When you’re looking for a quality outsourcing partner, you need to find someone that can represent your brand with excellence. It’s not just finding the best price or the first name that populates in a search bar, but finding someone who meets your specific needs.

Here are nine things to look for:

1. Flexibility. A great outsourcing partner will be someone who flexes to fit your needs, instead of just providing a one-size-fits-all approach.

2. Scalability. What you need now might not be the same as what you need in the future. Partnering with an outsourcing company that can grow with you will set you up for the most success.

3. Experience. Find a company that’s been in business for a while and has the experience to show for it.

4. Brand alignment. Look for a partner that can align with your brand, represent your brand, and essentially be an organic extension of your business.

5. Knowledge development. A company you partner with should take time to help agents understand client-specific content. They should both educate and enrich the agents to the who, where, what, how, and why of the client’s organization and its business processes. This is what helps the agent truly represent the business with excellence.

6. Training. The outsourcing partner should provide training. This should be hands-on, interactive, and paced correctly for the individual agent. It should also include soft skills training to ensure excellent customer service.

7. Quality assurance. You want to ensure that your customers are getting the best service possible. The company you choose should have a way of maintaining quality standards, ensuring adherence to compliance (PIC, HIPAA), and finding ways to further improve the customer experience (CX).

8. Resource management. An outsourcing partner should have a department that handles “traffic control.” It’s a way to help ensure that live contacts are being answered, agents are adhering to their schedules, and agents can receive assistance when needed. (At XACT, our resource management team can also manage callouts, assist in coverage replacement, and ensure that all agents have the adequate coverage they need.)

9. Professional and friendly. Pay attention to how the outsourcing partner treats you during your interactions. You want a company that is professional and friendly. The way they treat you can be a representation of how they treat their team and how their agents will treat your customers.

When you’re on the search for an outsourcing partner to provide customer contact solutions, find a partner that will meet your needs and grow with you. At XACT, you’ll find that we meet all of these points (and more), so visit our website today.

Misunderstandings can be common in professional or personal settings. It’s all too easy to have conversations and both parties walk away with a different understanding. Of course, this isn’t ideal for any relationship. It can lead to arguments, but it can also lead to lost business when dealing with customers. So, how do you improve the clarity within these conversations?

Get to the point. Try to keep yourself from going off on tangents. Stick to what message you want to deliver. Provide enough information that the customer will understand without providing so much that the customer loses track of the point.

Use common language. Avoid jargon. Stick to more simplistic language, instead. You don’t know your customers’ background or level of understanding, so it’s essential to speak in a way that most people understand.

Don’t make assumptions. Help avoid misunderstandings by gaining clarity yourself. Reiterate what you hear your customer asking for to ensure that you meet their needs.

Use bullet points when emailing. Customers are more likely to look for the message’s key points rather than read through the whole thing (especially if it’s a long email). So, to help prevent them from missing important details, use bullet points. This can help them find the essential topics in a flash.

Ask your customer if they have questions. Don’t assume your customer completely understands your message. When you’re done speaking, ask them if they have any questions.

Clarify your message. When the conversation is ending, take a minute to summarize what transpired during the conversation to ensure that there aren’t any misunderstandings before you close.

Include resources in written conversations. Send them over if you feel that specific resources would help provide better clarity to the customer. But, don’t add attachments without explaining what the attachment is and why you’re adding it.

Ask an open-ended follow-up. Before ending the conversation, ask customers or professionals if you can help them with anything else or if they have any other questions. If you may have misunderstood something or the customer didn’t tell you everything the first time, it’s good to ask this question before ending the conversation. It can help ensure that they leave satisfied.

Misunderstandings happen for several reasons. For example, sometimes, a person doesn’t understand what a word means. Other times they make assumptions, etc. That’s why it’s essential that you know what your customer is saying and that you also provide clarity in everything you say.

It’s easy to see how customer service can affect customer retention. Businesses tend to build customer loyalty with great products/services and excellent customer support. Consumers want to buy from a company that they can trust to deliver excellence in what they offer, whether that’s what they’re selling or how they’re answering questions and providing solutions. But, how does customer support also impact acquisition? We’re going to talk about four of the main ways in this blog. Keep reading.

Positive reviews build creditability

When you offer excellence to your customers, they’re going to be more inclined to praise your business for it. This will allow you to get more positive reviews online. It also helps you reduce the negative reviews. And even if you do get an occasional negative review, if you have great customer service, they’ll know how to respond to those reviews so that you might be able to resolve the issue while also making the business look better online.

When a prospective customer is considering buying from your business, they will often look at the reviews you have. This can be a determining factor in whether or not they want to purchase from you.

Availability reduces abandoned shopping carts

Abandoned shopping carts can be a problem for many companies. One of the reasons that carts can get abandoned is because customers have questions about a product, shipping service, the return policy or something else; however, they can’t easily find answers. If a prospective customer is able to quickly find answers either through a FAQ page on the website or by reaching out to you, it can reduce abandoned shopping carts and help a business acquire new customers. A great way to offer this type of fast and convenient service is through web chat support.

Word-of-mouth advertising creates more sales

Customers who love your product or service and the support you offer will be more likely to refer their friends and family to you. They may talk about it on their socials, text their loved ones or just mention your business in conversation. And it’s all free advertising!

A better reputation builds loyalty

When you offer excellent support, your business builds a better reputation. A business with a better reputation has a higher trust rating and becomes more well known. Prospective customers will be more inclined to take their business to you.

You can easily see how offering great customer support can impact how easy it is for you to acquire new customers. It allows you to build yourself better reviews online, reduce abandoned carts, get free advertising and build a better reputation overall.

If you’d like assistance with your customer support offerings, please reach out to us at XACT. We provide customized solutions to meet your needs.

We all know that texting has become a staple of communication. In fact, in 2020, there were 2.2 trillion texts sent, according to Statista. This number included short message service (SMS) and multimedia messaging service (MMS).

Overall, the younger generations prefer communicating with others through social media or texting. People will even text and ask if they can call before actually dialing out because they know that not everyone likes talking on the phone. The truth is, talking on the phone can be time-consuming. It’s often more convenient for people to shoot off a quick text and then check the response when they have availability. Whereas phone conversations can often hold the person captive, keeping them from being able to accomplish other things. It can also feel awkward to some people.

While phone calls certainly have their place, allowing for more detailed explanations without a lot of reading/writing involved and are usually preferred by older generations, they’re not everyone’s favorite thing. If you want to reach more of your audience, you need to offer more than just a phone number for customer service.

There are a few ways you can use text messaging to your advantage. One of the options is to have a number available that customers can text. It’s even more convenient if you use the same number that you allow for phone calls. You can utilize chatbots to handle a lot of the standard questions and offer the option for them to reach a live agent when needed. Texting can also be used as a means for agents to check back with customers and see how they’re doing and ask them to fill out a quick survey. Beyond customer service, businesses also use texting to let customers know about promotions they’re running. To get more customers to sign up for this, make sure to offer something like a discount on their next purchase.

Texting is just one of the tools that businesses can use to improve the overall customer experience. However, it’s essential to keep in mind that they expect quick replies when customers text. This means you need to have enough agents available to handle the demand. Even if you use chatbots, you’ll want to ensure you have enough live agents for when people need a more personal touch.

If you’re looking to include texting in your customer service solutions, visit out website to learn more: https://www.myxact.com/

Have you ever tried to get a hold of a company because you have a question or concern but you were left on hold for ages or maybe couldn’t get a hold of anyone at all? It can be incredibly frustrating for a person when a company is hard to reach, so annoying that you may decide you no longer want to do business with them. It’s equally irritating when the agent you do reach isn’t as helpful as you’d like them to be. Maybe they’re not really knowledgeable, they transfer you to the wrong person, or aren’t overly friendly. You can quickly see how a friendly, helpful agent who is easy to reach will increase retention.

That’s not the only way that customer service can increase retention either. You can use this service to put out surveys and see how satisfied customers are. You can use the surveys to help improve and deliver upon customer wants and needs. Another way to boost customer service initiatives and retention is to offer a loyalty program. This rewards customers for staying loyal to your company and is designed specifically for retaining your current clientele.

How does retaining your current customers help your business financially? Well, we know that it brings in income every time they make a purchase, but it also reduces the amount of money you need to put into ad campaigns trying to entice new customers. As this article from Forbes says, “Retaining a customer is much cheaper than acquiring a new customer. Studies suggest that depending on the industry you are in, acquiring a new customer can cost five to seven times more than retaining an old one.” However, they also point out that “it can never be customer retention versus customer acquisition.” Companies grow by “acquiring new customers.” But retaining your current base can reduce the amount of money you need to spend on customer acquisition. For one, you may not need to put as much emphasis on this because your company isn’t as desperate for new clientele. Another way retention saves you on marketing efforts is through word-of-mouth advertising. When satisfied customers remain loyal, they’ll be more likely to tell others about your company and bring them in, so customer service then works to improve not only retention but also customer acquisition. Also, this type of advertising is free for the company, so it’s a win-win solution!

Overall, you can see how customer service can boost retention which can improve your bottom line. If you’d like to help increase your customer support efforts, please reach out to us at XACT. We’d love to assist you and your customers!