Customer service is mandatory for any brand or service to maintain a healthy relationship with its customers. Customer support helps the customers to provide a clear solution for all kinds of problems and also guides the customers properly. The feedback from the customers will help the brand to improve its service and quality of its products.
Many brands or companies have their own customer support service agents and some brands outsource them; this is called the “Business Process Outsourcing” service ( BPO). An organization hires employees and trains them for these business support services; this can also be called “Call Center Services”. And the two main areas of business process outsourcing is front-office and back-office services.
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Customer Support Services
The customer support services can be divided into two main categories as below:
- Front office support services – Voice process, for example, marketing.
- Back office support services – Non-voice process, for example, outsource inbound call center services
Both voice-based and non-voice based services are widely used in business nowadays and play a vital role in helping the customers as well as the business. The service that they provide should satisfy the customer needs, and the feedback received from the customers may help the business to improve its product quality and relationship.
Front Office Support Services
The front office services are often voice-based which usually carries services like, taking surveys, marketing, and resolving customer queries in calls. The customer service agent who is handling the calls should have good communication skills, ability and knowledge to answer the customers’ query correctly and resolve them. If the questions cannot be resolved via calls, then a suitable complaint should be raised.
The voice process support can be further classified into two types as follows.
- Inbound voice process.
- Outbound voice process.
Inbound Voice Process
The customer service agents handle the incoming calls received from the customers. The main goal is to clear all the customer issues and provide solutions to the problems they have with the product or the brand through calls.
Outbound Voice Process
Here the customer service agent makes calls to the customers to market their product which is also known as telemarketing or brands aiming to get a new customer for the business. The calls are usually made to market or take surveys of the product or company and convince the customers to purchase their brands.
Back Office Support Services
The back-office services do not require the agents or customers to make calls so it can also be called “Non-voice process” services. Instead, it is only based on emails and messages. The customer service agent need not have a good oratory skill, but they should have excellent writing and typing skills and the ability to understand customer queries effectively to resolve them.
Most of the voice support services are not 24/7 services. But back-office support services can provide 24/7 support services to the customers so that their queries can be resolved regardless of the time.
Back office or non-voice process services include:
- Email support services
- Chat support service
Email Support Services
Email support services provide customer service through emails. The customer service agent should have excellent email drafting skills to work in email support. The customers can send their queries in email, and the agents will send a reply email which contains the solution. It works the same as front office support, but instead of voice calls, queries are resolved through emails.
Through email support services, the customer will be able to receive clear instructions which will solve their problem. Incase in the future, if the same problem arises, the customer can directly refer to the email without wasting time to call or send an email again to the support services. This saves time and energy for both the customer and the customer service agent.
Chat Support Services
The customer problems and queries are resolved by communicating with a service agent via chats in chat support services. The customers can communicate with the agents in a live chat whenever the agent is available. With this support, customers can send messages back and forth spontaneously. Chat supports service agents communicate with short and synchronous messages with the customers and helps to provide solutions for their problems.
Most importantly, chat agents should be able to understand and respond to queries appropriately in a short period. They should be able to resolve any kind of problems related to their brand or product by learning everything about it to guide the customers the right way.
It can be either a call or message, communication between the customers and companies are the critical point for a successful business.
