Out-of-hours live chat outsourcing is a fast-growing customer service support channel allowing customers to chat virtually with support staff in real-time. Unlike AI chat or chatbots, customer service agents–real humans– interact with a potential or existing customer through a text chat interface available on a company’s website.
Of course, maintaining a live chat support service requires an investment in staff, chat software, and procedures. Instead of handling all of these in-house, countless companies use website chat outsourcing to improve efficiency, increase customer satisfaction, free up internal employees, and invest wisely in customer service.
This article will explore live chat outsourcing for out-of-hours and explain why it could be an excellent solution for your business.
What is Live Chat?
Live chat is a web-based platform customers can use to contact a business. Customers, current or potential, may connect with a business via live chat for a variety of reasons:
- Seeking support or troubleshooting for a product or service.
- Ask questions about products or services before a purchase.
- Make a purchase.
- Reach a specific employee.
- Request information on job or internship opportunities.
In the case of live chat outsourcing out-of-hours, employees or customer service agents interact with customers in real-time instead of leaving them in the hands of chatbots or other automated systems that can leave callers feeling isolated or underserved.
Why might a business outsource their website chat functions, and what are the benefits of live chat? Let’s detail some of the reasons why outsourcing live chat out-of-hours could provide optimal customer service and ensure excellent customer relations.
Reasons why you must have out-of-hours live chat outsourcing
#1 Improve customer service efficiency
Live chat outsourcing is more effective than internal web chat for a variety of reasons:
- Internal employees’ core tasks can be sidelined while providing customer support, reducing their productivity.
- Call center or chat support agents are highly trained to provide one-stop customer service.
- Call centers operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, alleviating customer requests during peak hours and providing customer service even when office hours are over.
Adding an extra channel to your company’s customer support protocols can overwhelm employees with other primary tasks—R&D, manufacturing, accounting, or operations— and reduce their time to complete the tasks for which they are required.
In contrast, outsourcing live chat support services puts live chat in the hands of professionals, improving efficiency.
#2 Boost customer satisfaction
As customer service evolves adapting to emerging digital tools, experts observe two phenomena:
- Millennials and Gen Z customers show heightened phone call anxiety, which drives them to other remote customer service tools, such as email, text, and live chat.
- Even though younger customer populations rely on digital tools for customer support, automated tools like AI chat, self-service websites, and mobile app support guides alienate them and leave them feeling underserved.
Live chat addresses both of these trends because:
- Live chat allows customers to interact with a business on their terms if they don’t like phone calls, and it gives them the actual human interaction they need when they are looking for help.
- Live chat outsourcing service can increase your customers’ satisfaction during the support process by catering to the needs of a younger and growing customer base, feeling them valued.
#3 Free up internal employees time
As a business grows, its customer base grows, and so does its need for vital customer relations resources. Small companies rarely employ specific customer service representatives. As they grow, investing in operations or production staff makes more sense. More customers lead to greater demand for their products or services, and meeting this need increases cash flow.
By investing in call center services or outsourcing chat support, business owners add a new customer communication channel without sacrificing current staff functions, hiring new employees, or incurring any capital expenditure to open an in-house support center.
A live chat outsourcing service allows internal employees and company management to augment their primary workload while a separate remote team handles customer service efforts.
#4 Make a wise business investment
Business growth often requires investment in:
- More advanced software for production, accounting, and other functions.
- Larger physical space for computers or machinery.
- New staff and their training.
- Improved and expanded customer relations procedures.
With other essential investment priorities during the growth period, it makes financial sense for companies to outsource web chat. Live chat requires chat software and a workforce to monitor customer queries or requests and create standardized scripts and procedures. With live chat outsourcing, you get all of that at a fraction of the in-house cost.
#5 Increased quality of customer service
Every business is looking for cost savings, which makes a great point for outsourcing. While it’s true that outsourcing drastically reduces overhead, that shouldn’t be the only motive.
A business should place a premium on the quality of service, as any inefficiencies can lead to the mass migration of customers. If you consider the track record, clientele, and reviews while selecting an outsourcing company, you will end up onboarding a great out-of-hours live chat outsourcing partner. In the end, that all lead to a great quality of service and support for your customers.
#6 Provide 24/7 customer support
If your company deals with global customers or those who initiate communication after regular business hours, around-the-clock customer service becomes imperative. For example, an e-commerce business should provide round-the-clock customer support, regardless of the business hours. Establishing 24/7 customer support operations can be difficult for such a company, and therefore outsourcing to a specialist company that provides this facility becomes a viable alternative. The case study on how University Living grew with AM2PM Support, is worth reading to know more about this.
#7 Reduce repeat calls
If you are able to provide good service and support to your customers via live chat, you will be able to reduce the number of repeat calls for customer support. That again leads to an increase in the efficiency of overall customer support operations and also brings down the expenses required to provide good customer service. On top of that, when customers get real-time responses on chat, it makes them feel valued and supported, converting them into loyal fans of your brand. Win-win!
Are you ready to outsource out-of-hours live chat for your business?
By now, you must have got a fair idea of how outsourcing out-of-hours live chat can make your customers happy with your business ultimately driving your brand to grow further. At AM2PM Support, we have been the choice of hundreds of brands worldwide to take care of their live chat operations. To explore how can we help your business grow with our live chat outsourcing services, book a call with our team.
