Customer Service Outsourcing Has Changed Drastically

1. Customer Service Outsourcing Has Changed Drastically OUTSOURCING, what does the term mean? A giant building in a foreign land with executives who are adorned with headphones to work for probably 11 or 12 hours! This huge building is fondly referred to as, CALL CENTER. Businesses tie up with these centers to provide their customer the boon of friendly and affordable customer service. While this is a usual scenario everyone is aware about; there’s a new model of customer service in the making where customers are themselves outsourcing their customer service bugs to the third parties. Reaching out to the companies regarding a complaint or issue is an intimidating task. Navigating through the complicated phone menus, waiting on hold and explaining the problem to the representatives again & again is seriously time taking.

2. Understanding the level of pain these steps cause, certain companies have come forward and developed mobile applications to look after service matters on behalf of the customers’. They give people the chance to outsource their complaints and issues to third-party services who aim to fix customer service issues. If seen from customer’s end; nothing could be perfect than this. There’s a personal caretaker who looks after and attacks the offending company until the problem is solved or refund is made. This outsourced customer complaint paradigm has pushed companies as well as call center leaders to prepare themselves in every way. No doubt this is wonderful for the customers as far as convenience and speed is there; things have turned complex for the call centers in terms of identifying how to move forward. The Rise of On-Demand Economy Increase in the outsourced customer complaints is the result of an increase in on-demand economy. From availing a taxi service to getting an order delivered at the doorstep, customers can get any service they want. With on-demand economy making its way into every aspect of users’ daily lives, customer service needs to be on point. A lot has changed in the customer service sector owing to this rising on-demand economy. Companies are using technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to make their contact centers effectual. However, even these revolutionary technologies believe that a user approaches with genuine query or issue. The thing that’s changing now is that customers can easily outsource their problems to the third party. For instance, if refund for a delayed fight has to be asked, a customer can simply call the third party and have them contact the actual company on their behalf. This way, they get the service without putting any of their everyday tasks on hold. Now this definitely leads to adverse consequences for the contact center. Apps are Ruling

3. As apps and services are making noise, outsourced customer complaints are not something to expect in the future. What’s needed to be done is that contact centers should frame strategies accordingly. Let’s talk about AirHelp to clear things clearly. This app plugs in the email inbox and scans all the flights a customer has taken in the last three years. This is followed by running a database to see if any of the flights were canceled or delayed to check if there are any refunds the customer is entitled to. If something like this is found, AirHelp contacts the airline and asks them to refund the money to the customer. Also, it keeps a certain percentage of the funds as its fee. Similar to this amazing app, there is another one known as ‘Service.’ It has two signature products of its own among which one tells a traveler if their flight is delayed and assists them in getting compensation. The other product is developed to check a customer’s hotel bookings to monitor any drop in price to finalize the lowest price. Such apps are loved by the audience. They are depending on these applications to simplify their lives. Moreover, these apps do require contact centers to prepare themselves to expect boost in outsourced customer service interactions. Spike in Volume The easier & quicker for the customers to assign their issues to a third party, the more issues call centers will get. Now these service teams will handle complaints from the third-party representatives. The interaction here is different in nature as compared to the interaction with a regular customer. Outsourced services provided now are highly professional, efficient and equipped with every detail that is needed to provide proficient results for the end customer. It’s important to know that some of the outsourced services can even invoke legal action, if issues of the customers are not fixed aptly. To cater to the needs as expected, contact centers require data infrastructure and technology to deal with rising volume of interactions in a timely manner.

4. Tackling the increase in outsourced customer complaints is easy by implementing an AI solution that works with human executives. Customer service professionals working in AI-reinforced contact centers are quite responsible and outstanding in serving their role. As a number of ordinary tasks are possible to solve with machine learning, agents get more time for real interactions that are raised by third party customer complaint services. With third-party services expanding in terms of popularity, customer service leaders have no other option than getting ahead of the trend. They must update their agent training programs and also spend in AI tools, as this is the only way to solve the issues in a positive way no matter who is behind the complaint. This content is originally published on website plaxonic.com on 27th September,2018. Read more: https://www.plaxonic.com/blog/change-in-outsource-customer-service