11 Benefits of On-demand, Virtual Customer Service

As more and more data supports the fact that a great customer experience (CX) is essential for driving growth and achieving long-term success, it’s becoming equally clear that virtual customer service providers are the most effective and budget-friendly way to accomplish this important goal.

Though some traditional-minded leaders still cling to the idea that customer care must be delivered in-house, more are recognizing the many benefits of the virtual model. From the promise of significant cost savings to the promise of instant scalability in your labor pool, here are a few reasons why virtual customer service has become the standard for businesses looking to offer a superior CX.

11 Reasons to Choose On-demand, Virtual Customer Service over an In-house Contact Center

Provide the best customer experience by having a high-level of expertise agents.
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1. Access to real expertise. Today’s customers are more demanding and savvier than ever—and they can spot amateur service from a mile away. Skimping on customer care just doesn’t cut it anymore: The agents who represent your business must possess a high level of expertise, as do the management professionals who lead them, and who are often integral for crafting a superior CX strategy.

Why choose on-demand, virtual customer service? Because they’re in such high demand, quality customer service professionals are often already gainfully employed and expensive to hire, when they are seeking new opportunities. Using virtual customer service gives you access to a whole team of highly trained professionals, without having to hire them on a full-time basis.

Your business doesn’t have to pay for computers, computer monitors, servers, communications equipment, etc.
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2. Infrastructure costs. From an infrastructure standpoint alone, maintaining an onsite contact center is expensive, requiring investments in hardware (computers, monitors, servers, communications equipment) and software (operating systems for computers, communications programs for agents), not to mention the facility in which it’s all housed (rent, heating/cooling, insurance, security considerations).

Why choose on-demand, virtual customer service? With virtual customer service, you get access to the newest and best version of all of these essentials, without having to foot the bill for purchasing (and continuously upgrading) them.

With an on-demand, virtual-based contact center service provider, you get access to a full-time team of high-caliber customer care agents.
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3. Labor costs. Running your own in-house contact center essentially means adding another department to your business—complete with the operational and logistical expenses that go along with it. Can you really afford to staff a full-time team of expert customer service agents? And have you considered the high rates of pay and benefits needed to lure in the best possible candidates?

Why choose on-demand, virtual customer service? By partnering with an on-demand, virtual-based contact center service provider, you get access to a full-time team of high-caliber customer care agents, without the expense of permanently employing them.

With an on-demand contact center partner, you can automatically scale your number of active agents up or down as needed.
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4. Labor flexibility. Even if you are comfortable employing a permanent team of top-notch agents, are you prepared for the additional expense (and logistical headaches) of scaling them up or down to accommodate seasonal fluctuations? Ensuring continuous, high-quality care means keeping top agents at the ready all year, even when the demand is low.

Why choose on-demand, virtual customer service? With an on-demand contact center partner, you can automatically scale your number of active agents up or down as needed, at no additional expense, to make sure you’re staffed year-round with high-quality agents (as opposed to having to rely upon lower-cost, inexperienced temps during busy times).

Anything less than a hard-edged, holistic approach leaves your operations wide open to system breaches and customers to personal-identity thefts.
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5. Security considerations. Today’s businesses operate in an era of heightened risk from cyberattacks, which requires extra vigilance for the safety of customer data. This constant attention on security can be expensive, requiring as it does continuously updated hardware and software and hiring IT professionals who can ensure you’re always doing your utmost to prevent security breaches.

Why choose on-demand, virtual customer service? With a virtual customer service provider, you’ll automatically enjoy the latest and greatest in data and physical security precautions as part of your base rate.

Leading virtual contact centers like Working Solutions focus on continuous education and development to ensure that agents are always performing.
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6. Education. Are you prepared to offer your customer care reps the ongoing education necessary to ensure their continuous improvement? Most businesses’ operational goals fluctuate with the economy and other unpredictable factors, and you need to be able to train your agents to keep up with these new benchmarks—as well as the latest best practices in customer care and tech knowhow.

Why choose on-demand, virtual customer service? Leading virtual contact centers like Working Solutions focus on continuous education and development to ensure that agents are always performing at the highest possible levels.

Today’s leading virtual customer service providers are based in the United States and Canada—and so are all of their agents.
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7. Onshore service. Long gone are the days when offering your customers high-quality service at an affordable price point meant relying on the bargain-basement prices (and poor quality) of offshore service providers. Today, advancements in technology mean that the best virtual contact centers serving the U.S. market are now located nationwide.

Why choose on-demand, virtual customer service? Today’s leading virtual customer service providers (like Working Solutions) are based in the United States and Canada—and so are all of their agents. That means you get efficient and high-quality service while also eliminating the possibility of culture clashes that too often go hand-in-hand with offshore- customer care.

If your company has happy customer service agents your company will have happy customers as a result.
Source: www.workingsolutions.com.

8. Agent satisfaction. Satisfied customer service agents mean satisfied customers. Because virtual agents enjoy the comfort and convenience of working at home on their own schedules, they’re highly motivated to provide the best possible customer care. They’re not punching a clock; they’re engaged in a career that they’re passionate about—and that passion shows in the quality of service they deliver.

Why choose on-demand, virtual customer service? By giving agents the flexibility and independence of working from home—as opposed to making them travel to a physical contact center every day—the virtual model translates directly into increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Great customer service requires consistency, across messaging, quality of service, even tone of voice and friendliness.
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9. Customer satisfaction. Even with satisfied agents, though, how can you really be sure that the customer experience you’re offering is really doing the trick of engaging and satisfying the people who interact with your business? A number of measurement protocols exist, such as customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, to make sure that you’re continuously improving this important CX metric.

Why choose on-demand, virtual customer service? At Working Solutions, we know how to engage customers, as demonstrated by our CSAT scores, which rank approximately 13% higher than the industry average for on-demand contact center service providers.

At Working Solutions, we’ve worked hard to offer our agents an amazing, virtual-based company culture.
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10. Ensuring a great company culture. In addition to its huge operational costs in terms of labor and infrastructure, maintaining your own call center means putting in the necessary time and effort to make sure the agents working for you experience the best possible company culture—an essential component in maintaining the kind of agent attrition rate that corresponds to great customer service.

Why choose on-demand, virtual customer service? At Working Solutions, we’ve worked hard to offer our agents an amazing, virtual-based company culture, complete with opportunities for team-building, interpersonal bonding, and professional development (the success of which is demonstrated by the high ratings we receive from remote work sites like FlexJobs).

Partnering with a company that offers cloud-based data backups is the most reliable way to make sure your information is secure and readily accessible when you most need it.
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11. Automatic backup and business recovery. With severe fires and weather events becoming distressingly commonplace, the need for businesses to have a sophisticated backup plan in terms of customer data and communications is mandatory. After all, even if your business isn’t located in a high-risk zone, your customers may be.

Why choose on-demand, virtual customer service? Outsourcing your customer care needs to a virtual service provider like Working Solutions means having an offsite data backup plan automatically in place. It also means you can rely on a network of customer service agents located throughout America and Canada, eliminating your operational susceptibility to regional disruptions.

Ready to Get Started with On-demand, Virtual Customer Service?

Even with all of these benefits of virtual customer service under consideration, it’s important to remember that not all service providers are created equally. As more and more companies enter a booming market to meet the surging demand for high-quality customer care, the quality of outsourced care has become watered down.

For that reason, it’s essential to make sure you’re turning to a virtual customer service provider that can offer all the above benefits, as well as a proven track record—a company like Working Solutions, that boasts more than 20 years of direct industry experience.