while it’s slower than chat or phone calls, it does get around customers’ most common frustration—being put on hold—while still being fast enough for customer service expectations.
Here are just a few of the many times when email support makes sense for an organization:
You Need To Send External Documents
Email is especially useful for support cases that rely on documents to provide context. These can include receipts, invoices, and photos or videos—all of which would be more difficult, if not impossible, to relay by chat or a phone call. In addition, email provides a clean archive of correspondences, making it easy to study past correspondance.
You Need To Get Authorities On Board
Email makes it easy for customer service reps to loop other people in, which is great for getting information from a subject matter expert or escalating things to a supervisor. The built-in archive of past emails makes it easy to transfer information, minimizing the need for customers to repeat themselves.
You Need To Add Resources
It’s easy to use email to link to other resources, whether those are downloadable PDFs or resource pages. With email, you can condense a lot of information in a concise, readable format.
You Want To Use A Template
Email formatting options also make it easier to create and use a wide range of templates. Templates allow you to provide comprehensive answers in less time so you can provide detailed responses without having to make the customer wait.
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How Email Support Outsourcing Improves Customer Experience
When you outsource your email support, you enjoy reliability and consistent quality while keeping your own team free to focus on the work they do best.
Outsourced customer support teams offer flexible, efficient and scalable strategies to improve customer retention—and ultimately get more value out of your client base. Here are a few ways outsourced customer support services can ramp up your customer experience.
Shorter Response Times
Customers universally prefer swift responses and having a outsource customer support agent can dramatically improve your initial response time.
Perhaps more importantly, dedicated email support staff can reduce the time it takes to prepare comprehensive responses. Whether this means scouring your knowledge base or talking to your team’s technical experts, they can focus on getting customers the support they need. While email has no hold times, the longer periods between each message mean that each response has to be as thorough as possible to manage the overall handling time.
Effective Resolution
It’s not enough to answer promptly—you need to give the right answers. Email support staff can focus on efficient issue resolution, improving your resolution rate and increasing first contact resolution (FCR).
You can also outsource customer service work that synergizes with your email support (or support on other channels). This includes managing or refining a ticketing system, and maintaining a knowledge base or help desk.
24/7 Support Availability
Having around-the-clock customer support is a huge advantage in today’s consumer landscape and email support is one way to do that. By outsourcing your customer support, you can have people from all over the world cover different shifts to provide 24/7 support.
Consistent Messaging
Customer service can be an effective means of building customer relationships through consistent messaging. Support messages, after all, are still a means of getting into your customers’ inboxes and speaking to them with their full attention.
The vast majority of people who have a positive customer service experience with a company go on to buy again. So as long as you solve customers’ problems and maintain your brand voice throughout, you’ll leave a positive impression—and likely boost lifetime value, as well.
Costs, Scaling and Flexibility
It generally costs less to outsource customer service than recruit them in-house. Offshore staff costs significantly less per month, and even nearshore service providers let you save on equipment and benefits.
Outsourcing also gives you the freedom to scale up more quickly as the need arises. There’s less paperwork to sort through, and minimal onboarding and screening. This is especially useful if you experience periods of intense business activity, such as during the holiday rush or when launching a new product.
Get High-Growth Email Support through Magic
Through Magic, you can assemble a remote email support team to match your business’ requirements. We can find you remote staff to answer emails, set up or maintain a knowledge base, coordinate your help desk, and more.
Magic’s services are quick and flexible, so you get the skills you need when you need them. Your first recruits can start in as little as a week and you can adjust hours and team lineups to suit your circumstances.
Tell us what you need and we’ll find the right people to help your business grow. Book a call today.
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