Outsourcing Guides
Delivering good customer support can be expensive, but outsourcing to South Africa can save money while maintaining quality.
Good quality customer support is increasingly being seen as a must-have for businesses, especially in the tech sector. If customers have a problem, they need it to be resolved as quickly as possible. Much of the impression people form about a business will stem from how it performs when things go wrong. Get it right and you’ll have loyal customers for years. Get it wrong and they will start looking towards your competitors.
Customer support, therefore, has moved from a basic function to the front and centre of business strategy. People expect problems to be resolved much more quickly with a personalised approach that puts them first. The trouble, for business, is that delivering best-in-class support can be expensive. You need enough people on the line to avoid a lengthy wait on hold, and you need to give those operators the tools and the resources to put problems right without a lengthy wait. At a time when businesses face financial pressures from all directions, making that affordable can be difficult, which is why many businesses are looking to outsource customer support to South Africa.
What makes good customer support
How businesses deliver support and the expectations of customers are changing. Traditionally, businesses sought to cut costs on the first point of contact. Operators were there to take calls, answer any simple, basic questions, and direct people to the best available operator.
To reduce costs, many businesses outsourced functions to places such as India, which offered plenty of people with sufficient expertise to resolve queries. However, because English was not their first language, communication often became difficult, leading to frustration and call abandonment.
Problems with customer support can be a breaking point in a relationship between a customer and their service provider. For example, if you have a problem with your internet and it takes ages to get it back up and running, you’ll be looking for alternative service providers pretty quickly.
Another way to reduce costs has been by using chatbots. These are designed to handle simple queries, taking the load off call handlers. However, for all the advances in conversational AI over recent years, it can’t replace the expertise, flexibility and attention to detail that only comes from a human operative.
For good expertise, therefore, customers need the following:
• A short answer time.
• Operators with good communication skills who can understand their problems and direct them to the right place.
• A friendly and personalised service.
• Their problem needs to be resolved as quickly as possible.
Businesses, on the other hand, need an affordable service, maintain the customer relationship and give the customer what they need.
The trouble is that the need to control costs often puts pressure on the desire to deliver first-class customer experiences. The good news is that by outsourcing customer support to South Africa, you can have the best of both worlds.
Benefits of outsourcing customer support in South Africa
South Africa provides an ideal customer support option in many ways.
Labour costs are more affordable than in places such as the UK, which means you can staff your support centre with more agents, reducing the need for customers to wait. Lower costs are useful for resource-constrained small businesses that might not have the funds to support a large-scale domestic operation. Shifting to South Africa helps you to scale up your operation without breaking the bank. This can help small companies with national footprints that can struggle to cope with the high volume of incoming support calls.
South Africa’s workforce is young, diverse and highly skilled, with expertise available across all areas of business. Whatever the needs of your business, there will be people with the skills you need to get problems resolved.
Time zones are a good match for places such as the UK and Europe, with only a couple of hours’ difference. Staff can be on hand during the working day, but could also be made available out of office hours when many people will need to make support calls.
For countries with a larger difference, such as Australia, South Africa can be an excellent option to deliver 24-hour customer support. During the working day, calls can be handled by a domestic call centre before switching over to South Africa to cover the night shift. Whenever your customers have a problem, day or night, someone can be on the other end of the line to help them.
South Africa’s technological infrastructure is up there with the best around the world. Superfast internet is the norm in most cities, and businesses will have robust governance procedures around issues such as cybersecurity and data protection. South Africa’s regulatory environment is similar to the West, with strong data protection similar to that in Europe, such as the GDPR. When moving sensitive customer data between South Africa and your domestic country, you can be reassured that all information will be handled responsibly.
Although labour costs might not be as low as in places such as India, South Africa’s language match, commitment to quality, and robust infrastructure enable it to outperform competitors in terms of the customer experience.
Hiring customer support teams in South Africa
To set up your customer support team in South Africa, you’ll need awareness of local regulatory requirements. South Africa has strict labour laws, and although most of the laws will be familiar to Western countries, they have their nuances. South Africa’s history also means there are additional requirements regarding equality and economic inclusion for minorities that might go beyond requirements in your domestic market. Unions also tend to be stronger, with better protection for workers.
As a foreign country, it can be easy to unintentionally breach some of these rules, which is why it pays to have a local support team of HR and legal experts. Employing these directly can be expensive, with the need to set up a local legal entity within South Africa. An alternative option is to use an Employer of Record (EOR). It will be the legal employer for tax purposes within South Africa, which means they hold all legal responsibilities and accountability.
As a business, you’ll benefit from their HR expertise to avoid compliance issues and protect yourself from legal liability. Working with an EOR is also much more affordable as it avoids the ned to set up a foreign subsidiary.
Outsourcing customer support to South Africa, therefore, can be a fast, convenient and affordable way to provide your customers with the first-class experiences they deserve. For more information, feel free to download a PDF of our handy guide.
