How to Choose a Specialty After Hours Customer Support Vendor

At this point, most companies have realized that after-hours customer support is necessary to remain competitive and meet the expectations of their valued customers. After all, the game is to “get” customers and “keep” customers. Sounds simple, right? 

 

It can be, unless you are a small-medium size business (SMB) with low after-hours service volumes.  

 

Historically, SMB’s have had few (if any) feasible options for offering after hours support to their valuable customers. It seems like an impossible problem. Traditional solutions are cost prohibitive, while affordable workarounds such as answering services or offshoring quickly fall apart. It seems like the only affordable option has been to not offer after-hours support and accept a lower standard of service for customers that call outside of business hours. It’s been a real problem, until now.

 

The great news is that the market for customer service solutions is changing. Today, it is possible for SMB’s to find specialty vendors that are uniquely optimized for low service volume, after-hours support shifts. 

 

The best of these solutions are designed to integrate with your daytime operations for a seamless, branded customer experience and are available on an affordable, “pay for what you need basis”.

 

 

The availability of these optimized, after hours only support solutions is now an obvious, almost automatic choice for SMB’s that prioritize their customers’ experience. All that remains is to choose the right vendor for your SMB to get started. 

 

Things to Consider When Selecting a Specialty After Hours Support Vendor:

 

“Get Started” Perspective: It is important to not overthink your initial after-hour support requirements. Trying to transition all of your daytime functionality to get started will likely push these specialty solutions beyond their intended limits.  There is definitely a sweet spot here that blows away not offering after hours support at all.  

 

We strongly suggest thinking in terms of a “get started” mode to keep things simple, while achieving the majority of benefits. Then, things can evolve forward at a natural pace and as needed via effective change management.

 

Primary Vendor Roles and Functions for After Hours Service:

 

Contextual Triage: Any vendor worth considering should feature both professional customer rapport and a highly effective triage function to accurately determine credentials, issue identification, urgency, priority, proper routing, and any other contextual information required to create actionable tickets that can be resolved without additional user inputs.

 

Basic Tier 1 Troubleshooting:  We suggest limiting the initial Tier 1 scope to the “Top 5” issues with expected first contact resolution rates of above 90%. For many companies, the top 5 issues represent the majority of their Tier 1 traffic.

 

Escalation Management: Every ticket escalated correctly through “handoff” should be the objective given policy, priority, urgency, and workflows based on customer defined criteria. All tickets that are not resolved at Tier 1 need to be escalated with full confidence >100% of the time. 

 

Additional Considerations: Things like service level performance (x% of contacts answered in Y seconds with an average-speed-to-answer (ASA) of Z seconds), quality of service measurements like NPS scores, White label branded services (fielding contacts on behalf of your company and not the vendor) and defined scope of Tier 1 are sample issues that you should look for. Also, is this a traditional vendor trying to “shoe-horn” solution or a company that is truly specialized?  What does your gut tell you? 

 

What to look for in a Vendor’s Service Model:

 

Creating an after hours only solution for SMB’s is a true art. It requires an experienced vendor, leading capabilities and an exclusive focus on low volume service delivery. 

 

 

People: The vendor should feature professional, US-based agents working in a “Shared Desk” environment.  This implies that agents receive contacts from multiple companies and are not dedicated exclusively to your company. This is a key requirement for both affordability and service quality in low volume environments. 

 

Process, Knowledge and Workflow Engineering: A vendor’s process engineering is the difference between a poor solution and a great solution. A vendor must be able to warehouse and maintain all contextual knowledge to manage each ticket correctly, each time. This is where secret sauce gets made in the after hours support business. 

 

Systems and Technologies: Vendor should be using enterprise grade, cloud based systems that “play nice” via commercial connectors and must have qualified expertise to unify service models into a singular service platform for virtual team performance between organizations. This is a key requirement for a seamless customer experience around-the-clock.

 

Data and Analytics: The vendor should be a strongly advocate for data-driven operations, including the ability to aggregate all data for complete, real-time analytics. Data sets should include productivity, service level, and QA analytics to identify manage all areas of opportunity. 

 

Partnership: In addition to service delivery, vendor should bring friendly business terms, expertise, best practices, change management and project management for easy onboarding and management. Vendor’s vision should be aligned with yours and they should be likeable. 

 

 

Suggested After Hours Service Model Outcomes

 

•       Seamless integration with your current, daytime operations

•       Improved customer experience

•       Strategic peace of mind

•       Affordable, pay for what you need pricing

•       Significant ROI’s at a fraction of “traditional” costs

•       Service Partner alliance for roadmap success

 

In conclusion…

 

The customer support game has indeed changed.  SMB companies that previously lacked the ability to offer 24/7 support operations can now compete with the big firms for customer loyalty and retention without breaking the bank. Selective outsourcing with the right specialty vendor will upgrade your support game considerably almost overnight (pun intended). Are you ready to leap forward? 

 

 

This blog post was written by Ken Mcloughlin, founder of 3rdshiftdesk.com, an after-hours support specialty company.  Ken brings 30+ years of direct experience leading national outsourced service desk organizations  Ken can be reached for an meaningful conversation at kenmcl@3rdshiftdek.com