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Myths and Misconceptions of Outsourcing: Are They Real or False?

As many businesses are now operating online, some still bat their eyes at hiring outsourced help for online businesses. However, while people have their own opinions, facts that debunk myths and misconceptions about outsourcing are out there.

Myth #1: Outsourcing is only for big companies

False. Any business, big or small, can outsource assistants and other employees. However, since the pandemic shut down most physical businesses, most of them have no choice but to fully operate online to continue their work. Because of this, more and more establishments are constantly seeking help from the internet to hire virtual assistants and customer service representatives.

Outsourcing is also the perfect solution for small and medium enterprises with a limited budget to search, screen, and hire new workforce members. The process is much cheaper, and the talent pool is much wider.

Myth #2: You cannot control your business

False. People tend to doubt having outsourced team members as they think it can cause non-productivity in the team caused by language barriers, time zones, etc. On the contrary, you can fully control how your business goes about, and third-party providers of outsourced work have no other job but to provide you with your needed team members.

Also, the tasks you set are entirely dependent on you, and your team members only have to follow what you give them. Thus, you are in control the entire time, and all you have to do is set goals that your team members have to do for a certain time frame.

Myth #3: Outsourcing is inefficient

False. Having outsourced help is efficient in that your business is running 24/7. In addition, you can have tasks done while you sleep when you outsource team members from different time zones.

Some platforms can contribute to task tracking so you can keep tabs on what your team has accomplished at a certain time. Video conferencing and team analysis can also be done to ensure 100% productivity from your team.

Myth #4: Outsourcing is an expense

False. Rather than being an expense, think of it as an investment that can benefit you in the long run. For example, hiring outsourced team members can help you cut down administrative costs intended for seeking, screening, hiring, and even training.

Having an in-house department will save you a lot of money rather than hiring a business processor to outsource services. Less payroll, less office space, and less money spent on extra equipment and office materials.

Myth #5: You can’t expect quality work when you outsource

False. When you outsource your team, you are faced with an endless pool of talented and skilled individuals that can help your business to good. Because of this, work becomes more productive and more efficient. You are guaranteed high-quality work when you can hire skilled professionals who can assist you in your goals for your business.

When it comes to outsourcing team members, facts don’t lie. You are assured of efficient and productive work when you hire offshore people for your team. The success of your business is a team effort anyway, so as long as you can communicate your goals well, then the members of your team are sure to follow you.

Managing Time Zone Differences: Outsourcing and Customer Service

Many business owners have taken their businesses fully online, with all employees working remotely. One strategy that business owners have recently been using is hiring outsourced team members for their business.

As customer service and other administrative tasks have been delegated to remote workers across many different time zones, entrepreneurs may experience some difficulties with outsourcing and customer service.

Outsourced members can be hired directly by your company or provided by a third-party provider. Although it may be a big investment, it does have its advantages that can benefit your business. For example, hiring outsourced employees from different time zones can open your customer service lines 24 hours a day as you have employees covering different shifts.

If you’re still planning on outsourcing team members or having a hard time adjusting to this setup, it’s not an unsolvable problem. It may not be easy to manage a team that doesn’t have the same time zone as you, but there are some things you can do to effectively handle your team.

Set clear goals for your team to follow

From the beginning, make it clear to your team what outcomes you expect from them at the end of their shifts. Set a schedule and delegate tasks as early as possible to leeway for questions and concerns. This way, they have some instructions to follow while you are not yet available to address their concerns.

Goals and tasks can be assigned per day or week. Give a clear and specific deadline to lessen confusion among your employees.

There should be overlap hours

For every task, there are bound to have queries. So, make sure you set overlapping hours to accommodate your onshore and offshore team’s concerns. Not only will this expedite the meeting times, but it will maximize your team’s time in doing their actual tasks rather than repeating the same inquiries that the other team might have already raised.

Assigning a specific time for all onshore and offshore employees will also help productivity as less time is given for team meetings, and effective communication is ensured. It will also help with work turnovers and better communication.

Use reliable communication tools and platforms

As businesses have fully transferred online and are outsourcing help, it is only fitting that communication platforms have evolved to cater to these specific needs. Online platforms allow you to manage teams from different time zones, allow for video conferencing, and can easily be used by your employees.

These platforms also have team scheduling, planning, file sharing, timesheets, and task trackers. In addition, there are apps like monday.com, Smartsheet, Forecast, Anydo, Todoist and others that you can use for this. In this way, you and your team ensure effective communication and productivity. Outsourcing and customer service can be difficult for you to handle in the beginning, but you can immediately tell how it can positively impact your business. With the right tools and a great team, managing time zone differences will not be a problem for anyone. Reduce your business costs, expand your coverage, and efficiently carry out your work with the help of your outsourced team.

Cultivating A Customer-Centric Culture

We are in an era where customers and employees drive the success of businesses.
Once you put the customer at the centre of everything you do as a company and without customer–centric employees you won’t have success.

We are in an era where customers and employees drive the success of businesses. Once you put the customer at the centre of everything you do as a company and without customer-centric employees you won’t have success. You cannot have a customer if you do not have employees who have the customer at the forefront of everything they do

Companies who drive a customer-centric culture and who view their customers as the heart of the business will always perform above expectations. They make ‘customer satisfaction their main focus. Customer satisfaction brings meaning to the company, forms the basis for internal and external communication and is a driving force for action.

Organisations should seek feedback from customers and share it with the customer team to continually improve customer experience.

Creating a Customer-Centric Culture

Great customer experience has become a distinguishing feature for companies and an important aspect to gain customer loyalty. Organisations with customer-centric cultures have a clear understanding of how their unique value proposition can make a significant difference to customers. Research, data processing, and customer experience analysis means companies can tailor the experience to their customers and build stronger, longer-lasting relationships. Companies that focus on their customers can provide a positive customer experience throughout their journey.

Organisations with customer-centric cultures have a clear understanding of how their unique value proposition can make a significant difference to customers. Customer-oriented companies place the customer at the centre of their actions and ensure that they make decisions that think first about the customer and the impact of those decisions on the customer.

How to Build a Customer-Centric Culture

Empowering Employees

Employees should know that customer satisfaction is the responsibility of everyone employed by the company. The leader should be leading and empowering their employees to create a highly engaging workforce establishing customer-centric culture.

Customer Value Proposition

The company defines the value from the customer’s perspective for a customer-centric approach. This captivates the customers to choose and buy your services or products.

Customer’s Feedback

Many companies conduct surveys annually to collect feedback from their customers to understand their needs and requirements. Interacting with the customers and amending the changes suggested deepens the customer’s trust and advocacy. These surveys cannot be tokenism, they must be genuine and acted on.

Closing the loop

Customers face positive as well as negative experiences and should give feedback accordingly. Tackling negative feedback has a great impact on the company’s success.

Sometimes, businesses need to make hard decisions, it’s these hard decisions that can be the turning point for many businesses. A company’s growth can be traced back to when they decided on a customer-centric approach. The growth of management and employees nurtures the growth of a company.

However, it must start at the top. Management must drive this approach and live and breathe it every single day.

Customer satisfaction is the key to success. Cultivating the customer-centric culture will drive you in maintaining old customers and equally importantly, obtain new ones which in turn provides sustained ongoing success.

3 Signs That You Need To Outsource

Allocating your resources in the right manner is what leads to growth. Running a successful business requires carrying out a thousand and one different tasks efficiently. As the world comes through the covid pandemic many businesses have come to realise working from home or remotely can work.

Do you need all that current office space? Do you need so many staff members in the office?

Outsourcing doesn’t only reduce your operating costs, it can increase productivity.

Yes, two birds, one stone.

New contract? Need more staff.

Your business is on the right track if you’re securing new clients, however, it does come with some concerns. By getting new clients on-board, you also need additional staff, yep, all those little annoying and time-consuming tasks like, increase advertising on job sites, interviews, second interviews, training, attrition, this all adds up to one thing. Increased costs. This is the time to consider outsourcing a team that can handle simple but time-consuming tasks like data entry, cold-calling, follow-ups even your telephone sales team.

Time to reconsider all that office space?

With the work from the home culture that was forced upon us during the pandemic, we all agree that having big office spaces is nothing but a waste of rent money that can be saved and put to better use. A bigger team naturally results in a bigger office space. Now it’s proven that staff can work remotely, why not consider outsourcing? You don’t need the extra office space. Moving into smaller premises where your core team can work efficiently is the smart thing to do. It is cheaper and functional as well.
You’re looking to expand without increasing costs?

Expanding and growing your business sounds great, hiring new staff isn’t always an option. Apart from the process of recruiting and training new employees, it is extremely costly and leads to an increase in OPEX in your business.

Smart decisions need to be made when it comes to financial management. With outsourcing, you can hire skilled and dedicated professionals who can help you take care of tasks, from data entry, cold calling, and inbound customer service. Outsourcing these specialist tasks allow you to concentrate on what you do best. Run your business.

My Concierge Perth is an Australian-based outsourcing company that provides Australian and international businesses with all the support to enable them to reduce costs, increase productivity with all the support from our Australian office and our overseas locations. With our expert call centre sales team and extraordinary customer service teams, we dedicate 100% to achieving your desired outcomes.

If you need to find a solution for your customer service or call centre, visit our website today and we’ll find a solution that’s right for your business. Check out our services on our website https://myconciergeperth.com.au/services/

Four Important Practices Every Outsourcing Company Should Follow

Great client support can be hard to accomplish. Client care agents go through broad and continuous preparation to sharpen their abilities, and it isn’t something that comes effectively to everybody. Customer cate service is training that delegates. Fortunately, there are dynamic advances that these companies can take to ensure that customer loyalty remains high.

Here are four client support practices which a decent outsourcing company should use:

1) Listening
Many people who call a customer care number are generally not having a satisfactory experience with the service. Pressures can be intense, and at times a customer is simply hoping to vent their dissatisfactions. It is important for good client support organisations to prepare their agents on listening to their customers. If a disappointed client feels heard, it can go far in diffusing the whole situation.

2) Personalisation
Nobody likes feeling as though they are conversing with a machine. It is significant for client service reps to rapidly build a rapport with their guests, to promise them that there is a human being on the other side. A speedy method to build steady rapport is personalisation. An agreeable tone, using the customer’s name, and light tone help to cause the whole customer service experience closer to home.

3) Collection of Data
A decent representative ought to be continually gathering information from the customer they’re in contact with. Note-taking is an incredible method to accomplish this. As the call advances, the client support rep may have to call for something the customer might have recently referred to. Rather than asking them to re-depict their concern, it is better if the rep has the data directly before them in their notes. This will both settle on the decision more effective and will cause the customer to feel as though they are truly being paid attention to.

4) Managing expectations
It can be tempting to give a guarantee to a customer that their problem is 100% solvable. But, the inability to follow through on a guarantee like that will exacerbate things for everybody. It is necessary for a client care rep to oversee guest assumptions. Guarantees and assurances can never be made. A client service rep should vow to do their best to tackle an issue, and that’s it. Promising positive results is a tricky incline that leads to disappointment.

Looking for tailored call centre and cold calling services? MyConciergePerth is here to help you. Outsource your non-core functions to us, while you concentrate on your business.

Visit our website and check out our services: https://myconciergeperth.com.au/

You can call us on 0407 770 238 or email us at info@myconciergeperth.com.au

Are Outsourced Chat Support Services The Best Way To Reach Millennials?

Millennials are part of a significant chunk of the customer base in today’s technologically advanced world. Companies charm them with young and energetic advertisements and promotions through social media. But one thing that isn’t generally on the list of companies is chat support.

In the present times, the worth of voice support is receding. Although it is an important part of client care and specialised technical support, it is not as essential as it used to be in the past. Running a voice-based call centre alone is insufficient. You additionally need to use outsourcing chat support services for making the ideal progress for your business.

There is an emerging need for high-quality chat support services. It is essential that you run email and chat support services to reach out to millennials. You can opt for outsourcing services like outsource email support services or standalone back office support services, but it will divert your focus from your core project. You should not invest your time, money and energy where it is not necessary. The most ideal approach to execute chat support services is by a vendor with other practical experience and expertise.

A live chat support software, also known as a live chatbot, is the most important aspect of a Live Chat process. Directing the chats accurately to various departments is the most essential yet a very basic necessity. You also have the choice to personalise it for pre-made and fixed responses, notifications if you haven’t responded to any messages and a ton of other basic highlights. If the software is above average in quality, you will be able to conduct a chat support process that will be cherished by millennials because contacting you for doubts will become easy and hassle-free, and it’ll take no time.

Analytics can assist you in areas where you can further improve the efficiency of your Live Chat. For instance, analytics can give you a brief idea about the productivity of your agents. Also, analytics can figure out the vast amount of information flowing through your contact centre. They can also produce insights, which may prove to help make future business strategies.

Creating A Brand Identity Before Starting Up A New Business

The number of startups and businesses are increasing year after year. To make a place for your brand in the market, you need to do something that other businesses are not doing.

What is it that you should do to stand out against your competitors?

There are marketing strategies to succeed; however, startups can build a success story within a year by creating a strong brand identity for itself.

Building Brand Identity

A strong brand identity triggers the right thoughts, emotions, and ideas in consumers. They view your services and products positively and appealingly. This increases customer loyalty. Once the brand trust and loyalty is built, consumers are ready to take a risk and try out your new products, thus increasing sales.

However, before you start investing in marketing, you must first ensure if your brand is viable and available. There is no point in building a brand image if it infringes the registered trademarks of another business or may cause harm to the reputation of the brand.

Hence, before building a brand image, get advice on the viability of their marks, logos, and product identity to avoid legal issues later.

Grow your Startup Online

The internet is a powerful medium for your business to gain brand exposure and visibility. Research shows that 94% of the consumers conduct some kind of online research before purchasing, and 52% of that research is on product review sites. Hence, your brand must have a solid online presence.

Create an informative and easy-to-navigate website. Focus on SEO. Do not cut any corners, as consumers make a judgment of a brand based on its online appearance.

Widen your visibility and awareness by building your network through social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so on. Blogs and client newsletters also build the authority and credibility of the brand.

The basic idea is to get as much positive exposure as possible.

Live up to your Brand

Live up to your word and expectations of the consumers. Users are 50% more likely to give negative feedback if something is wrong with the product or service.

It is very vital to keep up your brand reputation by providing good products and services.

Creating a brand identity requires time and effort. You need to give your 100% and have undivided attention. Considering you’re just starting as a business venture, there may be other non-core business functions that may distract you.

To focus entirely on the core business functions, hiring a personal concierge may be of benefit to you. Check out our concierge services now.

5 Benefits Of Hiring Outsourced Bookkeeping Services

The advances in technology have made it possible to hire outsourced bookkeeping services that have higher expertise at lower rates. This enables running your business smoothly and turning more profit.

5 Benefits of Hiring Outsourced Bookkeeping Services

Here are the top 5 advantages of outsourcing a bookkeeper:

1. More Time

Does accounting take a lot of your time? Hiring an outsourced accountant will save you the time and trouble, allowing you to focus on the important functions of the business. The stress of taxing can be overwhelming and distract you from main tasks like customer service and brand visibility. Also, having an in-house accountant can at times, raise conflict of interest.

2. Save Money

If you are just at the start of a new business, money can be tight. You require solid employees at low costs. By outsourcing accountants, you can hire qualified employees at lower rates. You can save time, resources and have increased productivity as not much training would be required. You pay for what you need.

3. Expertise on your side

When you outsource your bookkeeping to a highly skilled team, your requirements will always be met on time and effectively but the person with the right skill level.

4. Focused Staff

Working in-office amongst other departments and hustle can be distracting. This can lead to unproductivity. By having an outsourced bookkeeping team, they are free of distractions and work off-site, in turn focussing solely on your business.

5. Access to the latest tools

Bookkeeping firms use the most advanced technology. These tools are often very expensive and can cause a budget load. When you outsource bookkeepers, your business can benefit from these tools. By outsourcing, you gain access to these tools as part of the service.

In a nutshell, outsourced bookkeeping services can save you time, effort, and money while giving qualified experts. Contact us now!

What is the Point of Scale and How to Choose the Best POS System for your Small Business?

A POS or Point of Scale system automates buying and selling by an electronic cash register. It uses artificial intelligence including a scanner, printer, calculator, card reader, and other related hardware.

In short, it is a system that captures sales while streamlining other administrative tasks. With the correct POS system, it can insert easy, efficient, and cost-effective results. Otherwise, your business operations may encounter complexities.

How does POS work?

Make Sales: The software takes commands to filter the items in its inventory library and makes the sale.

For Analysis: The advanced POS systems can also give reports about sales, customer engagement, inventory management, and account maintenance.

Make Payment: It ensures secure routing of funds to the integrated bank account after each sale.

How to choose the best POS system for your business?

There is a wide variety of POS systems. There are varied combinations of exclusive and ordinary features. The fusion of peripherals, terminal, and POS software translates into a greater understanding of what and who you are selling.

Hence, you should research thoroughly and have a crystal clear image of your business goals before choosing a POS system. Apart from that, you should also consider the below factors while choosing a POS system for iPad or desktop:

1. Installation

Consider the installation time and cost of set up. The equipment that you require needs IT pros to guide you on the operation of the system and what all features exist. The installation may take a day. However, the comprehensibility of their functions and efficiency needs a certain time.

2. Routing Cost

The routing payment cost includes the computation of the percent of sales per sale bank charges. Accordingly, the payment processes. For instance, a person purchases a commodity worth $10. The swiping machine will route the transaction to the customer’s bank. The bank will credit the sale’s amount in the merchant’s bank account. Besides, it deducts the requisite routing payment cost, which can be 1% or more.

3. Peripheral cost/ Rental fee

Peripherals are the hardware, like printer, card reader, scanner, etc. It configures a transaction. The entrepreneur can buy them. Alternatively, he can also rent a POS system. Accordingly, the fee structure will vary.

4. Maintenance

A robust POS system has a composition of related software. It can be software to support countertop POS, retail POS, and mobile POS systems. Each system has different maintenance and upgrading charges.

5. PCI DSS Compliance

If your company accepts credit card payments, you must look into the PCI compliance. It prioritises security through payment processing, connecting systems, and managing data.

6. Level Of Mobility

This determines the flexibility of peripherals to move easily.

7. EMV Chip cards

Installing EMV will get you off the possibility of credit card fraud. It authenticates chip-card transactions.

8. NFC Payment Ability

The different modes of payment include Apple Pay, Android Pay, and Contactless Card. The contactless mobile payments need interaction with the peripherals. This is where Near Field Communication (NFC) technology comes into play. It lets the devices interact with each other.

9. Remote access

The POS software should be accessible from everywhere. Cloud-computing allows over-looking and analysis from the remote area.

10. 24×7 support

The support team should be available all the time.