In a world where businesses require more suppliers than ever before, the need to keep up with demand becomes more significant and more difficult. Offshoring, much like outsourcing, allows a business to pull and utilize resources outside of itself.

With more information surrounding offshoring related to the customer experience, businesses can thrive in a way that may not have otherwise been possible.

What is Customer Experience (CX)?

According to Forbes, customer experience is best defined as a customer's perception of your brand.

Customer experience can be a tricky facet to manage because although your business may have a great plan, top-notch products, or the best services, a customer can still negatively perceive you based on their experience with you.

And often, in the business world, your customer's perception of you can quickly become your reality.

Because of this fact of business, the phrases "customer experience" and "customer perception" are almost always interchangeable. And likewise, it becomes critical that you manage your customer experience well.

How is CX Different from Customer Service?

It's often easy to intermingle customer service with the idea of customer experience; however, the two phrases represent different things - both of which must be addressed to have a successful business.

The main difference between the two is scope. While customer experience represents a customer's entire journey with a company, customer service is just a small segment. So, you need to have good customer service to achieve a positive customer experience.

The timeline also plays a role in the difference between CX and customer service. A business can begin impacting customer experience before an individual is even a customer. On the other hand, customer service is provided to someone who has already purchased a product or service.

Finally, customer experience is proactive in its execution, while customer service is reactive. A business can plan ahead to coordinate the various touchpoints of a customer's experience to come while customer service addresses any issues that arise.

In most cases, any individual seeking customer service will do so on a one-time basis. The customer experience is usually designed to interact with a customer in many ways throughout their dealings with a business.

Customer experience impacts three essential aspects of your business:

• 1) Reputation
• 2) Reviews
• 3) Reorders

Why is Customer Experience Important?

Customer experience is the lifeblood of any operating business. It dictates how your business is perceived by the world, which narrates the scope of your success.

Ultimately, customer experience impacts three essential aspects of your business:

• Reputation
• Reviews
• Reorders

We can look at each of these segments individually to learn more.

Reputation

A business's reputation is just as valuable as its product. Over the years, we've all seen a company or two that has unfortunately secured a negative reputation in the eyes of the public.

For example, it seems many people view Delta Airlines as one of the worst airlines to fly. It's often the butt of many jokes, and just sort of has that reputation.

Why? Well, that doesn't really matter. All that matters is that the reputation is there. And while Delta has worked to make improvements over the years, that poor reputation is something that sticks with them.

As you can see from Delta, it doesn't take a massive scandal to kill your company's reputation. Poor customer experience is often the cause of the problem, with symptoms ranging from product flaws to lousy customer service.

You may not lose everything if you've been branded with a negative reputation, but you can certainly lose a lot. Customers want to invest in companies that they can trust to deliver quality products, services, and experiences. They also value companies who care about their customers.

Reviews

Did you know that a whopping 84% of millennials do not trust traditional advertising? With the rise of social media, brands and businesses have had to completely change the way they market their products and services.

If you're online, you've probably seen online influencers promote products. Between long-form videos and comment sections, it seems that reviews have become increasingly crucial to a successful business.

A good customer experience leads to good reviews. People value the honest feedback of customers who have already used the product, received the service, or dealt with the company. Therefore, it's vital that you respect the relationship you form with each and every customer throughout their experience with you.

In today's day and age, it's not enough to create a catchy jingle or a clever television ad. Sure, those things can draw a potential customer to your website, but the personal reviews are what will help solidify their decision to invest in your business.

84% of millennials do not trust traditional advertising.

Reorders

A company is more likely to sell to an existing customer than a potential customer. In fact, there's a60-70% chance your business can sell to someone who is already a customer and only a 5-20% chance of selling to a newcomer.

When a customer has a good experience with a company, it makes them want to come back and choose you over someone else the next time. A large portion of businesses attributes more than half of their revenue to repeat customers.

All this to say: making sure your customers are happy and have a good experience is key to a successful business.

Even if your customers have something negative happen to them, you can still coax them to come back. That's the beauty in the customer experience - you can have an impact at various touchpoints.

What is Offshoring (or Outsourcing)?

Although offshoring and outsourcing are frequently used as synonyms, there are slight nuances of difference between the two.

Both of these words mean to source products or services from a third party. It can mean contracting professionals to complete tasks or bringing in inventory from another company. Both offshoring and outsourcing can help minimize costs.

While outsourcing means enlisting the help of any outside professional or company, offshoring specifically refers to production or operations performed in another country.

An excellent example of this is Ford Motor Company. While the brand is widely recognized as an American one, the company has a manufacturing facility located in Mexico. Its headquarters is located in Michigan, but they source production from another company.

Offshoring improves customer service, another reason why outsourcing is about growth.

Learn more

How is Offshoring Related to Customer Experience?

We've introduced two different ideas to you at this point: the customer experience and offshoring. But how do the two relate to one another in the business world?

For starters, running a business or owning a company involves a lot of various components and responsibilities - all of which can add up quickly to a lot of work. Some owners or businesses simply can't keep up with the demand.

When businesses begin to collapse under this immense pressure, the customer experience is often the first thing to falter. A poorly operated business cannot possibly offer a positive experience to its customers.

By offshoring, a company can relieve some of the pressure it has taken on by handing it off to another company or third-party professionals. One of the most common forms of offshoring is international call centers that deal with customer service and the customer experience.

Let's look at this in more detail.

Better Problem Resolution

When you offshore or outsource customer experience resources, you can dedicate more time and effort to the cause. Offshoring customer experience means having a company on your side that is 100% focused on resolving customer and experience issues.

Rather than splitting resources or having employees handle multiple tasks, you can rely on an experienced manager to oversee problem resolution, making that their main goal so you can focus on other aspects of the business.

Faster Response Time

Offshoring a customer experience company also allows you to have more employees, and therefore faster response times.

Remember how we mentioned reputation? Customer service phone lines, in general, have a poor reputation among customers because of their typically long wait times.

By outsourcing a call center or a customer experience professional, you can lower those wait times and roll out quicker responses, which earns your company extra points towards your reputation and reviews.

Easier for Customer to Buy

Part of the customer experience is the buying process, and you can offshore companies and professionals for this as well. Third-party companies can do things like take phone orders, manage online sales, and even handle advertising.

All of the components above help to make up the customer experience

Rather than trying to organize all of these things in-house, you can save money and streamline processes by hiring another company to take care of everything. You will save money, and your customers will have an easier time buying your product.

CX Tasks Performed by Offshore Team Members

So what exactly can you contract an offshore team to do for your customer experience? Let's review some tasks below.

Sales Lead Generation

One of the many tasks that a CX offshore team member can provide your company is lead generation. Outsourced companies can handle multiple things or focus on one thing, but either way, improving customer engagement can fall to these professionals.

Offshore team members can take on the customer engagement process, which includes tasks like opportunity management, retention, loyalty, reputation management, and pipeline reporting.

Case Ticketing

Offshore team members effectively manage client cases by using case ticketing. Tickets are used to assign cases to professionals quickly and allow them to track the issue and file responsive solutions.

Not only does case ticketing keep things organized and ensure that every customer issue is resolved in a timely manner, but it also drives quality control and allows a customized approach to each and every customer problem.

How CX Software and Offshoring Work Together

CX software offers a digital option for businesses looking to outsource their customer experience operations. These types of software platforms serve as a technology solution to effectively manage businesses and the digital customer experience.

Examples of CX Software

In the digital age that we currently live in, there are several CX software options to choose from. Here's a short list of just a few examples:

• Delegate CX
• Adobe Experience Manager
• Clarabridge
• ClickTale
• IBM Tealeaf

Any one of these top companies can help power the customer experience, allowing your business to generate leads, improve customer service, and secure repeat customers under outside professional management.

Types of Things Offshore Staff Do in CX Software

The biggest question you have to ask yourself when researching CX software is this: what do I get out of it? Each company will have its own unique offerings, but you can expect your average company to offer many of the same staff operations:

• Strategy Development
• Internal/External Branding
• Customer Insight
• Lead Generation
• Customer Service
• Order Entry
• Database Management
• Shipping
• Vendor Relations
• Basic Accounting

These are just a few of the many CX operations you can offshore using CX software.

Tips and Reminders for Offshoring - The DCX 4D Process

At Delegate CX, we want to make sure that you have the best possible offshore experience. We make it easy to outsource your customer experience by following the digital customer experience 4D process.

Define the Job

A good CX team will take a good, hard look at the job ahead of them to define its scope, outline its needs, and develop an effective strategy.

Deliver the Right Talent for the Job

After defining the job, we work to assign the best professionals with the right skill set to properly manage its operations.

Document the Process

We always document our processes so that you can see exactly what is being done. This allows us to look back, make changes, and improve processes along the way.

Develop and Train

Not only do we select the talent and oversee the whole process, but we will also train your entire offshore team to reach the highest potential.

Resources for Customer Experience

Below are some professional resources so you can learn more about the customer experience, what it is, and how you can improve it within your business.

• Closing the Gap: Offshoring and the Customer Experience (tmcnet.com)
• Exactly What Is A CX Program? - Business 2 Community
• What Is Customer Experience? (forbes.com)
• Why the customer experience matters | McKinsey
• THE CUSTOMER SERVICE REPORT: Why great customer service matters even more in the age of e-commerce and the channels that perform best (businessinsider.com)

Use Our Delegate CX Guide to Offshoring

At Delegate CX, we have fine-tuned our processes to ensure smooth operation through the entire offshoring process. In fact, we even have our very out guide to offshoring to help you along. Check it out today!