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What is a customer service representative?
A customer service representative is responsible for interacting and liaising with customers to handle queries, complaints, process order requests and provide information on existing and upcoming products and services of an organisation. They are the first point of contact for customers requiring assistance and are experts at solving problems using CRM databases.
Customer service representative duties and tasks can include:
- Maintaining a calm, positive and empathetic attitude when dealing with customer concerns and queries at all times
- Liaising with clients through different channels such as social media platforms, email or phone
- Acknowledging and working to resolve customer complaints or issues
- Using expert product knowledge to process orders and customer applications
- Maintaining records of customer interactions on CRM database systems to keep track of product issues, complaints and past transactions.
These customer service tasks are particularly well-suited to being outsourced. Organisations free up their local service teams’ time by sending these tasks to outsourced customer service representatives. This allows your onshore team to focus on performing higher value, revenue generating work.
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What key skills and qualifications make a great customer service representative?
Customer service representatives need to be empathetic and understand how to remain calm under pressure. When customers are stressed or upset, these representatives need to be able to provide a calming environment to help solve any issues as quickly as possible. Being able to multitask and answer phone calls while manoeuvring CRM databases is a key skill in addressing customer queries.
Outsourcing service providers recruit customer service representatives the same way an internal, talent acquisition team would. Essentially, they ask the same questions to understand whether these offshore candidates would be able to provide the level of quality required by Australian organisations:
- What experience and knowledge do you have as a customer service representative or in a similar role dealing with customer queries?
- What are your conflict resolution skills like?
- How do you ensure excellent communication in speaking to customers, interpreting their needs and problem-solving to improve customer experience?
- Provide an example of how you dealt with a demanding customer and resolved the issue quickly and efficiently?
- How familiar are you with CRM databases?
A higher education degree or certificate is not required to be a successful customer service representative. Being familiar with computer software and telephone systems is a plus and will require less training. Interpersonal skills such as empathy, active listening and problem-solving are essential to ensure high customer satisfaction levels are maintained.
- Whether you are looking to train a customer service representative from the ground up and teach them your business's way of customer care, or
- Whether you are seeking expertise and a team of customer service representatives with proven success in the service industry.
Outsourcing companies can help you find the right candidate to meet your organisation's customer experience requirements. Hiring highly proficient customer service representatives will ensure that your company’s image is maintained. These representatives who can efficiently solve customer queries and provide excellent customer service in the process can free up your onshore team’s time to generate more revenue and develop customer relationships.
Benefits of outsourcing customer service representative roles
Organisations are able to appreciate the added benefits that come from offshoring customer service representative duties to the Philippines, including:
What are the costs associated with hiring an offshore customer service representative?
Outsourcing your customer service representative roles to the Philippines can represent significant cost savings of up to 70%. At Beepo, we offer a simple monthly fee to help you reduce your overheads and focus on growing your business. This monthly fee covers everything: including infrastructure, security, recruitment and training, management and staff benefits.
For more detailed information on costs, please arrange a business consultation so we can tailor a solution to your business needs.
How does hiring an outsourced customer service representative work?
This first step is to find out if your business is offshore ready. If the answer is yes, here are the next steps:
- Create a job description: to help us hire the right candidate for your role. We can also assist in this process to ensure we are finding the best talent in the current local market.
- Source the right candidate: we source candidates across our database and the local market before presenting you with a shortlist of the most suitable candidates available.
- Screen and interview: you screen, interview and select the candidate(s) you’d like to hire while we take care of the infrastructure set up to get them ready to work for your business. It’s usually around six to eight weeks to get your offshore staff up and running.
- Onboard and train: your business, along with the operational assistance of our offshore management team, organise new staff onboarding and training, including the use of your systems, any relevant processes and workflows they may need and an overview of your company values and culture. This will help your new team member fit seamlessly into your organisation and assist in effective change management with your existing onshore team members.
The Beepo advantage
Beepo is an outsourcing company based in Australia that offers businesses a distinct competitive edge with offshore staffing solutions. We take the time to understand the hardships our clients face when it comes to recruiting hard working, dedicated staff. The Philippines is renowned for its rich talent pool. This makes us adept at finding and recruiting the best talent for our clients.