outsourced support?

[3rdcoast]

I've read alot of info both good and bad but seems kinda mostly negative with outsourced chat support. What would it take to start your own chat support center?

Not sure what category this goes in.



___---Pluto---____

I apologize ahead of time for my sarcastic replies.

[3rdcoast]

what would it take for me to be my own "bob cares©"?

what kind of programs? I'm not even sure what or where to look.

:bonkhead:


___---Pluto---___

[Chicken]

Well, you need a ticket desk that can accpet and track tickets from various hosts, people who will work for very littel to answer them, yet provide a high level of service (seems to be the underlying problem withthe whole outsourced support model), and clients that are willing to trust you with their business even though you've never done this before.

Not an easy startup I'd imagine...

[Taylor]

It takes a ton of resources, capital and work to get an outsourced support company going.

One reccomendation: If you are going to do outsourced support, have your employees at one central location. Companies are relying on you to handle their customer support and service, you need to be able to have a firm grasp on your employees at all times to ensure everything is operating smoothly (things get quite hectik working support). Would be a business killing issue if one of your remote employees didn't login, or started performing certain things while working and you have no true stance to get ahold of him.

[etechsupport]

you can ask support companies if they can give you free trial. if they can then you should ask all your friends and staff to rush on live chat all the time and try to find out if the support company is capable of handling your business.


Andrew S.
http://etechsupport.net
MSN : itgeeks@hotmail.com

[niyogi]

Outsourced live technical support requires time and dedication from both the outsourcing company and the web hosting provider to make the operation a success.

Our experience in rolling out probably the largest outsourced tech support project ever is going smoothly only because the customer is willing to work with us and understands the tiny aspects that make the learning curve a little steep.

Once the several tiny hurdles are passed and the patience tested, it all becomes worthwhile because you have a team that understands your business they way you want them to.

Our model is *not* to provide template-y solutions to hosting companies that use our service - instead, we toss back and forth many emails to fine tune how we will support their customers. Even if, we irritate them too much with their questions; the goal is to do it right.

So, to answer the thread's question, it is not hard per se to open up technical support services but challenging to give your customers exactly what they are looking for. (And, if you're finding guys in India to offer tech support, that's super challenging as well.) Fortunately, for us, it's been working out quite nicely. :P

Roj

[Chicken]

Originally posted by etechsupport:

you can ask support companies if they can give you free trial. if they can then you should ask all your friends and staff to rush on live chat all the time and try to find out if the support company is capable of handling your business.
Andrew, this person isn't looking for free trials from support companies. They are looking to become the support company to service others.

[outtasking]

outsourcing makes you to loose control of service & quality. If provider is good, congratulations, if provider fails, you can´t do anything else than complaint them

regards

[niyogi]

Outtasking,

I agree with you. Customers don't like too spelling and grammar mistakes coming from their service provider. ;-)

Roj

[linux-tech]

Outsourcing support can be good and bad actually.
Good, because, if you're small, you get sleep and don't worry about your clients being supported.
Bad, because most of the companies doing this are ******** companies that speak very rough English (of course if you're not looking for English speaking individuals, it's all good), and barely understand what the customer is saying.

True story:
I work for a company that has outsourced their support to a certain company (I'll leave the name of the company out because it's not important). I called up as I needed to speak with someone in the office, because of bills not getting paid (theirs, not mine).

When I called, I got this guy who answered right away (yay). I told him I worked for the company and needed to speak with someone in the office.

His response (and I'm not kidding):
What is your domain name?

So, again, I told the guy, I worked with the company, even told him who I was, and that I needed to speak with someone in the office.

His response (again, I'm not kidding)
What is your domain name?

At this point, I asked him "Are you in the office of company x?"

His response:
Yes, we are in the office.

Ok, so we're getting somewhere. I told him again what I needed.

His response:
What is your domain name?

3rd time, I finally said I wanted to speak with someone who spoke English. Well, I get another guy, thick eastern accent (no offense meant to ANYONE there, these guys just didn't have a clue).

I again tell him what I need, the same response.

This goes on for a good 10 minutes, and I give up and drop an email to the client. Had I been a customer at that point, I would have dropped service right there. These guys did NOT understand a bit of what I was saying, and it quite clearly showed.

The moral of the story:
If you're going to outsource, make SURE you outsource to the right people. Check out your support company, see what they offer, what others have said, and what they'll give in the way of a "free trial".

It doesn't take that much to setup a support company really, just a willingness to learn, a couple MX changes, and something like Ceberus helpdesk. Of course, youneed the staff to watch things 24/7, but that's a given.

[drmike]

Originally posted by niyogi:

Outtasking,

I agree with you. Customers don't like too spelling and grammar mistakes coming from their service provider. ;-)

Roj

Or how about incorrectly written sigs. :)

::whistle::

-drmike

[3rdcoast]

Originally posted by 3rdcoast:

I've read alot of info both good and bad but seems kinda mostly negative with outsourced chat support. What would it take to start your own chat support center?

Not sure what category this goes in.



___---Pluto---____

I apologize ahead of time for my sarcastic replies.

:soapbox: :uzi: :uzi2: