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The Pros and cons of outsourcing customer services.

How to set up the best customer service and save millions without outsourcing.

I can't believe how lousy customer support is these days.

By now, I dread every time I run into a problem with a product or service I pay for.

There are so many great products out there.

At least this is until I have a problem and contact customer services.

They take weeks to answer, don't read my requests, and when they reply, it is autogenerated.

Every time I get the impression I am speaking to a chatbot.

It takes hours of my time to get my problem solved.

That is, if I don't give up in frustration before,

Then, my next step is to search for another product that has a solution for my problem.

I don't care about how fantastic this product is anymore.

One customer lost.

As a customer, I care about getting solutions to my problems.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Customer support is one of the most underestimated drivers of most businesses.

They even got a rebranding and are now called Customer Success Managers.

Businesses doing customer services right save millions in marketing, sales, and product development.

So why don't companies care about helping their customers?

Why don't they use this opportunity to learn how to improve their product?

Why don't they help the customer succeed?

When To Outsource Customer Services

When I talk about outsourcing, I mean handing a part of your business

either to an external company without a clue about your product.
or to a chatbot with or without AI.

The pros and cons of outsourcing customer services are as follows:

Pros

Cost reduction.
Easy to scale.
24/7 availability.

Cons

Quality control issues.
Decrease in customer retention.
No human connection.
Missing out on valuable feedback.

Knowing this, you should outsource your customer support when:

Customer relationships are not relevant to your business at all.
You want to maximize your bottom line short-term while damaging it long-term.
Your product is so perfect that no customer support issues arise ever.

The Problem With Outsourcing Customer Support

The short answer is that most businesses don't care about their customers.

They're not there to solve problems.

They're running their business to maximize their profits.

Today, they even replace their underpaid support in India with an even cheaper AI chatbot.

Even if it might be cheaper to outsource to a low-salary country, it will cost you in the long run.

The most important stakeholder of your business is your customer.

By outsourcing customer support, you lose connection to this stakeholder.

Why should you care about your customer's satisfaction with your product?

Because:

Happy customers = happy business.

A direct connection to your customers can be priceless.

It is a tool to build trust and long-term connections with your customers.

Replacing a caring human with a chatbot won't solve their problems better.

The problems my customers have are real.

If I can't solve the problems, someone else will.

So my customers' problems are my problems.

But there is more.

Humans communicate for three reasons:

Level 1: To be heard.
Level 2: To be hugged.
Level 3: To be helped.

We call this the 3Hs or the Triforce of Communication.

Some customers will contact me to get a problem fixed (level 3).

But they often also want to be emotionally supported (level 2).

They want their trust in me and my product to be re-established and reassured.

If they trust you, they want to contribute to your company's success without being asked (level 1).

An AI agent can't provide level 2 support when your customer knows it is a bot.

So far, I haven't seen a company implementing a chatbot to handle level 1 sufficiently.

It can be so easy to handle level 1.

Sadly, external human support workers often perform worse than a chatbot.

If an AI can replace my customer support, it wasn't good support.

Your customer support needs to react to all 3Hs to be considered excellent.

How does your customer support handle levels 1 and 2 right now?

How to do Customer Support Right

Here are three steps to do customer service right.

1. Build a Solid In-House Customer Success Team

Your customer success team lives in your product and breathes your company culture.

Their goals are:

Listen to the customers and extract every bit of valuable information.
Resolve any issue put in front of them or at least show a path to resolution.

Your customer's trust in you should increase after contacting your customer success team.

Your customer success team doesn't need to be available 24/7.

You can slow down.

Most customers are okay with a response taking 24 hours.

As long as they have the impression that they're being helped and that the other person cares.

2. Filter Requests With An AI Chatbot

For this team to focus on the essential cases, you need a sophisticated filter in front of them.

Get an AI chatbot, but customize it for your product.

This AI agent should:

Filter requests that can be solved with a blog post or yes/no answer.
Be able to notice loops in the conversation and resolve them.
If it can't resolve the issue within 3-4 prompts, it sends customers to your customer success team.

Avoid repeated answers at all costs for both your bot and your team.

Nothing infuriates a customer more than copy-paste answer repeats.

It is like a fist to the face telling them you don't care about them.

3. Have Measures For All 3Hs In Place

Review your support cases and create a list of model support cases.

Mark each case with the required levels of communication.

A customer might need more than one level of communication in one case.

Then, develop processes and methods to fulfill all levels for each support case.

For example:

Have a process ready for customers to report and track a bug they found.
Have your customer success team trained in nonviolent communication.
Have a page where customers can vote on what feature to implement next.

Keep On Iterating

Keep improving your customer service constantly.

Just as any other essential part of your business.

Make customer satisfaction one of your core KPIs for the whole business.

Not just for the support team but also for everyone else.

Only if we work together towards the same goal will we achieve it.

Keep on improving until your customer support can handle all the 3Hs.

Level 1: Make your customers feel heard.
Level 2: Connect emotionally with them.
Level 3: Solve their problems.

When you achieve this, your customers will become groupies and do the heavy lifting for you.

Your customers will bring in new customers, features, and much more money.

All by themselves.

Let's win together.

And this time, I mean you and your customers.

Does your customer services cover all 3Hs yet?

Which one will you cover next?

Tell me in the comments below.

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Why Outsourcing Your Customer Services is Bad