It’s no secret that very few companies today have made progress in terms of offering after-hours customer support, and for good reason. This is especially true for small to medium-sized businesses (SMB’s).
Internally, the costs are prohibitive, and the operational complexities are extreme. Consider what it takes to staff an additional 6+ people to cover your low service volume, after-hours shifts? Good luck getting executive buy-in here.
Externally, traditional vendors ARE SIMPLY NOT optimized for after-hours shifts with low service volumes. These round-peg, square-hole solutions are expensive, typically don’t integrate well with your daytime operations and over time lead to poor service quality.
However, the great news is that there are finally specialized vendors that offer highly optimized, after hours only customer support solutions that are affordable, offer high service quality play nice with your daytime operations. In other words, after-hours support solutions are ideal for SMB’s.
The bottom line: It’s time to completely re-think your company’s after-hours customer support strategy to take advantage of these new solution opportunities.
Today it is possible for companies to selectively outsource their after hours customer support operations for a fraction of their support budget (5-15%), while increasing customer facing, quality agent based support coverage by 70% (nights, weekends and holidays).
“Companies should run toward these specialty after-hours customer support solutions as fast as they can. Literally, one of the biggest no-brainers in business today. Game Changer” – Ken Mcloughlin, founder of 3rdshiftdesk.com
Top Company Benefits of Outsourcing After-Hours Customer Support with an Optimized solution:
1) Optimized Cost vs. Performance: Impress your customers with increased coverage and enterprise support capabilities after-hours for a small percentage of your current budget.
2) Eliminate Lousy Workarounds: After-hours workarounds such as “on-call” agents, answering services, voicemails, poorly executed self-help and FAQ’s often fail to meet customer’s needs and prove to be non-sustainable. Today’s savvy customers have little patience when things go wrong and only a qualified solution will do.
3) Establish Peace of Mind: No longer fear the unknown when you and your primary service teams are offline. Enjoy peace of mind while knowing that you have a professional solution in place to manage critical issues at their flashpoint…nights, weekends and holidays.
4) Brand Strength: Differentiate your brand from your competitors and the market itself by prioritizing around-the-clock support coverage for your valuable customers. Trust us, they will notice.
5) Stronger “Customer Centric” Culture: Jump start your strategic customer-care roadmap by offering 24/7 support as a key component of your overall “Customer Experience”.
6) Net Promoter Score Outcomes: “Improved customer experiences have become today’s true marketing engine” – Accenture. Build customer loyalty and retention by meeting customers on their terms and when it is convenient for them. Convert your customers into raving fans when things go wrong after-hours.
7) Many Use Cases: After hours support can open the door to many use cases such as: bundled support to enhance sales efforts, support subscriptions for hotline support, internal customers, external customers, VIPs, contractual SLA’s, and international customer support.
8) Partner with the Right Vendor: In addition to offering after-hours support solutions, the right vendor will also bring enterprise capabilities, expertise, and best practices to potentially enhance all of your support operations. Build a trusted relationship today, and leverage it across the board.
Top Customer Benefits of Outsourcing After-Hours Customer Support with an Optimized Solution:
1) Meeting Customers On Their Terms: Today’s customers demand support when it is right for them. In fact, 24/7 support is quickly becoming the expectation of most consumers. Companies that fail to deliver 24/7 support are now working against themselves by failing to meet their customer’s needs.
2) Validate Brand Affinity: As a consumer, doesn’t it feel good when you have made a product or service decision that is validated over time? Build brand affinity and help your customers love you by offering 24/7 support. Convert product or service problems into great experiences around the clock.
3) Build Customer-base communities: High allegiance customers form deputized communities over time. Statistically, these customer groups subscribe longer, buy more upgrades, and share their experiences with their peers more often (the converse is true too). Offering support 24/7 is a crucial step towards building loyal and enthusiastic customer communities.
If you don’t take anything else away from this, remember that…
For most businesses, finding the right speciality after-hours only support partner is transformational. Meeting customers on their terms, around the clock has become a fundamental requirement for success.
Such speciality vendors offer seamless, enterprise-grade support solutions for after-hours customer care, that feature best practices, are cost-effective, and are easy to bring online.
Given typical low after-hours service volumes, the right after-hours solution will only consume a fraction of your support budget while increasing quality customer-facing, human-based support coverage by 70%.
The game has indeed changed. It’s time to rethink your support strategy for 24/7 operations or fail to do so at your own peril. I suggest you start running.
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 a meaningful conversation at kenmcl@3rdshiftdek.com