Live Chat Outsourcing: What Is It & Is It Worth It?
By
Jeff Mosler
December 28, 2021
Are you considering live chat outsourcing? Follow along to learn more about what it is and why it might be the best solution for your business.
Live chat is a fast-growing customer service support channel allowing customers to virtually chat with support staff in real-time. As opposed to AI chat or chatbots, customer service agents—real humans—interact with a potential customer or an existing client via a text chat interface available on a company’s website.
Of course, maintaining a live chat support service requires an investment in personnel, chat software, and procedures. Instead of managing all of these elements in-house, countless businesses are using website chat outsourcing to improve efficiency, boost customer satisfaction, free up in-house employees, and invest in customer service wisely.
In this article, we’ll explore live chat outsourcing and discuss why it might be an excellent solution for your business.
What Is Live Chat?
Live chat is a web-based platform that customers can use to contact a business. Clients—current or potential—may reach out to a business via live chat for a variety of reasons:
Seeking support or troubleshooting for a product or service
Asking questions about products or services before a purchase
Making a purchase
Reaching out to a specific employee
Requesting information about hiring or internship opportunities
Employees—or customer support agents, in the case of live chat support service outsourcing—interact with customers in real-time instead of leaving them in the hands of chatbots or other automated systems that can leave callers feeling isolated or underserved.
Why Outsource Live Chat?
Why might a business outsource website chat functions and what are the benefits of live chat? Let’s flesh out some of the reasons why outsourcing your live chat might provide optimal customer service and ensure excellent client relations.
#1 Improve Efficiency
Live chat outsourcing is more efficient than in-house web chat for a variety of reasons:
In-house employees’ primary duties can fall to the wayside while they provide customer support, reducing their productivity.
Call center or chat support agents are highly trained to provide standardized customer service.
Call centers operate 24/7/365, alleviating client requests during peak hours and providing customer service even when business hours are over.
Adding an additional channel to your business’s customer support protocols can burden employees with other primary tasks—R&D, fabrication, accounting, or operations—and reduce the amount of time they have to complete the tasks they were hired to do.
In contrast, outsourcing live chat support services puts live chat in the hands of the professionals, improving efficiency.
#2 Boost Customer Satisfaction
As customer service shifts to accommodate emerging digital tools, experts observe two phenomena:
Millennial and Gen-Z customers display increased phone anxiety, driving them toward other remote customer service tools like email, SMS text, and live chat.
Even though younger client populations rely upon digital tools for customer support, automated tools like AI chat, self-service websites, and mobile app support guides alienate them and leave them feeling underserved.
Live chat responds to both of these trends—it allows customers to interact with a business on their own terms if they’re not fond of phone calls, and it gives them the real human interaction they crave when seeking help. A live chat outsourcing service can boost your customer satisfaction during the support process by meeting the needs of growing younger client bases.
#3 Free Up In-House Employees
As a business grows, so does its customer base, and so does its need for robust client relations resources. Small businesses rarely employ specific customer service representatives, and as they grow, investing in operations or production staff simply makes more sense—more clients leads to more demand for their products or services, and meeting that need increases profit.
By investing in call center services or chat support outsourcing, business owners add a new channel of customer communication without sacrificing current staff functions or hiring new employees.
A live chat outsourcing service frees up in-house employees and company leadership to scale up their primary task load while a separate, remote team handles customer service efforts.
#4 Make a Smart Investment
Business growth often requires an investment in:
More advanced software for production, accounting, and other functions
Larger physical space for computers or machinery
New personnel and their training
Improved and expanded customer relations procedures
With other important investment priorities during the growth period, it simply makes financial sense for businesses to outsource web chat. Live chat requires chat software and manpower to both monitor customer queries or requests and create standardized scripts and procedures.
Instead of investing in all of these services separately and relying upon trial and error, businesses can rely upon the professional experience of highly trained call centers, getting more bang for their buck.
Outsource Your Business’s Live Chat Efforts with Nexa
Live chat can provide improved efficiency, better customer experience, and increased customer satisfaction, reduced staffing concerns, and a sound investment in client relations.
As your business grows, your daily operations will scale up with it. For customer support channels that meet the needs of your growing company, Nexa is here to help.
Our team of expert call center agents provides 24/7/365 omnichannel support via phone, live chat, email, SMS texting services, and more. We have the digital tools, manpower, and training infrastructure to meet your clients’ needs day and night, leaving you to do what you love—running a successful, growing company.
Nexa Receptionists Holdings, LLC (“Nexa”) welcomes Pravin Chandrasoma as its first-ever Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for its two brands: Nexa and Alert Communications.
