Guest Post: 6 Ways BPOs Can Boost Customer Experience

This week, we feature an article by Baphira Wahlang Shylla, a digital marketer at Knowmax, a SaaS company that provides knowledge management solutions for various industries that are seeking to improve their customer service metrics. She shares how BPOs can enhance your customer experience.

With rapidly evolving technology in today’s digital age, the BPO industry is bombarded with opportunities to improve customer experience (CX) in ways unthinkable a few decades earlier. From self-service portals to omnichannel support options and knowledge management systems, BPOs have greatly enhanced customer service.   

Despite all this dynamic change, one thing has always remained constant: people’s love for convenience. This makes it all the more crucial to delivering a top-notch customer experience, otherwise, people are sure to take their business elsewhere! 

According to Statista (2021), 57 percent of companies use BPOs so that they can concentrate on core issues and operations of their businesses and minimize costs. BPOs not only help you win customers, but they are a proven method of generating revenue as well. In India alone, the IT BPO industry generated around $154 million in revenue in 2017-2018, according to Brandongaille. 

Let us look at six ways in which BPOs can increase customer experience for your business.  

1. Self-Service for Timeless Customer Support  

In today’s world, with people’s attention spans becoming shorter by the day, resolving issues quickly and efficiently is every company’s goal. Consumers not only want ever-ready solutions to their problems, they also want them with the least amount of friction. A report by Harvard Business Review shows that 81 percent of all customers opt for self-service solutions before contacting a live representative. 

This is why most BPO companies opt for the self-service option, as most customers have now come to expect it. Self-service portals provide the option of easily and readily accessible information anytime and anywhere, irrespective of the call center’s opening hours.  

Self-service channels like FAQs, guides, and a knowledge base for self-service allow the customer the autonomy to help themselves. It also allows them to choose the medium they are most comfortable with, thus empowering the customers. 

2. Leverage the Power of Knowledge Management System 

The current key aim of the BPO industry is to provide high-quality service to both its clients and customers. With the use and integration of knowledge management software in their operations, this technological upgrade has revolutionized the way BPOs provide satisfactory customer experience. 

For example, it can take up to 5-6 weeks to provide training to new agents at a call center. Moreover, the high annual turnover rate of up to 26 percent of permanent agents does not make the case any better. It only results in excess wastage of resources and capital for the company only for the agents to leave in a few months.  

Instead, by using an efficient knowledge management system, the center can reduce its agent training period up to 40-50 percent. By using a Natural Language Search (NLS) to empower agents against a central knowledge base repository, the agents can have ready access to basic knowledge and resolve queries promptly.  

3. Omnichannel Customer Support Options  

The BPO industry is dynamic and constantly evolving, with many organizations realizing the benefits of omnichannel customer support. The 21st-century customer is spoiled with many channels to choose from- chatbots, self-service portals, social media and guides, and traditional phone calls.  

While some customers might prefer the around-the-clock self-service portals, others appreciate the traditional telephonic service. Often, the channel used by the customers also depends on their problem. For instance, many customers prefer direct contact with the agent when resolving financial inquiries. 

It is to be noted that with this multi-channel presence, the BPOs need to be careful that all channels provide quality and consistent answers and solutions to customer doubts and queries.  

4. Well-structured and Optimized CX Analytics  

Organizing data systematically is one of the fundamental priorities of any company in order to enhance customer experience. The more well-mapped the customer journey toward your brand, the easier it is to plan and implement customer experience strategies, increase customer engagement and maximize conversions.  

However, the problem is that not all companies are equipped to deal with this information on-site. This is where BPOs can come to your rescue. By outsourcing the work relating to CX analytics, BPOs can delve deeper into tapping the requirements of customers as well as implement effective strategies to meet their needs.  

By tracking the right metrics, BPOs can also measure the quality of their support and work on improving their service accordingly. The key here is to focus on the data in order to implement targeted and mindful improvements faster.  

5. Successful Remote Partnerships  

Besides saving costs and advanced technologies that BPOs employ, they also bring the competitive edge of global collaboration round-the-clock. With the work-from-home culture changing the way people work, engaging outsourced remote teams can change the approaches toward customer experience. 

For instance, customer experience outsourcing gives you the edge of working with top customer experience specialists and agents, provides multiple layers of tech security for remote teams, minimizes data breaches, and all-day service, removing any delay in conflict resolution.  

It’s a win-win overall as BPOs not only increase the company’s productivity and revenues, but it is also very customer-centric and ensures a positive customer experience. 

6. Call Center Scripts for Support Productivity 

Call center agents are expected to handle all sorts of customer queries and complaints. It is impossible to predict every possible interaction that could arise between the agent and the customer. However, using a flexible, well-thought-out call center scripting tool will surely enhance productivity and prepare the agents to handle customer-related issues effectively.  

Scripts are also a great way to reduce the training costs & time of new agents as they can use the scripts to learn the processes as well as use them as a guide whenever they need to. This is also a possible remedy to reduce agent turnover, as scripts reduce the pressure of memorizing for the call agents.   

This would, in turn, make them more confident while handling customer problems, enhancing the overall agent and customer experience.  

Conclusion  

Customer experience is all about catering to the customer’s needs, ensuring that their user journey is as smooth as possible. BPOs can go a long way to ensure that your customers are provided with top-notch service through some of the ways mentioned above. They also help the client maximize their productivity by focusing on core issues, reducing costs, and boosting sales. 

Baphira Wahlang Shylla is a member of the digital marketing team at Knowmax, a SaaS company that provides knowledge management solutions for various industries that are seeking to improve their customer service metrics. Other than her passion for digital marketing, Baphira is an avid reader who dabbles every now and then in painting and digital art.