In a digital-first world, maybe it’s time to let go of the lingering desire for a brick-and-mortar office.
The need might come more from habit than necessity.
Going remote with customer service has a number of benefits. But how is it a great choice for you?
Remote hiring presents new opportunities
Customers around the world are increasing their virtual shopping footfall.
Eurostat reports that, as of 2022, 90% of people — from teenagers to the elderly — actively use the internet, with 74% using it to order goods or services online.
But if you’re communicating online, do you even need a brick and mortar office?
Taking your support virtual allows you to migrate your customer service team to an online platform, helping you serve your digitally savvy customers in the ways they prefer.
But how does it benefit them and you?
Always open service
Cloud offices mean your team can handle customer queries fast from any part of the world. By hiring internationally, you get full coverage over shifts and time zones. Your customers no longer need to wait for support on ‘regular’ working hours or days.
Massive savings
Going remote with your customer support solutions means making significant savings. According to Capgemini’s research, enabling a remote work model saves you 32% to 43% in real estate costs alone.
Support benefits
In a virtual office, your team can coordinate their online work smoothly, from anywhere. While you:
- can recruit highly skilled talent from all over the globe
- will attract multilingual and culturally inclusive support
- can support customers at all hours from a cloud office
Customer convenience
Remote customer services can significantly reduce customer pain in the support cycle. Your customers can now call, text, email, chat, or hit their socials to get in touch from the comfort of their own homes.
In doing so, you’ll also increase customer satisfaction before addressing a single query. But how does it empower your team?
Your talent wants to work remotely
If you’re looking to recruit skilled talent and serve the modern customer, a remote work model is a perfect choice.
You’ll attract high quality talent
Why fight the war for talent in your backyard? Remote hiring can open up the whole world as your talent marketplace.
Many bright, talented workers are looking to connect with international brands like yours, but they may be slipping under your radar due to geographical limitations.
With remote hiring, you can access high quality, certified candidates who want to work for you. At Cocoroco, we’ve pre-vetted all profiles, listed skills and assessment scores, and found more straightforward ways to handle contracts and wages.
All that’s left to do is right swipe the profiles you like and the recruitment process is on.
You’ll have happier employees
Work from home customer service jobs are an ideal choice for young talent. They eliminate commute time, increase well-being, and offer flexibility – the top reasons young people want to work remotely.
Remote working keeps your team happy, and happy employees are more productive and more likely to keep your customers happy: a win/win/win.
Reduced churn
For millennials and Gen Z, a greater work-life balance matters. And their workplace of choice isn’t an office cubicle. 8 in 10 don’t want to be in an office full-time, as per EY’s Work Reimagined Employee Survey.
They also don’t need much to get started working remotely for you. A laptop, decent broadband, and a quiet corner to work — assets most digital natives already have — should do it.
Remote customer service is an excellent fit for high-quality talent, and having a work from home job makes churn less likely.
How does it empower your team?
Ever wanted to map a new support path? Remote service gives you that chance. Having a virtual team lets you redefine what customer service can do and uniquely empowers your service.
Support customers instantly, easily
A virtual office lets your team talk to customers 24×7 and allows you to hire a team across different shifts and timezones for full coverage. So say goodbye to traditional business hours and being closed for weekends.
Your agents can also serve customers on their platform of choice, whether by text, call, chat, or social media.
As more and more people shop online, your customers increasingly expect a hassle-free service. Remote support lets your team provide it.
Act local while being global
Why should a physical location decide if people can work for you? Going remote enables agents to offer local support from anywhere in the world.
Remote working lets service reps perform to the best of their ability from anywhere around the globe, benefiting your local customers.
For example, fluent German speakers can offer language support even if they live outside their country without worrying about having to relocate, commute, or pay premium rent in Germany to serve German customers.
Easily offer multilingual support
People trust their mother tongue the most. And for over 80% of the world’s population, English isn’t their native language, CNN reports.
So to understand, connect with, and create satisfying experiences for your customer, multilingual support is a must these days.
Remote hiring makes multilingual support easy.
It lets native speakers easily join your team and serve your customers in the language they trust. Now you can efficiently recruit a Spanish speaker who may be living in Portugal or an Italian living in France keeping your Spanish and Italian customers happy too.
Recruiting multilingual agents lets you provide frictionless language support for your customers – wherever they are.
Show cultural diversity
For a global brand, upholding cultural diversity is essential. It’s also what international customers expect and demand.
Having international talent enables cultural diversity by making it easy to hire from different cultures around the globe.
Your customers are likely to be a rich mix, coming from various backgrounds and ethnicities. When speaking to them, you have to be mindful of their differences, so you need a culturally-inclusive team.
Customer interactions sensitive to culture and diversity can powerfully strengthen their relationship with your brand, making remote hiring the number one choice.
Focus on first contact resolution
First contact resolution (FCR) is an excellent customer satisfaction metric.
FCR is the rate at which your team is solving customer issues the first time they contact you without calling back for a resolution. It’s what keeps your customers happiest.
By the unique nature of your remote system, you can store a complete record of customer interactions using customer relationship management software. In addition, it can help you process and track big data to improve your FCR.
Increase skills-based routing
Remote skills-based routing (SBR) is a system by which you can redirect customer queries online to different support channels equipped to resolve them.
SBR increases the probability of solving customer problems the first time they call in, as they aren’t left waiting in a ‘general’ queue.
It also boosts productivity as agents don’t waste time on issues better handled by someone else and it reduces customer pain by providing specialised service that avoids unnecessary back and forth.
SBR technology enables all of this in remote customer service.
Empowered decision-making
McKinsey’s research talks about a moment of truth in customer service and its importance in building customer loyalty. It’s a spark in any service interaction that makes your customer feel an intense emotional commitment to your brand.
You can light that spark with a remote team by skipping old management protocols and unnecessary red tape.
Trust your team to take critical decisions to build customer loyalty and empower them to create exceptional customer interactions on the spot.
Whether giving freebies, refunds, or goodwill discounts, empowered remote service can transform a customer’s relationship with your brand.
Remote customer service meets your business goals
We believe going remote delivers outstanding service.
Firstly, it can take some weight off your shoulders.
You’ve probably got a lot on your plate as a business, so why not leave the sourcing and vetting of high-quality candidates to someone else as you focus on development, strategy, and logistics?
Even when scaling up, remote hiring lets you recruit as and when you need it.
Going remote allows you to attract the right talent to serve your customers while leading a happy, productive team that’s loyal to you.
Your business grows when satisfied customers don’t churn, and your employees stick around too.
So why wait? Empower your team for a life outside of the office and reap all the benefits of remote working today.
Turn your customer service around to customer excellence with Cocoroco. Contact us or book a demo if you’d like to know more.
