Identify when and how to invest correctly in customer service and external support

When I started on this journey to “save” customer service from the implosion route that call centers and bots were following, I came across some absolute truths that everyone propagated without blinking: “Customer service is only good when it’s internal”, “Bot reduced 50% of my customer service and increased conversion”.

We had been going through a cycle of call center operations inflated with low-skilled labor (still poorly paid) and, as a result, a wave of advocacy that all customer service could be easily replaced by a bot with artificial intelligence. In short, either we had terrible service (hello, Judite!), or we had a robot that didn’t understand what we were asking. And in both cases, without solving anything for the customer.

Cutting through this smoke, some companies began to see the middle ground, guided by something fundamental to any service operation, whether internal or external: the ability to solve problems. Good service is service that solves problems. An excellent service is one that resolves with empathy. A great customer service is one that resolves issues with empathy, conveying the company’s culture. And with this amplified north, I went through some experiences that taught me when and how to outsource a customer service operation.

If the company wants to outsource customer service/support for the sake of cutting costs, but doesn’t want to give the outsourced company the autonomy to solve problems, this simply won’t work and we’ll continue with the same scenario. However, contrary to what many people believe, keeping customer service in-house isn’t the solution if the company isn’t willing to invest in it internally, both in time and money. This is because it involves training, patience, analysis and many operational specificities that are not normally available to internal staff.

So it’s not just about hiring a team, it’s about hiring experts who organize and operate the whole samba and answer the phone, reply to emails, chats, whats apps and the like, in a resolute, empathetic way, conveying the company’s values. You don’t usually find these skills in one person because of a cultural aversion to customer service. After all, it was (and still is) treated as a sub-job in many spheres, so much so that they changed the name to the English version of it “customer service” in an attempt to give it more value.

As such, I don’t see any obstacles to outsourcing an operation as long as the parties involved share the same values: problem-solving, empathy and appreciation of the contracting company’s culture. I’ve seen incredibly complex operations assigned to a call center, but I’ve also seen companies that didn’t want to outsource due to the need to control the service more, even though it’s made up of extremely basic requests.

I’ve already written about the need for control within companies in this article. The secret lies precisely in valuing the company’s culture, which, before the pandemic, was believed to be transmitted only if someone was part of it, wearing a badge, a T-shirt and “sharing the fruit in the pantry”. It is now understood that culture is valued when working conditions are good, when there is a sense of humor and when (moral) values are similar. Point.

There is no cake recipe. Scaling a service involves hiring more people and improving the technology behind the processes – yes, sometimes even a bot (no, I don’t think it’s the devil’s business, but I do think it needs to be used wisely, a topic for another article).

The team can be either internal or external, it’s up to the company’s culture to understand how capable it is of assembling this team in an operationally intelligent way and how much it is willing to invest in it.

Often, there are already qualified centers with a whole up-to-date team ready to resolve the situation (pulling a mackerel on Scooto, since we’re very good at it). There are many call centers and a lot of technology being developed for all tastes, for complex care, for more basic care and, along with this, the logic of the whole sector is changing (especially now in the pandemic).

Sometimes it’s more expensive to outsource, sometimes it’s cheaper. I’d like to give you a definitive answer, but it all depends on the complexity of your operation. If you want to talk about it, just call me or click on the button: