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Virtual Assistance
As a business owner, you know how valuable customers are to the success of your business. But often times, customer service usually has little to no budget at all. When it comes to allocating funds, it’s usually the last one on the list to consider. Businesses today spend so much on marketing and advertising just to get brand exposure and get new customers in. Don’t get me wrong, we all know marketing plays a big role for your business—but so does customer service.
Customers are the lifeline of any business and customer service is what encourages existing ones to keep coming back. After all, no one wants a business that only caters to first-time customers. When you treat your customers right, it solidifies your brand reputation and sends a positive message to your prospects and future clients. It also gives you the edge and allows you to stand out from the competition. If you’re still having second thoughts about the value of customer service for your business, just keep in mind that acquiring a new customer is six times more costly than retaining current ones!
However, let’s face it; hiring someone to handle customer service operations is far too expensive and simply impractical for some. Production, operations, sales and marketing—these are just a few of the things you have to oversee when managing a business. Most of the time, the reason why companies put customer service on the back burner is because the responsibility of running a business is already overwhelming to begin with. This is why in recent years businesses have considered outsourcing. In fact, more than 50% of companies today make use of third-party assistance to maximize business efficiency.
What is outsourcing?
Outsourcing is basically hiring other people from a third-party source to carry out business functions on your behalf. Outsourcing is a strategic move for businesses of any size not only for its benefits of reducing cost and maximizing productivity, but it also allows them to focus their efforts on their strengths and more important business matters.
Outsourcing can help your business in myriad ways. This includes digital marketing, data entry, collections, content management—almost every aspect of a business can be outsourced. But in this article, we’ll be focusing more outsourcing customer service and how to do it effectively.
Delegating simpler (but important) tasks to external support teams is a reasonable and definitely the more practical choice. When it comes to customer service, you can start by delegating basic tasks like reaching out to clients, keeping up with customer demands, and providing assistance to their needs. Not to mention, outsourcing tasks like these saves you a great deal of time, stress, and overhead costs.
Although it may sound appealing, outsourcing your customer service department to a third-party source isn’t exactly easy. And with all the options available today, choosing the right one for your business can be tricky. This is where a virtual assistant comes in.
Outsourcing customer service through virtual assistants
Why virtual assistance is the perfect solution for your business
We’ve mentioned earlier that one of the reasons why customer service often is overlooked by most business is because the task in itself is a repetitive routine and matters that are more urgent need attending. But truth is, there will always be urgent matters, and if customers are not properly taken care of, chances are, you’ll lose them. We’ve heard too many stories of clients refusing to come back to a business because of how they were treated. Even the most simple and basic task like responding to emails or answering phone calls adds up. Customer service plays a crucial role in your business and virtual assistance just might be the answer to your problem. Here’s why:
Minimum Supervision
A virtual assistant (VA) is someone you can hire to help you take on basic day-to-day functions. The best thing about VAs is that they are resourceful and can operate anywhere in the world, can carry out tasks, and perform routines with minimum supervision. If you feel like you could do more important things with your time rather than personally handling customer service tasks, you should consider hiring a VA. As long as you’re familiar enough to teach the process to someone else, discuss certain guidelines beforehand, and distinguish good work—you’re good to go.
Reduce Operational Cost
Outsourcing external support lowers overall operational costs. Full-time employees have fixed salaries, and expenses like overtime pay, transportation costs, healthcare, and other benefits. With virtual assistants, you can get the quality work done from a customer service staff without the additional expenses of hiring someone full-time.
Organize Repetitive Tasks
Most businesses today are now online. This opens up your venture to different types of customers. Although diverse, chances are most of them will have similar questions and queries, and are most likely to run into the same problems. Having an external customer support to streamline repetitive tasks such as this allows you and your team to focus on other projects instead of having to answer the same issues repeatedly.
Bottom line
The more time you spend doing trivial tasks, the lesser time you have left for to work on areas that actually require your skills and expertise, the stuff that drives your business forward. Turning over basic yet time-consuming tasks and functions to someone else will allow you to focus on what really matters.
Customers are the lifeline of your business. Without them, there will be no transactions to begin with, so it’s only natural you find someone you can trust to handle this crucial area competently. Outsourcing external support for your customer service is the most effective and practical move your business can do to maximize overall efficiency without affecting productivity. Not to mention it keeps customers happy while giving you the time and freedom to focus on urgent business matters.
