As global economies continue to benefit from the eCommerce boosts resulting from the pandemic, your global eCommerce seller enhancing its customer engagement in a way that resonates with global customers is vital, creating long-lasting brand-customer relationships to augment your long-term brand loyalty/sales market dominance & legacy. With growing opportunities to increment product/service sales via social networking and eCommerce platforms & websites, the demand for products/services via eCommerce has been substantially-growing. This is why it’s highly-important for go-global businesses to consider the best practices we’ll talk about when it comes to eCommerce outsourcing.
According to a 3rd party:
“e-Commerce is ‘merging into normal commerce;’ the percentage of weekly internet sales compared to retail sales for niche product categories (like consumer electronics [US$ 988.4 billion dollars] and fashion [US$ 904.5 billion dollars] – amongst others) are becoming extremely-significant, having reached a 58.4% average (2022 – only the U.S.). This is expected to increase by 50%+ over the next 4 years.”
With e-Commerce products/service purchase demands growing, meeting high customer expectations while ensuring consumers close out/enjoy purchases – while ensuring a superb CX that influences their long-term loyalty/brand ambassadorship – is highly-crucial. Customer loyalty alone, according to Callnovo Contact Center’s article on the best CS practices to build customer loyalty, offers vital advantages that improve overall global sales success – such as:
- share-of-wallet augmentation,
- brand ambassadorship, and
- more formidable trust.
To capitalize on high brand loyalty advantages and ensure you build the strong, global brand growth & sales success needed to dominate your niche sales markets and strive for a long-lasting brand legacy, it’s highly-important to consider eCommerce outsourcing/eCommerce customer service outsourcing benefits and key best practices; in this article, let’s touch on:
- eCommerce CS support outsourcing advantages,
- eCommerce outsourcing/eCommerce customer service outsourcing best practices, and
- how Callnovo’s customer-centric, multilingual & omnichannel call center/contact center outsourcing solutions help take eCommerce Sellers’ brand( success to the next level.
eCommerce Outsourcing/eCommerce Customer Service Outsourcing
eCommerce Outsourcing Advantages
If your e-Commerce company is looking to increase its customer loyalty & brand reputation – and its global brand reach – eCommerce outsourcing is viable. According to Callnovo’s guide to contact center outsourcing:
“BPO is grandly-necessary – as, by outsourcing business functions, you’ll efficiently/effectively maximize on international sales opportunities while minimizing operational overhead, improving efficiency/effectivity of administration, operations, and your departments’ functions, reducing operations/resource costs/adding value to your brand.“
While Callnovo shares from a general perspective, BPO outsourcing advantages highly-translate to the e-Commerce industry. Let’s go over eCommerce outsourcing/eCommerce customer service outsourcing benefits:
- Cost Savings: Your eSeller can reduce the necessity of investing into an in-house CS department – which’d involve training, salary, and benefits costs; to save, you can choose contact centers’ fixed monthly fees which allow CS support at a lower price. Furthermore, you can scale down in-house fees to match an appropriate budget that works for you.
- Core Business Functions in Focus: You can prioritize core functions to manage your reputation effectively; by having outsourced vendors handle your operations, you can focus on developing effective strategies to improve your brand & minimize and/or mitigate threats to your reputation.
- Skilled Professionals at your Fingertips: 3rd-party contact centers train & certify CSRs to deliver quality CS for any eCommerce business need; they prepare CSRs to provide 24/7/365 support that builds/maintains positive customer reviews for your provided products/services.
- Efficiency Incrementation: An outsourced call center’s operations policies/procedures will match your business needs/goals; you can expect top-tier e-Commerce CS. Furthermore, call centers secure enhanced efficiency & quick time-to-market when you launch new products/service offerings.
eCommerce Customer Service Outsourcing Best Practices
Now that we’ve gone over key eCommerce outsourcing/eCommerce customer service outsourcing advantages, let’s visit 8 eCommerce CS outsourcing best practices that’ll help you take advantage of those benefits – and ensure customer-centric service that guarantees quality customer engagement and leads to fantastic CX, ensuring great, long-term brand loyalty that brings long-term, global market success.
Clearly-communicate Outsourcing Goals
Knowing/communicating your goals is a great success builder; this should include everything from cost savings to improved CS. Once you know what’s wanted, you’ll find the right provider easily.
There’re many outsourcing service options to consider; here’s a few:
- customer service & support,
- back office processing,
- accounting & finance,
- data entry,
- web design/hosting, and
- legal services.
Once you’ve defined your goals, outline your expectations in terms of your provider. For example:
- Are you looking to outsource part of an existing project – or all of it?
- What level of involvement do you expect in terms of functional responsibility/decision-making authority?
Be clear on what you require/expect from your outsourcing relationship to avoid hiccups later on.
Consider Hidden Costs
Before signing an outsourced call center service agreement, ask what hidden costs are associated (if any); some providers may charge extraneous fees for additional services, software upgrades, or technical support. Ensure you’re being billed by the hour – if not, there could be unexpected charges. If certain services aren’t needed, ensure they’re not priced. What this entails more than anything is that you understand the billing model – as being clear on what’s expected and how much it’ll cost mitigates misunderstandings further on.
Don’t Take KPIs for Granted
KPIs are important as they track/measure your outsourcing relationship’s success. Be very specific when evaluating KPIs; for example, you might want your outsourcing partner to decrease order processing time by 20% – or increase first-call resolution for inbound service calls.
The tasks you plan on outsourcing determine which KPIs should be tracked; here’s general KPIs often-used when outsourcing:
- project budget & spending,
- service quality,
- service delivery efficiency, and
- service level agreements (SLAs) being met or not met.
Take time to identify which KPIs are relevant before outsourcing to accurately-track your project’s success.
Communicate on Ownership Early
When beginning a business outsourcing partnership, discussing who owns what is vital; you should agree on ownership before moving forward – otherwise, you risk one party taking all the credit for success.
Here’s some ways to deal with that:
- Work-for-hire: The outsourcer is considered an employee of the company and all completed workloads are the hiring company’s property.
- Assignment of intellectual property (IP): The outsourcer assigns to the hiring company all created rights to the IP.
- Retained rights: Your outsourcer agrees to refrain from using completed workloads for any purpose outside the signed agreement – meaning, if they want to conjure a separate agreement, they’d need your approval first.
Detail a Data & Privacy Policy
Write up a data & privacy policy that outlines all ways personal data between both parties will be handled; the policy should also address privacy concerns – such as, whether personal info. will be shared with 3rd-party vendors. This’ll protect your outsourced employees’ privacy. Policies don’t have to be complex either; in fact, they can be simple as long as they cover all necessary bases.
Know your Provider’s Capacity
Before entering into an outsourcing provider agreement, do your best to understand their capacity. You can ask:
- What’s their normal workload?
- How many projects do they work on concurrently?
- What’s the size of their team?
If you’ve a big project needing completion in a short time period, ensure the contact center can handle the workload – as, you don’t want to have them tell you they’re too busy to take on a heavier workload after the project’s launch. On the other hand, if you’re outsourcing a non-time-sensitive type of project, you can be flexible with your provider’s capacity; just ensure to discuss this upfront to evade surprises down the road.
Don’t Be Blinded by Costs
Don’t be overly-concerned with costs; though it’s tempting to opt for the cheapest options, costs aren’t the only factor influencing your vendor choice; consider the other factors – like outsourcing experience, service quality, and reputation. It may be worth paying more for a better-quality outsourced center.
Here’re key considerable qualities:
- Quality – including meeting deadlines, ensuring accuracy, and providing a top-tier, finished product,
- Experience – asking:
- how long has the provider been in business, and
- do they have specific experience in your industry/niche?
- Reputation – asking:
- what do others say about the provider, and
- are they satisfied with the provider’s service?
Choose the Right Outsourced Center
Here’s additional factors to consider when choosing a partner:
- the type of work needing completed,
- outsourcing business’ size,
- experience level(s),
- type of services offered,
- geographical locations, and
- languages offered.
In some cases, using an outsourcing broker to find the right provider is helpful; they’ve experience working with a variety of outsourcing companies and can correctly-match you with the right one to meet your business needs.
Callnovo’s Customer-centric Solutions for Brand Loyalty Growth
Callnovo Contact Center enhances teams with excellent, customer-centric outsourcing solutions that ensure strong, global, long-term brand loyalty growth in accordance with the above-mentioned e-Commerce customer service outsourcing practices.
Some key advantages are:
- High-quality Expertise – quality service personnel skilled in areas as:
- customer-centric enthusiasm/service attitude,
- strong communication & soft-skills,
- intuitive logical thinking skills,
- complex product/service knowledge/skills, and
- acute management/operations skills.
- Always-available Service – maximizing customer satisfaction/CX by continually meeting customers’ needs without limit.
- Omnichannel Support – accessible, rapid contact solutions through all comm. channels – guaranteeing always-ready support, leading to enhanced CX, influencing long-term customer brand ambassadorship/customer loyalty.
- Native Language Support – meeting customers’ needs efficiently, conforming to cultural expectations, improving customer loyalty.
Conclusion
To ensure you take advantage of the before-mentioned e-Commerce outsourcing customer loyalty benefits and successfully put in place mentioned e-Commerce outsourcing best practices, it’s highly important to consider how outsourced contact centers with the right eCommerce service experience, stellar service quality, and a strong brand reputation can help. To support you, Callnovo offers a customer-centric multilingual, omnichannel outsourcing solution to meet high eCommerce customer expectations, improving your brand’s customer loyalty, leading to global sales success.