Outsourcing is about more than quick resolution. It’s a launchpad for exceptional customer experiences that form the basis of scalable, ambitious growth. Here’s why the right BPO customer service can redefine CX for challenger brands.
Here’s the thing about building customer satisfaction and retention for your business: Even though you may excel at attracting the right crowd to your challenger brand, if you can’t hold your audience’s attention or give them compelling reasons to return, it’s hard work gone to waste.
Your brand can’t rely solely on looking slick—it’s got to be sticky too.
The good news is a business process outsourcing partner can strengthen your operations so your efforts bear fruit long past the first interaction.
If you’re keen to build a sticky brand with an outsourcing partner that gets you both customer satisfaction and retention, follow these five tips for success:
1. Align all the moving parts
Brands have many pieces that must work together in sync.
You have to consider website performance, design, logistics, marketing, communications, customer support … not to mention brand perception, product quality and the overall experience.
It’s a lot to manage at once. One weak element can throw things out of whack—and increase the likelihood shoppers will go elsewhere. Taking a holistic, or omnichannel, approach to every customer touchpoint ensures there’s consistency and high quality.
Ensure your outsourcing partner is well-placed to master one of the most common operational blindspots: customer support and feedback mechanisms. Whenever customers encounter a problem, they should get a branded experience delivered by a BPO-managed service team that specializes in customer support.
With a trusted BPO shouldering some of the front office’s heaviest lifting, you’re free to focus on creating value elsewhere.
2. Simplicity sticks
You’ll have an easier time being understood if your brand and its messaging are clear, simple and powerful. Simplicity sells—and sticks—but it’s so hard to get right. Many brands go through constant soul-searching exercises to discover and distill their direction into something that resonates with the changing expectations of their customers.
Where does your BPO partner fit in? First, they can give you an external perspective as an impartial observer and help you more closely align your proposed offering with their broader view of what the market demands. Seeing your brand from the outside-in can help it realign and evolve.
Second, your partner can manifest the simplicity you’re aiming for through relevant communication channels: from setting up a low-touch, self-service interactive voice response (IVR) system to a comprehensive high-touch contact center capable of seamlessly managing more complex customer challenges.
An experienced BPO facilitates simple, consistent experiences that keep customers coming back.
3. Deliver unique value
Customers have plenty of choices in the market. To stand out, you need to offer tangible, specific and differentiated value—a surefire way to make people stick around.
So what’s your value? Being useful? Responsive? Caring? Convenient? It’s your BPO partner’s role to take whatever unique value you’ve identified—and amplify it.
For example, a premium consumer tech brand targeting super fans will likely enlist a BPO partner who can cope with technical depth, training staff to navigate complex inquiries with agility, empathy and assuredness.
Anyone can deliver value, but delivering on that value consistently and repeatedly leads to better customer satisfaction and retention.
4. Keep it coming
If you increase your retention rates by 5%, you should get a 25%-95% profit boost (at least, according to Bain & Co[1]). So it pays to please customers again and again.
Of course, increasing customer lifetime value is a complex, multifaceted endeavor—and driving consistent, branded experiences across your support channels is a key pillar in that goal.
Consider embedding ways to personalize interactions or set up data-capture capabilities to strengthen every subsequent interaction. For example, an e-commerce retailer might give customers an opt-in to receive tailored promotions on their website, or suggest items based on purchase history to make repeat buying easier.
One technique to improve stickiness is through a framework of data-driven customer support. A sales or support agent is better equipped to solve problems with the information fit for the moment. Service that feels both anticipatory and contextualized by historical interactions can significantly boost satisfaction and retention.
5. Go the extra mile
Sticky brands are worth shouting about. Everyone remembers the time when a sales assistant soothed our frayed nerves, listened, understood and went above and beyond the call of duty to ensure we went home with the right purchase.
And sadly, the inverse is true. People ALWAYS remember the one time you kept them on hold for 45 minutes, no matter how many other times before their questions were answered quickly and easily.
To get more of these killer positive moments, sometimes you have to go off-script. A BPO that’s flexible can deal with complexity and transform your customers’ thorniest problems into moments of magic.
The reward is a sticky brand—and happy customers who not only stick around but bring their friends.
Get unstuck with sticky CX
The best thing your BPO can do for you is drive exceptional customer experiences that generate higher customer satisfaction and retention rates.
Whichever way your brand decides to go, a partner who builds and supports your direction is worth sticking with.
Accelerate customer lifetime value with better CX.
[1] “Prescription for cutting costs“, Bain and Company, 2016.
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