The world is constantly evolving and your business has to keep up. In this time where a simple social media post about your brand can become a crisis in a matter of seconds, you need to be quick in addressing your customers’ questions and feedback. Customer service outsourcing could be of great help in times of needs, which is mostly every time.

Despite the steady growth of chatbots in recent years, the need for outsourced live chat agents is still very much recognized especially when looking for a virtual assistant. Entrepreneurs, especially startups, need to focus more on the core areas of their business and leave the duties of responding to queries to a reliable live chat customer service representative. Not only do they function as a tool for communicating with your customers, they also help boost sales.

Perks of hiring outsourced live chat agents

As your business booms, there’s a high tendency of queries to flood your inbox. Never let your customers down, with hundreds even thousands of options available online, every business is always hanging by a thread when it comes to customer loyalty. Hiring an in-house live chat operator is one key but it might cost you too much, not to mention that they won’t be available 24/7 to cater your customers. Getting an outsourced live chat support operator makes sense because of its proven benefits.

• Outsourcing is cost-effective. As mentioned already, acquiring an in-house staff is always costly due to salary packages and benefits mandated by the government for regular employees. On the contrary, outsourced live chat agents are a lot cheaper as they are working remotely and need not spend a dollar for a commute, food allowance, and other miscellaneous. In addition, remote workers are usually more productive compared to their in-house counterparts. Paid on a per-hour basis, outsourced employees are expected to deliver outputs, meaning you only pay for actual hours your employee is actively working.
• Increase in sales. Compared to a bot, when a human takes over the live chat support, there’s a higher chance of converting a regular purchase to an upgraded one. Bots, for instance, lack the natural ability of humans to have sympathy on a customer’s needs based on their emotions. Therefore, if you’re aiming high conversation rate, your live chat support agent should be a good salesperson, too.
• Improved customer service and loyalty. Having outsourced live chat agents to attend to customers’ concerns 24/7/365 shows how much you value your patrons. That’s one way of winning your clients’ loyalty.
• Effective crisis management. Live up to the promise of delivering only the best for your customers. When they need your help, video tutorials and long-form contents are sometimes not enough. Being there real-time for them matters the most, instructing them the step-by-step procedure of you purchasing or using your product until they gain satisfaction. And while you can’t be always there to do that tedious task, the help of outsourced live chat agents comes in handy.

Live Chat vs. Chatbots

Chatbots are created to assist humans in daily life and not as a competition. Bots serve as an extension to human limitation. For instance, one person can’t be working 24 hours facing the computer while responding to all queries without resting. On the contrary, acknowledge the fact that chatbots are not (yet) perfect. It is designed and programmed to function on behalf of humans, to increase productivity for the users, and sustain the convenience within a workplace.

To help you decide, imagine a scenario where a customer has already purchased a product from your online store. Upon receiving the item, the customer wants to ask something about the product which a chatbot couldn’t answer because the information needed was not programmed into the chatbot’s system. It can spark trouble when a customer can’t get what he wants right away. There are a lot of questions that only humans can understand and answer.

Another issue about bots is its inability to read misspelled texts. We can’t always tell a customer to use the right spelling all the time, especially in this modern era of text messaging. Only humans can fully understand humans.
While chatbots and AI has a bright, promising future to function for digital business, this doesn’t mean that it can replace humans in the workplace. Not anytime soon, at least. They can be our teammate for productivity and a mix of human and bots will be a powerful customer service team up when done correctly.

Managed Live Chat Support Team

It’s not enough that you acquire a dedicated live chat support agent. They need to be articulate, quick, effective, and efficient. More so, they need to be knowledgeable about your products and services and know the gist of your overall business. This can be learned through dedicated training and competent management.
HOPLA is eager in helping businesses who need a live chat support team to increase productivity in their organization. Our customer chat support agents waste no time in attending to customer queries, especially when a potential sale is apparent.

Effective customer service starts at finding the right people to push your venture into the next big thing in the industry. Call us to discuss how we can help you!