Outsourced customer service means letting an external provider handle all or part of your customer service, usually phone, email and chat. Instead of hiring your own agents you buy the capacity as a service and pay per case, per hour or per subscription. The model is used by companies with uneven case volume, by those that need cover outside office hours, and by those that simply do not have the volume for a customer service department of their own. What decides whether it works is rarely the price, but how well the provider gets access to your systems and your knowledge.
How outsourced customer service works in practice
Setups vary, but at heart it means moving the case flow to someone else's staff without moving the responsibility for the customer experience.
- Calls and messages are routed to the provider, either entirely or at certain times.
- The provider works in your systems or in their own, handing complex cases back to you.
- You set the guidelines for tone, response times and what can be decided without you.
- Follow up runs against agreed measures such as response time and service level.
Forms of outsourced customer service
- Full outsourcing, the provider owns the whole customer relationship.
- Overflow handling, your own staff answer first and the provider takes what they cannot reach.
- Out of hours cover, external help in evenings, at weekends and over holiday periods.
- An answering service, a simpler version where someone answers, takes a message and passes it on.
When it pays off and when it does not
Outsourcing usually pays off when volume swings sharply, when you need to cover hours you cannot staff yourself, or when cases are simple and well defined. It rarely pays off when the customer relationship is the product itself, when cases need deep product knowledge, or when you need what customers say feeding back into development. Cost is rarely the problem. What tends to hurt is losing touch with what customers are actually asking about.
The alternative is to scale your own team
Before outsourcing, it is worth working out what a better flow would give you. With answer groups, time based routing and a call queue it is often possible to handle far more cases with the same staff. At Lynes the AI is built in, developed in house and part of the same platform, so an AI agent can answer the most common questions directly and hand over to a person when needed, all in one single app. Read more about answer groups or our AI support agent.
Frequently asked questions about outsourced customer service
What does outsourced customer service cost?
It varies widely depending on whether you pay per case, per hour or per subscription. Always ask for the price per handled case, because that is the only figure you can compare between providers.
Is outsourced customer service the same as an answering service?
No. An answering service answers, takes a message and passes it on. Outsourced customer service also resolves the case.
Will customers notice that support is outsourced?
They should not. It comes down to how well the provider gets access to your systems, your product knowledge and your tone.
Can we outsource only part of it?
Yes, and that is the most common setup. Many let an external team take evenings, weekends and overflow while their own staff cover office hours.
Want to see how far a smarter flow takes you before you outsource? Book a Lynes demo.
