Outsourcing customer service is a surefire way to reduce customer service costs and edge closer to true 24/7 support - at least on the surface.
Outsourcing carries risk and when it's not managed correctly, you get horror stories. Ask the countless CX managers who say they would never outsource again.
- Dramatic drop in customer satisfaction scores.
- 'Lumpy' periods of agent efficiency.
- Bloated, inefficient support teams.
The catalyst for these issues? Poor onboarding and outsourcing management.
Letting an outsourcing company manage your outsourced support agents is a recipe for disaster.
The step-by-step guide that I used to onboard 10 outsourced support agents who consistently achieved 30 ticket updates per/hour at 94% customer satisfaction is below:
Start onboarding at the interview stages:
Actions: Communicate expectations in the interview stages and generate excitement.
- Communicate individual expectations and KPIs: Let candidates know what the expectation is. This might include metrics such as updates per/hour, solves per/hour, percentage of one-touch tickets, and CSAT or NPS.
- Communicate team expectations and KPIs: Communicate the standard you hold the team to. These are metrics that you should be proud to communicate publicly - it might be: 95% CSAT, 95% SLA, and a team efficiency of 20 updates per hour.
- Provide an overview of the company: Share your brands best work, what it stands for, where it's heading and who's on the team - be infectiously proud - it will rub off on outsourced hires.
Host a training session:
Actions: Book a 1-2 hour live training session.
- Tag a list of tickets for everyone to work through: Have agents answer tickets that run through critical elements of your standard operating procedure (SOP) and tech stack.
- Stay on call the entire time: Hold their hand in the first half, working through tickets together before letting them continue as it were a shift. Everyone stays on call, muted, until a question is asked and worked through together.
- Cover the entire tech stack: Ensure that every agent answers a ticket that forces them to work not just in your customer service platform, but also in Shopify, your WMS, ERP and any other tool they need to know how to use.
- Invite internal leaders: Turn it into a development opportunity - you can even let them lead the training session if they are ready. This quickens relationship building between your internal team and outsourced agents and signals a growth path for your new hires.
Their first two weeks:
Actions: Set the bar high and be there to support.
- Hold a 'welcome' meeting:?Have a team meeting where everyone on board can meet and get to know each other quickly. Communicate that outsourced hires are treated the same as internal hires. They will then expect themselves to perform just as well as one.
- Set aggressive weekly goals:?Be aggressive with where you want your new hires to be at the end of each week. I like to set an update per/hour KPI that is 50% lower than the internal teams by the end of the first week. At the end of the second week, we expect new hires to hit the team KPI.
- Always in VC: Rotate this responsibility, but always have an internal team member available in a voice channel should a new hire want to join and ask a question. Best to invite calls rather than messages in the first two weeks.
- End-of-week review: At the end of each week catch up with the outsourced team and discuss how things are going and answer any questions. Look at everyone's performance on call to signal that you take expectations seriously.
The following two weeks:
Actions: Stop hand holding and start challenging.
- Respond to questions with links to your SOP: You should have an SOP written for all possible customer tickets. Move new hires to leaning on this rather than other peoples time - when a question comes, link them to the relevant page and give them the opportunity to figure it out themselves.
- Review challenging tickets & scenarios: Cover on call all the complex tickets that you see come in more rarely. Speak to your SOPs and encourage the new hires to tackle these if they feel confident. Signal trust.
- Conduct a survey:?Collect anonymous feedback on which tickets challenge them, which of the SOPs are unclear, how they rate the onboarding experience, and what specific training would be helpful.
- End-of-month team meeting: Host an end-of-month team meeting, shout out your new hires' progress, and share some appreciation for everyone hitting their goals.
Lose the poor performers:
If someone drops below your expectations, reach out and ask if they need any support or extra training - let them know that you've noticed they're struggling to keep up with the rest of the team. Be understanding and sympathetic.
If someone is repeatedly not meeting your expectations, handle it sooner rather than later and rotate them off the team.
You are paying an outsourcing company for their pool of candidates - leverage it, you do not need to settle for underperformance.
It might be frustrating to hear, but getting through one or two bad eggs to end up with a longstanding team of high performers is worth its weight in gold.
I had to replace three outsourced employees before we had a team of ten high performers. Every week these outsourced agents achieved:
- 94% customer satisfaction.
- 30 updates per/hour on average.
- And they were great cultural fits that were fun to work with.
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