Do it yourself or outsource it is a question that entrepreneurs regularly ask themselves. You can also ask yourself this question in the area of your customer service. Do you prefer to manage it yourself or let an external party run your customer service? Both options have advantages and disadvantages, which we will discuss with you below. This way you can make a well-considered choice that suits your organization and the objectives you have with your webshop.
The importance of good customer service
Taking your customer service seriously is a must for many companies, and this is especially true for web shops. The service needs of (online) customers are increasing. Not only do they want to be helped properly, processing speed also plays a role: especially since the rise of Live Chat and WhatsApp for companies, for example. Customers are not used to waiting days for an answer via these channels, sometimes they think a few minutes is too long. In addition, they also want to be treated in a friendly manner and preferably offered a tailor-made solution as quickly as possible. And do you not meet these wishes? Then a bad review is easily posted. Do you feel the pressure increasing? Fortunately, there are various ways to organize your customer service properly and efficiently - so there is no reason to panic!
Outsourcing customer service in a webshop : advantages and disadvantages
One of the options is to outsource your customer service to a party that specializes in this.
Advantages
- Outsourcing your customer service can save you a lot of time. You do not have to train and supply employees yourself, it is all done for you. This way you don't have to worry about your customer service and you can fully focus on your business.
- When you outsource the customer service of your webshop, you can often make agreements with the external party about accessibility. Do you want to be available to customers 24 hours a day? Then that is usually not a problem. Especially for smaller web shops with limited opening hours, it is actually impossible to make someone from your own organization available 24 hours a day for customer questions.
Cons
- No matter how good the external party is, the customer service representatives are not your employees. You cannot expect them to have the same knowledge of and feeling about your organization as your own employees.
- Hiring an external party for your customer service makes it more difficult to keep lines short. You create, as it were, an extra layer between the customer and your company. Of course, good external customer service tries to communicate with you as clearly as possible, but it is almost impossible to prevent 'noise on the line' from sometimes occurring.
Doing customer service yourself: pros and cons
Below we discuss the pros and cons of managing your customer service yourself.
Advantages
- A major advantage of managing your customer service yourself is that you have everything in your own hands and keep it close to yourself. The employees have a lot of knowledge about your company and can really radiate (with a friendly smile) what you stand for as a webshop. You can also train your customer service staff yourself and adjust where things could possibly be improved.
- Another advantage is that you always have first-hand information from customers. For example, a customer can give you very valuable feedback that you can immediately share in the workplace. You must also always keep it under your own management for other customer data.
Cons
- Running your customer service well and efficiently is not easy. It is especially important that you set up your customer service environment properly and that processes always run in the same (logical) way. Fortunately, good software helps with this! You can read more about that below.
- Running your own customer service takes time. Depending on the size of your webshop and the number of customer questions that come in, you will soon need one or more employees to ensure everything runs smoothly.
Customer service software from Belco
Even though we see the benefits of outsourcing customer service, we at Belco still believe that you can always do better yourself. Your employees can best convey what you stand for - and customers feel that too. It is important to make your customer service as smart and efficient as possible. We have developed special software for this in which all customer communications, regardless of channel, are received and handled in one clear environment.
In addition, Belco is full of smart features such as dividing your customer service into teams, automatic customer recognition, sending internal notes to colleagues and planning follow-up actions. In this way we eliminate the disadvantages of running your customer service ourselves and make optimal use of the advantages (with a broad smile).
Do you have any questions regarding this blog? Let us know! Wondering if Belco is something for you? Try our software for free for 2 weeks and experience what it's like to work in an all-in-one customer service environment.This trial is completely without obligation and stops automatically after 2 weeks.
