Description
Like any decision in life and business, there is bad that has to be swallowed with the good when outsourcing your technical support services to a third-party vendor. Although it would be possible to highlight a number of potential concerns, there are only two major concerns that your company should have when considering entrusting your technical support to an outside vendor. First and foremost, you’ll have to accept a loss of quality control over your company’s technical support service. When you entrust your business’s technical support services to an outside vendor, you are entrusting them with the responsibility of hiring experienced individuals and properly training those tech support specialists. This means that you have given up control over what employees will do to ensure your customers are getting the very best in service. Will they go the extra mile to solve problems? Will they provide correct, accurate solutions for your customers? Additionally, outsourcing your technical support puts a degree of distance between your business and the clients and customers that drive your business.
The first benefit that will come to mind for the fiscally conservative is cost reduction. Let’s set aside for a moment the cost of maintaining telephonic systems and paying for VOIP services, outsourcing your technical support to a third-party specialist transfers the cost burden associated with hiring and training tech support specialists, setting up resources, and maintain systems to the outside specialist. Outsourcing your technical support reduces the people cost your business faces, while also providing the peace of mind that knowledgeable, highly-trained associates will be assist your clientele when issues arise. Next we come to flexibility. As your business grows you need your systems and infrastructure to keep pace so that customers don’t pay the price for hiccups in service or coverage. If you keep your technical support service in-house there are two potential problems involved when it comes to scalability. If your business experiences rapid growth, you might struggle to find quality team members to work in your technical support group and clients will suffer through longer waits.
Q: Can your agents use our in-house systems for outsourced help desk, live chat or phone support? A: We believe in complete transparency — our staff will interact with your customers directly through your help desk system. If you subscribe to our Live Chat service, we’ll provide you with code to place on your website. For our Phone Support offering, you can forward calls to our team via SIP or route them to a local phone number we provide during the setup process.
Customers are going to call in with all manner of issues, and while some of those may be expected issues your company is aware, there are always going to be issues that arise for which there is no protocol for solving. Now isn’t the time to get flustered or allow yourself to appear caught off guard. When you are dealing with a unique situation where “no” seems like the only possible answer, dig deeper and look for the solution to their problem. Ask them questions about the specific problem they are experiencing and get as much detail as you can. Not only will this help you identify the exact source of frustration for your customer, but it will show the customer that you are genuinely interested in their problem and actively trying to find a solution that will make them happy. It’s easy when faced with adversity in the customer service world to become negative and shoot down customer after customer with a cold, flat out “no.” However, doing so is just going to create more problems in the future. Customers are going to ask you for things you simply cannot or should not do at times.
VMware Touch Support is a VMware Professional Service Provider specializing in providing solutions, applications and services that will increase your bottom line through the implementation of cloud computing services.