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Outsourcing email support is a common strategy among E-commerce businesses today. As companies look to scale and improve customer operations through outsourcing, it is crucial to choose an outsourcing partner that is both cost-effective and with highly trained personnel.
However, with so many BPO firms across the globe, finding the right company that delivers customer-focused email service and a quick response time can undoubtedly be a challenge.
Before outsourcing email support, examine the following factors to help you make a well-informed choice.
Why Do Companies Outsource Email Support?
Everyone who has written a support email is well aware that there is much more to it than just composing it and hitting send. Careful evaluation, wording, and excellent editing are needed to create an effective customer service email. It is worth doing because an ineffective email support strategy wastes your money and can cause a poor customer experience.
Outsourcing your email support service to a reliable BPO firm can bring about the following benefits.
Enhanced Production, Quality, and Delivery
Training your in-house email support team can be time-consuming and costly. Moreover, your team members might be able to contribute more to other aspects of your business. Your initiatives and resources can become cluttered and unproductive if your staff focuses on non-core functions that they are not trained to handle effectively.
Outsourcing your email support initiatives to a BPO firm with proven experience and expertise in the kind of campaign you want to run might be better.
Numerous outsourced email support teams rely on technologies and strategies to expedite production and eradicate mistakes via a quality audit (QA) testing approach.
These teams adhere to the quality standards necessary to compete in a crowded market. Most businesses cannot afford to train in-house email support teams to the same level of expertise as experienced outsourced email support teams.
Improved Response Rates
The effectiveness of an email support campaign is directly connected to your customer’s experience. Outsourcing experts analyze metrics such as first-rate resolution, customer surveys, customer satisfaction or CSAT, resolution rate and generate complete, well-written, customer-focused email support campaigns. A well-coordinated email support initiative will improve your business’s response rate, improving the overall customer experience.
Improved Email Deliverability
Have you integrated comprehensive A/B testing methods into your existing in-house email solution? How about checking for Outlook headers or text-less messages? Are you employing the newest technology to deploy filtering to meet changing ISP requirements?
Have you considered the additional issues that cause permission-based email blocking? These are just a few locations where your internal email solution may be failing to reach your clients. If you lack the necessary expertise and tools to design a truly defined and presented email support campaign, your customer service may suffer.
Outsourcing your email support services might help you expand your team’s skills. Competent staff will not only create confidence with your consumers but also with their ISPs, reducing the chance of spam complaints.
An expert crew knows all the newest risks to prevent your emails from being sent. Your outsourced email support teams should be able to assist you by enhancing email delivery and campaign management.
Cut Costs
Creating efficient in-house support teams can be costly. Instead of hiring a ready-made outsourcing company, in-house staff will need to be hired, trained, and managed.
This is why organizations conducting email support operations might face more significant skill-related expenditures. Consider the expenses of outsourcing the procedure. If you have not shopped for a quotation, now is the time.
Skills and Specialization
Outsourcing companies with years of experience can implement and manage email support campaigns for a wide variety of industries and consumer groups. They know when and how to use tactics and tools to execute campaigns successfully.
That is why you should consider outsourced email support services. A well-honed skill for increasing client targeting, personalization, and email message optimization is required.
Great email operations teams will share their expertise and experience, recommending vital best practices. For instance, showing how to use permission-based email lists, optimize HTML addresses, and include the most advanced client engagement technology. They understand the benefits of targeted, data-driven email marketing initiatives, resulting in continuous and sustained company development.
4 Factors to Consider Before Outsourcing Email
Although many companies outsource email services, it is not always the ideal option for your operation. You must think carefully about outsourcing vs. in-house. Below are the 4 main points to consider before outsourcing email support;
1. What Are Your Current Obstacles?
Regardless of its benefits, outsourcing is not a remedy. It will not magically fix the difficulties hindering your company’s postal operations. Consider outsourcing this service if your invoices/statements or marketing mailings are often late.
Delegating this costly problem to another team sounds sensible. This may help, but other internal issues may have caused the delays. Maybe your internal sales team could not interact with the customer service team responsible for the mailings, which explains their tardiness.
Maybe the skill set necessary to execute marketing mailings and understand USPS guidelines is lacking. Some printing, folding, and inserting equipment may be lacking.
You do not want to outsource your mail operation only to find that you are paying significantly higher prices while facing similar issues.
2. Will It Be Cheaper?
The main factor for outsourcing is cost. Outsourcing allows your company to produce the same amount of work in a cost-efficient and productive way.
However, there are several factors to consider when outsourcing, such as the company’s location. Are they based offshore or somewhere near, perhaps? Are the currently available resources within your BPO firm able to support new technology? Are there any extra costs for training, overtime, etc?
3. Do You Require Additional Space?
If your company’s space requirements have increased lately, you may want to consider outsourcing non-critical activities. Some establishments needed an additional headcount to support customer service operations, but the current setup might not allow for hiring additional resources.
Outsourcing may be just the answer.
4. Which Regulations Are You Required to Follow?
Depending on the business area in which you work, you may be required to adhere to a variety of different rules when it comes to outsourcing customer service operations. One thoughtless error could result in a data compliance breach carrying a significant penalty that causes many of your customers to search elsewhere for their needs.
To prevent this, regularly evaluate the requirements that apply to the data privacy aspects of your business before contracting with another organization. Rest confident that if you handle another person’s private information, the government has regulations governing how you – or a third party – must manage it.
See Email Outsourcing: The Quick Guide
What Are the Criteria for Evaluating Outsourcing Companies?
The capacity of your outsourcing partner to satisfy your needs must be the primary focus of your evaluation. Listed below are some factors to consider.
Establish Industry Knowledge
The depth of expertise and experience of a prospective outsourcing firm in your sector will help you decide whether a company is qualified to manage the activities and processes you want to outsource. To determine an outsourcing vendor’s level of expertise, you might inquire about the number of projects in which the firm has participated and the scope.
Additionally, the management team, project managers, and other team members who support you should have outstanding credentials and significant experience implementing business objectives.
Determine Technical Expertise
The BPO provider should be able to describe the process it employs to manage projects, monitor progress, and address difficulties.
Ideally, the outsourcing provider needs to excel in critical areas such as project management and quality control. Having an ongoing strategy helps guarantee that your organization can expect to receive the support it needs so that you can continue to provide customer services without interruption.
Inquire About Vendor References and Testimonials
Knowing the history of your potential outsourcing partner will give you a better grasp of the services the vendor can provide. Reach out to former and current clients about the extent and quality of the services and any difficulties encountered during the collaboration.
Alternatively, you might review any case studies available on the company’s website to get acquainted with the company’s mode of operation. If appropriate, request examples of finished projects or marketing prototypes to get a sense of the output you can expect after the service contract is signed.
Inspect Communication and Client Management Systems
To ensure effective communication with your partner, communicate your expectations in advance. Also, make sure you have a full contact roster so that everyone on the outsourced team is accessible through email, phone, or other messaging apps or software at the scheduled times.
If you operate in a separate time zone, your outsourcing provider must ensure working hours coincide to avoid communication gaps.
Additionally, you must agree on a single point of contact for your questions, comments, and concerns, guaranteeing an adequate flow of information between you and your outsourced workforce.
Check Infrastructure and Technologies
A technologically advanced service provider is better equipped to meet your business’s requirements and expectations. Your outsourcing partner’s IT infrastructure should contain:
- Cutting-edge hardware and software components.
- A robust network of phone and internet lines.
- Interaction with your technology.
Additionally, your vendor may need to acquire and implement other technologies tailored to your organization.
Compute The Costs
Fixed project expenses might result in significant savings. Therefore whenever feasible, inquire about this option with your prospective partner. Otherwise, you should investigate and challenge any hidden costs associated with project execution, employee training, and similar activities that could add additional charges to your operations.
Conduct a Personnel Evaluation
The success of your outsourced partnership is highly dependent on your outsourcing team’s employees and other elements. You might study your vendor’s recruiting rules and procedures to assist you in emphasizing the knowledge, discipline, technical and soft skills required by your organization.
Moreover, it may benefit your firm if your partner grasps and embraces your corporate culture, which encompasses your values, beliefs, vision or mission statement, and manner of communication.
Determine Financial Viability
When selecting a partner, determine whether or not the business is secure and capable of long-term viability. You want to be sure that this firm will be accessible as an outsourcing partner for the duration of your project.
With the advice included in this article, you can identify the finest onshore, nearshore, or offshore outsourcing partner that fits your criteria and is a good fit for your firm.
Find out: 4 Industry Tips For Outsourcing Customer Service
Bonus: Should I Outsource My Email Marketing?
One of the most attractive aspects of email marketing is its affordability. As your company expands, you can scale up or down your email marketing campaigns. Using an in-house team might involve more staff or technology. Of course, after hiring, there is always the possibility of underperformance.
Here are a few reasons why outsourcing email marketing will benefit you:
Email Marketing is Hard Work
Email marketing is expensive if you do not have a specialized marketing staff.
A monthly or weekly email is usually manageable. But if you are only doing that, you are losing out on a huge chance to enhance email conversions and revenue.
A good email marketing strategy takes hours of work and multiple touchpoints. More critically, it demands unique talents.
Today’s marketing emails may include HTML, GIFs, exceptional graphics, and unique text. Even essential emails may need complicated assets like bespoke CTA buttons or automated procedures.
If your email marketing plan includes inbound marketing, it should consist of analytics. Understanding your analytics takes a specific set of skills. For instance, you might need to ascertain why one email was opened while another was not.
Skills required for email marketing campaigns include:
- Graphic Design Coding
- Data Mining
- Marketing A/B Testing
Three to five persons may be required to execute a successful email marketing campaign. You may also need extra tools to send automated emails.
Email Marketing Automation Tools
Rather than sending one-time emails, automated emails are sent in response to data and user activity. For instance, if a contact submits a form on your website requesting access to a guide, you can instantly give them the direction.
Automation also allows for more creative lead nurturing. If a newsletter subscriber opens and converts, you may add them to a different workflow with special content. You might offer a free consultation, a demo, or some bottom-funnel information like a comparative white paper.
Several email marketing automation solutions are available, but some are pricey, and others have a steep learning curve. Developing automated procedures is sometimes challenging and time-intensive. Outsourcing email marketing can help you succeed with your emails since many outsourced marketing teams already have access to email marketing tools such as CRM.
Data Gives You an Advantage
Successful email marketing is data-driven.
Knowing how many people open and click on your emails may help you develop more robust campaigns in the future. If your previous email had a poor available rate, you might try changing the subject, preview text, or even the sender name to see if it improves the next time.
The content of your previous email may need to be revised if the click-through rate is poor. What is the email’s ultimate goal?
You do not want to clutter a webinar sign-up page with links to your blog entries. You will not want to distribute an offer to all of your blog followers if you offer it to existing customers.
Among the key metrics to monitor are:
- Rates
- Click-through Rate
- Unsubscribe Rate
- Bounces and Hard Bounces
- Churn Rate Delivery (Contact List Growth Over Time)
If you’re losing connections faster than you replace them, it’s time to restructure your email marketing and identify new sources of contacts.
Final Thoughts
Outsourcing email support services has been the go-to method for online businesses, particularly marketing companies and e-commerce businesses. An abundance of tools is available, making it easier for an agency with genuine competence to outsource all work. Outsourcing avoids complicating matters for organizations with limited resources.
It is critical to note that when outsourcing your email support operations to a BPO provider, you should verify their reliability and trustworthiness by both researching and inquiring about their previous campaign outcomes.
By selecting a reliable BPO partner, you can focus on the core competencies of your business without sacrificing customer experience.
