Because people still think they’re necessary…
And because they’re a pain in the ass, for everyone involved.
Customer service employees, customers, and everyone else in the business.
As a customer, the last thing you ever want to do is call customer service at a company.
When you’re looking for a job, call center NPC is rarely at the top of your list.
And when you’re running a business, you also don’t want to spend your time thinking about customer service issues.
When people think “customer service” they naturally think “handling” customer complaints, requests, and problems.
And they often assume that this means using… a call center.
Both of these things are sometimes necessary, but they’re far from the whole picture.
The first priority of customer service should be to prevent as many customers as possible from EVER contacting customer service.
Anticipate problems and questions before they happen, and then work to make sure they don’t happen. Not by hiding, but by proactively fixing things.
Any issues that still happen should be assumed to be of real importance and handled accordingly.
But this does not require a call center, and it does not require outsourcing.
One of the (reported and collapsed) spam answers to this question said that a call center can completely take over your customer service (cheaply) with 5 minutes set up time.
If you believe that, you probably aren’t smart enough to have read this far.
How great of a job do you think a 5 minute cheap call center is going to do? How well do they know your products?
How are they going to perform with upsells?
How much are they going to care when people get frustrated with their outsourced NPC Indian bullshit?
And where are they going to be when this all blows up in your face and they say it’s not part of their contract?
Bottom line, call centers *may* be necessary in certain industries. If you’re dealing with elderly people or something that is *truly* urgent.
But for most modern businesses, customer support, when necessary, can and should be provided through more intelligent means, like email or live chat.
— Mark
P.S. Ready to move on from the outdated call center world to the future of profitable customer service?
The solution is here: https://gumroad.com/l/rkbth/VIP
