Beyond Cost-Reduction – The Next Generation of Outsourcing

by John Bryson

Outsourcing has moved way beyond simple cost reduction. The next generation of outsourcing is all about adding value to the sales process and increasing customer loyalty.

To add that kind of value, outsourcing partners need a pool of agents who are highly trained and educated, which is why the innovative ones are focusing their recruitment efforts on the universities in their home countries. Their average agent is college educated, and many have the equivalent of an MBA. All they’ll need is some training on a client’s product suite, and they’re ready to sell.

Transferring Skill Sets from Customer to Customer

One of the key benefits of the more innovative outsourcing partners is their ability to apply sales expertise quickly and efficiently. These partners are able and willing to provide chat services for limited durations. For online retailers, it means turning on additional chat agents for the holiday season, or to support a specific product roll-out. Once an engagement ends, the agents are re-deployed to another client.

Choosing If (and What) to Outsource

That offshore agents have become more adept at e-selling is good news, but does it follow that all companies should send that function overseas? How should a company determine if outsourcing is a good strategy for its chat channel?

The answer depends entirely on your company’s unique business requirements. Consider:

• The learning curve of your products, and how much specialized expertise is required to adequately answer your customers’ questions. Overseas chat agents are experts at probing needs and selling online. But if your company offers say, complex medical imaging in acute care situations, it may be best to keep that selling in-house
• The kinds of investments – in terms of training and management oversight – that will be needed to enable outsourced agents to speak intelligently about your products
• The dollar amount and net margins of your products
• How you’ll measure performance and results

Complexity of Products

Outsourcing isn’t an all or nothing proposition. In fact, many of LivePerson’s enterprise customers opt to outsource just a segment of their products lines, not their entire inventory. For instance, some large high tech clients rely on offshore agents for their SMB and consumer offerings, and in-house agents to service their enterprise client base.

Capabilities such as canned responses and scripts help to bridge the gap as the outsourced agents come up to speed on products. The repetitive questions of the SMB and consumer visitors make sales and support well suited for offshore agents.

The same high tech providers rely on in-house resources to service their enterprise divisions, where deep product knowledge and expertise is much harder to replicate.

The next generation of outsourcing partners is helping companies use chat to increase sales conversions. Chat is a great equalizer in that it can outline the sales process, masks accents, and strategically use pre-composed or canned messages to keep a dialog flowing. The pool of agents available through these outsourcing partners is highly skilled, educated, and perhaps most important – motivated to succeed. By choosing the right partner, you can harness the motivation of their agents to sell more goods online.