After-Hours Customer Support can play a significant role in managing and caring for the most important element of any business – The Customers.
Typically, with the end of business-hours operations, all contact with the company becomes unavailable for customers until the next day. By definition, that means that a business-hours-only support function is literally closed 70% of the time. Given today’s internet and social media savvy customers, this is a really long wait to be able to speak to someone for solving a problem or managing an issue.
Depending on the business, there can be countless situations when customers might need help at odd hours. Consider a scenario where a working person needs help with something and they are not able to call while they are at work. In this simle case, access to after hours support is not merely a convenience, but a requirement. Clearly, this type of customer will move toward a brand that prioritizes their experience by provided after-hours customer support. Can you think of the many other reasons someone may want to contact your support operations after standard business hours?
1. Staying Competitive
Enterprises have long known that better customer service gives them a competitive edge and will boost them ahead in the race to reach the top. To achieve this, large companies often establish an internal call center team to handle their customer support requests around the clock.
But what about smaller companies, ie> Small to medium (SMB) sized businesses? Historically, these companies have found that after-hours support operations are very complex to implement and are usually cost prohibitive, especially given the common low service volume after hours shifts. Often, the only feasible options are sub-par, which is why so few SMB’s ultimately provide a 24/7 support experience to their valuable customers.
But thankfully, new outsourcing options now exist for after-hours customer support that allows companies to deliver seamless, quality support with very reasonable budgets that have been specifically optimized for low-volume after, hours shifts. Yes, SMB’s can now deploy many of the same customer retention and loyalty building support operations that enterprise companies have been enjoying for years. Furthermore, these outsourced after-hours support solutions often lead to other benefits such as reduced costs, internal talent retention, improved NPS scores and lead to an overall improved, customer-centric culture for your company.
It’s time to revisit your company’s strategies for business competitiveness via improved customer care.
2. Reducing Costs
While there are costs associated with after-hours customer support, quality care can be very affordable and reduce other costs given low volume, after hours shifts.
Rather than paying someone by the hour to sit around and wait for your phone to ring, it’s always cheaper to pay a qualified service with appropriately skilled staff to keep an eye out for intermittent volume. Unanswered calls are missed opportunities, and often end up costing businesses more than they realize.
Missing phone calls or having limited support hours is a fast way to provide a poor customer service experience, and poor customer service costs businesses a whopping $75 billion a year! (Gartner)
If you can’t afford to let current and future sales slip away, an outsourced after-hours support solution ensures that callers have a live agent to speak with it is convenient for them. With fewer interactions slipping through the cracks, your business will be able to make good experiences around the clock and ultimately increase its revenue.
It’s time to explore your after hours support options here in an ROI context.
Take Away
Providing 24/7 service to your customers is a very important capability that most SMB businesses can now take advantage of in the current service-centric market. The question is often less “Can you afford an after hours access” and more “Can you afford NOT to have after hours access”? Todays new options make the case very quickly.