Growth can be challenging, even when the world hasn’t experienced a year-long crisis. Businesses looking to expand often feel they have to battle talent to support their customer base as they strive for their growth goals – but remote work can be the answer to a customer support talent shortage.
For businesses heading for growth, the challenges of operating at scale are at the forefront of leaders’ minds. How do you grow without losing your customer base? How can you source the skills you need when customer support talent is harder than ever to find locally?
Luckily, a remote solution – with the right talent in place – can resolve these problems.
When you’re growing, customer experience is more important than ever
No matter your industry, customer relationships have been tested by the events of the past 12 months. For companies looking to grow, holding on to customer loyalty is key for ensuring that growth doesn’t come at the cost of losing business.
According to Gartner, customer loyalty is based on value-enhanced services, where they leave an interaction not just with their issue resolved, but with the knowledge that their purchase decision is valuable.
The average probability that customers would stay with a service when offered a switch to another was 82% after a value-enhancing customer support interaction, but only 61% after they received a low-effort resolution to their issue.
Even though the outcome of the interaction might have been the same, anticipating needs, educating customers on better or new usage for services or products, helping customers achieve a goal and validating purchase decisions all led to greater loyalty.
But how do you find the customer support talent you need to provide customer support that has value?
Talent shortage doesn’t have to get in the way of growth
PwC’s 23rd Annual Global CEO Survey found that 74% of leaders were concerned that key skills wouldn’t be available from the talent pool they had access to – with 32% “extremely concerned” about this issue.
When local talent is in short supply, looking further afield is the only viable solution. We believe physical boundaries shouldn’t limit companies and candidates from finding talent they deserve.
Expanding the talent pool to ensure the success of your business growth is the only sensible choice when local availability is low.
Though lots of businesses have “gone remote” recently, the feasibility of finding new customer support talent and the paperwork required for hiring remotely is still new to many.
Partnering with a remote work-focused provider can help you get over the hurdles your competitors face.
Attracting great talent is key to supporting expansion
The option to work from home or to have a remote job are the biggest draw for talent in the post-pandemic job marketplace.
Not only that, but you need to ensure your potential team member will feel like they’re cared for and genuinely a part of the business.
This isn’t just a case of being nice – it’s better for growth.
Research from the CompassionLab at the University of Michigan shows that leaders who demonstrate compassion and empathy toward employees create better resilience in challenging periods.
And what period can be more challenging than growth?
That’s why we operate with a human-first approach to hiring.
Connecting with – and holding onto – great talent requires compassion and empathy. This has to be clear from the first interaction with your potential hires. Not just for them, but for your growth potential and customer retention.
Remote customer service is the best recipe for growth
Given this research, it just makes sense to take a four-step approach to growth with remote customer support to support you.
Expansion will be most successful when you:
- Find great talent, no matter where you’re based
- Hire your new employees with empathy to prime them to develop resilience during growth challenges
- Give your customers a value-enhanced service with your experienced talent able to do their best from all over the globe
- Grow with your business supported with the right people and your customers happily engaged
