Unlocking Business Growth: The Power of Outsourcing in Customer Success Management
Businesses and consumers alike have a wealth of options at their fingertips. The importance of a well-run customer success (CS) organization is vital to keeping your customers loyal and supporting business growth goals. According to a recent Salesforce survey, 73% of consumers will abandon a brand after three or fewer negative customer service experiences. This means customer success leaders are under pressure to consistently analyze their talent pool and operations to ensure their teams are running effectively while meeting demands from leadership to reduce costs, right size teams, and streamline operations. An effective and efficient CS organization must balance the broad strategy of business objectives with day-to-day management of the CS team.
When teams are strapped for resources or under pressure to reduce costs, one might consider the possibility of outsourcing. It does not mean the business function is less important, but it opens the door for opportunity to be nimbler in response to changing market conditions and savvier with expenses. An effective outsourcing strategy will streamline and optimize across the department.
Attracting and retaining talent in-house is expensive
The role of a customer success manager is broad. They need a well-rounded skill set: technical expertise to understand your company’s processes from onboarding to implementation, personable skills to build relationships and trust, and analytical skills to anticipate customer’s needs and understand their goals. You might be thinking there is no way outsourced talent can get as ingrained in the process as an in-house team to properly serve our clients. In fact, it can be daunting to think an outsourced team could successfully deliver the same experience as one trained in-house.
The importance of finding the right outsourcing partner makes all the difference. You don’t want to just offshore your team, you want to trust the talent they source can meet the standards of your business. A reputable outsourcing firm will create the foundation with you to attract and retain top talent that supports your objectives, reduces costs and frees up time to focus on core business objectives. Further, this model offers ease to scale up or down seasonally or based on economic landscape and eliminate redundancy in tasks and resources.
Offsetting the time and cost with a firm that acts as an extension of your company is not much different than the approach your CS managers take with your clients. It’s about anticipating needs and always prioritizing the client’s bottom line.
Automate and measure
When you look at day-to-day operations, do you find there is a lot of time spent and wasted on redundant or time-consuming tasks that offer limited impact? By outsourcing or automating these activities, companies can focus on their core competencies.
According to a recent Gartner survey, 70% of large organizations in the US will implement infrastructure automation by 2025. Whether that is in-house or outsourced depends on your goals and strategy, but either way workload automation is essential when trying to scale. It also offers the opportunity to be more consumer-centric and provide a more personal experience.
Another challenge facing customer success leaders is how to effectively measure customer satisfaction. By leveraging data analytics, companies can gain insights into customer behavior and preferences. By measuring key metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Effort Score (CES), companies can identify areas of improvement and implement targeted solutions to enhance customer satisfaction. Outsourcing analytics services can give organizations access to professionals and technologies with a deep understanding of analytics that provide recommendations and drive business growth that may otherwise be too expensive to run in-house.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing
Outsourcing is a strategic initiative that requires thoughtful planning prior to adopting, but the solution doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Many organizations are able to find the right mix of in-house of outsourced resources aligned to their unique goals and operations.
In today’s competitive business environment, investing in customer success is critical to long-term success. Consider the cost savings and access to specialized expertise that may not be available in-house. By leveraging both in-house and outsourced resources, along with technology, companies can improve operations efficiency and drive greater customer satisfaction.
JDA TSG helps customer success teams align people, process and technology to ensure stellar customer experiences. With JDA TSG, your outsourced team feels like its your own.
We are heading to the Customer Success Festival in New York City on March 14th. If you are headed there too, let’s find time to meet.