Does Customer Service Really Affect Your Bottom Line?

After you’ve spent the cash to outsource your hosting support, you may be wondering how important customer service really is to your company. While it’s easy to see the amount you’re spending have an effect on your bottom line, is this investment providing positive gains?

Customer service can have a positive or negative effect on the bottom line of any company. If your support is fast, efficient and reliable, it will affect the bottom line in a positive way, even though you may not see it right away. However, if you don’t offer good support and customer service, your bottom line may suffer.

Top Benefits of Outsourcing Customer Support

Before we get into the benefits of outsourcing your customer support, it’s important to note, not all support companies are created equal. Some provide phone support from other countries with agents that simply don’t care about your customers. Others provide full, 100% North American support agents with not only the ability to speak great English, but also the empathy necessary to show your customers they really do care.

You need to choose the right company for your support needs, if you want to reap the rewards. Here are some of the top benefits your bottom line will experience when you outsource customer support.

Reduced Costs

When comparing outsourced hosting support to in-house support, it’s like comparing a banana to a slab of beef. They aren’t even in the same category, such as the apple and orange, which are both fruits. While both options may be providing support, the cost of in-house support is astronomical compared to outsourced hosting support.

Outsourcing your support needs means you pay a certain amount per month, per ticket or per time spent on each ticket. You only have to pay for work done and not for someone just to be available. When you hire in-house support technicians, they require an hourly pay or salary. This can add up in a hurry and just a couple of support technicians may cost you far more than outsourcing your support to a team of experts.

More Support Hours

Again, comparing in-house to outsourced support, you’ll actually be able to compete with the big dogs when you outsource the support. Most smaller hosting companies cannot afford to keep support staff around 24/7, which is necessary to really compete. Your bottom line will suffer if you cannot provide full, around-the-clock support for your customers.

Experts for Support

Using a company with experts providing tech support for your customers goes a very long way. When a customer knows they are dealing with someone that doesn’t know how to help them, it will reflect poorly on you. This could cost you customers and have a negative effect on the bottom line.

However, when you outsource your support to a company with experts in the field, you gain reliability and your customers will notice. They will be happy to have an expert helping them with an issue instead of just anybody willing to look up an answer online and try to walk them through it.

Better Customer Retention

In the hosting industry, keeping your customers isn’t always about price. Most of the time, it’s about quality of service and support. With great customer support, you gain better customer retention.

It’s far less expensive to keep a current customer than to lose one and have to find a new customer. In addition, happy customers help to drive more sales through referrals, upgrades and positive reviews.

When you outsource your customer support, you gain all of these benefits to your bottom line and much more. Your bottom line will thank you since more efficient customer service leads to positive gains.