How To Choose eCommerce Call Center Outsourcing Provider

As online shopping continues to gain pace, the demand for responsive and effective customer support is increasing at a much greater rate. Many businesses are turning to call center outsourcing to meet these demands and to optimize costs and resources. However, finding a reliable outsourcing partner is crucial and requires you to follow the correct approach.
In this blog, we have provided the complete procedure that helps you connect with the right eCommerce call center outsourcing partner.
Outsource eCommerce Call Center With the Right Approach.
Finding a reliable company to outsource eCommerce call center operations is a crucial task. That’s why experts recommend businesses follow a streamlined procedure as below to cover every necessary aspect and factor.
#1: Define Your Business Objectives
You need to start with the process by listing down all your requirements, including the business and technical needs. It will help you narrow down the service providers that you need to focus on. In addition, your requirement list must contain the call volume, peak times, and industry expertise factors.
Furthermore, you should also choose your preferred outsourcing model if you want a service provider in the same country, then it’s onshore. For a nearby country, it’s nearshore, and for a distant location, such as a different continent, then it’s offshore. Also, gain a brief insight into your business constraints, such as cost and time.
#2: Search for eCommerce Call Center Outsourcing Firms
Once you have all your requirements, it will become easy to find an eCommerce call center outsourcing firm. You can utilize multiple search engines, forums, and even blogs from CX experts to gain knowledge about top firms, offering the required services.
Also, it’s preferred to conduct a brief search using the right keywords. It’ll help you save time and discover the trusted service providers aligning with your industry expertise. For instance, to find a firm offering chat services, you can use the keyword “eCommerce chat services” or “eCommerce chat outsourcing.”
Similarly, you can build up your own keywords to ease out the discovering phase.
#3: Analyze Expertise and Experience
Now, you have to go through the website of each company to get a better understanding of their experience and expertise in eCommerce call center operations. The website will provide details about their clientele, active years, case studies, and a deeper insight into the offered services.
Further, you can navigate all their web pages, research client reviews on other platforms, and, if possible, contact their customers for review. Mostly, this stage revolves around understanding the service provider through “n” a number of mediums.
Additionally, you can go through their case studies to learn how the firm resolved, improved, or optimized the call center operations. Always remember that you need to look specifically for eCommerce-oriented information.
#4: Check Offered Call Center Services
At this step, you need to analyze the eCommerce call center solutions getting offered by the service providers. Mainly, we are going to remove those firms whose services are not up to the mark. To do so, navigate to the services page and look for the following services:
- eCommerce chat services
- eCommerce call services
- eCommerce mail services
- eCommerce order tracking services
- eCommerce-compliant handling services
- eCommerce dispute management services
These are some of the most prominent services that an eCommerce business needs. You also have to focus on these solutions. It will help you resolve every customer’s query and issue, leading to increased customer satisfaction and retention KPIs.
#5: Evaluate Engagement Models
Whether you are choosing an eCommerce call center outsourcing partner or any other, always assess the engagement models. You should know about all the outsourcing team hiring models and how you can pay the service provider. Primarily, dedicated teams, resource-based, and time-based models are popular among the outsourcing firms.
However, there are some providers that offer hybrid and custom engagement models. Also, it’s recommended to contact the organization for cost concerns, as sometimes you can avail of additional offers or discounts.
Furthermore, research for the average pay range of workforce, and taxes, where the service provider is located. It’ll aid you in gaining a brief idea about the required budget to leverage professional call center services.
#6: Focus on Tools, Technology and Infrastructure
Tools, technology, and infrastructure of the service providers highly contribute to the success of your eCommerce business. You need to ensure that your outsourced call center agents are using the latest customer handling tools and their systems are up-to-date and secure. It’ll aid you in improving customer interaction and satisfaction.
In addition, look for the technology associated with AI and automation, as these two are revolutionizing the customer experience. And having them on your end will assuredly benefit your ROI. Moreover, look for a scope of scalability for catering to a broader customer base during peak hours and seasons.
#7: Discuss Your Needs and Finalize
Until this stage, you have information about multiple companies offering to outsource eCommerce call center operations. So, now is the time, that you should evaluate all those firms and reach out to them for final discussion. Firstly, you need to shortlist the firms based on your evaluation and then schedule meetings for a deeper insight.
During the discussions, clear all your queries about the following:
- Customer supporting tools and technologies
- Base, additional, and hidden costs
- Data privacy policies
- Payment cycles and models
- Onboarding procedure
- Contract termination policies
- Compliance with any particular legal regulation or protocol
Besides, if you want, you can ask for a trial to clear out all your queries. Once you are satisfied and ensured, finalize the service provider and start onboarding.
#8: Monitor and Optimize
Monitoring the performance of your call center agents is a continuous procedure. You have to ensure that your outsourcing partner maintains all the following agent performance metrics:
- Ticket resolution time
- Customer satisfaction rate
- Service level
- Average handle time
- Escalation rate
- Agent utilization rate
- Quality assurance scores
You may like to read:10 Proven Golden Rules of Customer Service for Long-Term Success
Wrapping Up
To partner with a trusted and reliable eCommerce outsourcing firm, you should always follow the correct approach. It helps you cover all the important requirements and undergo each factor to evaluate the service provider in and out. In addition, it also streamlines your entire process, saves time, and reduces the complexities, and you know what to do next. Thus, following the procedure leverages you with the right eCommerce call center agent outsourcing provider.