We’ll Source, Hire and help Manage them
for you so you don’t have to.
Lifetime support, dedicated account manager
by your side, every step of the way!
We’ll Source, Hire and help Manage them for you so you don’t have to.
Lifetime support, dedicated account manager by your side, every step of the way!
17 Years of
Virtual Staffing
Experience
Trusted by
3,368
SME’s
6,948
Virtual Staff
Hired
We’ll Source, Hire and help Manage them for you so you don’t have to. Lifetime support, dedicated account manager by your side, every step of the way!
17 Years of
Virtual Staffing
Experience
Trusted by
3,368
SME’s
6,948
Virtual Staff
Hired
We’ll help you find a highly-qualified and dedicated Filipino virtual customer support professional.
*Booking interviews depend on candidates' availability and interest.
*Please note that hourly rates are linked to the exchange rate and fluctuate slightly from month to month.
Attracting customers is one thing; retaining them is another.
In a time where online reviews and social media influence buying decisions, effective customer service is a significant advantage.
Investing in it not only improves your customer retention and brand reputation, but your bottom line as well.
According to research, increasing customer retention by just 5% can boost your profits by anywhere from 25% to 95%, depending on your industry.
Furthermore, acquiring new customers is five to seven times more expensive than retaining them.
To achieve this, you’ll need top-notch customer service representatives. However, if you’re just starting out, you might not have the budget to hire on-site agents.
Fortunately, a more affordable alternative exists: outsourcing your needs to qualified remote customer service specialists, especially in the Philippines where they’re renowned for their hospitality.
Here’s an in-depth guide to getting started.
Still on the fence about hiring customer service specialists? Watch out for these signs:
You need specialized customer service agents if your business is facing:
When you notice a drop in customer satisfaction scores and/or an uptick in customer churn, it may mean that your ad hoc support is failing to meet your customer’s expectations.
If customer emails, calls, live chat requests, and support tickets are piling up faster than your team can handle, it’s a clear sign they’re being stretched too thin.
If the sudden surge of new customers is outpacing the growth of your support staff, it’s time to scale up to maintain quality customer experience.
As your products/services become more sophisticated, your customers may need more specialized help to make the most of them.
If you need to pull employees from their core tasks to address support issues, it’s a clear sign you need a dedicated customer service team to provide operational support.
Let’s now see the benefits of hiring experienced customer support staff on tim
A dedicated customer service team helps streamline support processes, reduce response times, and prevent issues from further escalating.
This efficiency not only improves customer relationships but also frees your other teams to focus on growth initiatives.
Bringing a dedicated customer care specialist as demand for your services/products increases lets you respond quickly to customer inquiries and resolve issues efficiently.
When customers receive timely, high-quality support, their likelihood of reusing your products/services increases.
A lower churn rate means that you won’t have to spend more to acquire new customers, while existing ones will generate more revenue over a longer period.
A robust customer support team can gather and analyze customer feedback effectively, allowing you to refine your products/services, marketing strategies, and identify new revenue opportunities.
Companies that invest in customer service tend to build stronger trust-based relationships with their customers.
To build the ideal customer support team, you must first know where to look for qualified candidates and how to attract them.
Here are some ways you can attract top customer support specialists and assess their skills:
Showcase your company’s positive work culture, career advancement opportunities, and employee well-being on your website and social media accounts to attract high-quality candidates.
Ensure your salary packages, bonuses, and benefits (i.e., flexible schedules, health insurance, and professional development programs) are competitive enough to draw and retain top talent.
Incorporate behavioral questions and theoretical scenarios to evaluate candidates’ problem-solving skills, empathy, and ability to handle difficult customer situations.
Use customer aptitude tests, personality assessments, and situational judgment tests to objectively evaluate your candidate’s suitability for the role.
These data-driven assessments provide unique insights into how well a candidate performs in a high-pressure, customer-facing environment.
Streamline your hiring process with clear communication, timely feedback, and a smooth interview process.
Aside from helping you secure top talent, doing this also improves your employer brand.
The growing popularity of remote work means that geographical boundaries are no longer an obstacle to finding high-quality customer service specialists.
Here’s how you can leverage this to find candidates best suited to your business’s needs:
Before you start looking for candidates, you must clearly outline the skills, experience, and cultural fit you’re looking for.
Post your job ads on LinkedIn, GlassDoor, or industry-specific job boards where candidates with the qualifications you need are likely to search.
Use channels like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to showcase your company’s culture, share employee testimonials, and advertise open positions to attract good candidates.
Encourage your current employees to refer candidates by offering incentives.
Referrals usually come with the benefit of being pre-vetted by trusted team members.
Working with trusted outsourcing companies, like Remote Staff, makes it easier to find pre-vetted candidates or fill out a position quickly.
Let’s now discuss the various skills and qualifications your customer support specialists should have:
Ideal customer service representatives must possess the following skills:
Clear, concise, and friendly written and verbal communication is crucial for understanding and addressing customer needs.
The ability to genuinely understand a customer’s feelings and concerns helps build trust and effectively resolve issues.
Effective representatives must be capable of quickly analyzing issues and providing solutions, which is critical in resolving complaints on inbound calls and addressing potential customer concerns during outbound calls.
Customer service can be very challenging. Thus, look for individuals who remain calm under pressure, are patient with repetitive inquiries, and handle difficult situations gracefully.
Accuracy is vital in documenting customer interactions, following processes, and ensuring solutions are thoroughly implemented for long-term customer satisfaction.
Depending on your industry, your candidate may also need to be familiar with product-specific tools, help desk software, and CRM systems.
When it comes to customer support, having the right mix of soft and technical skills lets your representatives build rapport and trust with your clients. This, in turn, significantly improves customer satisfaction and encourages loyalty to your business.
In addition, technical knowledge in your field, services, and products allows them to quickly diagnose and resolve issues.
Furthermore, in modern call centers and digital support environments, agents handle both inbound and outbound calls, live chats, and emails, where a combination of soft and technical skills helps them maintain consistent service quality.
Finally, representatives with both skill sets can identify and leverage sales opportunities during customer interactions without compromising the quality of service.
Besides the right skill set, your candidates will also need the right tools and onboarding to succeed in their tasks.
Here are some equipment and software your customer support specialists need to perform their tasks optimally:
Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) Systems:
Tools like Salesforce, Freshdesk, or Zendesk centralize customer data and track interactions across channels to help agents access customer histories and manage follow-ups.
Ticketing and Helpdesk Software:
Solutions like Zendesk or Freshdesk offer dashboards and automation features so your specialists can manage and prioritize incoming inquiries to ensure timely resolutions.
Workforce Management
and Scheduling Tools:
Tools like Aspect help optimize staffing levels and manage shift scheduling to meet fluctuating demand in a call center environment.
Omnichannel Communication Platforms:
These integrate various channels (email, social media, phone) so your specialists have a unified view of customer interactions.
Live Chat and Chatbot Solutions:
These tools provide real-time assistance through live chat interfaces or AI-powered chatbots (e.g., Intercom, LiveChat, or Drift) that can handle routine inquiries 24/7.
Analytics and Reporting Tools:
Business intelligence tools like Power BI or Tableau help track and analyze performance data to continuously improve service levels.
Effective onboarding programs provide new hires with comprehensive training on your services/products, systems (i.e., CRM and call center software), and company processes.
Doing so ensures they can readily handle inbound and outbound calls, quickly resolve customer issues, and support sales activities.
Additionally, onboarding is your chance to communicate your company’s values, customer-centric philosophy, and service standards to your new hires so they can better align their services with your branding.
Finally, a robust onboarding process can make your new hires feel valued and supported, which fosters loyalty and reduces turnover.
To meet the demands of today’s ever-changing business environment, your team must constantly hone their skills and learn new ones.
Regular training ensures your team remains updated with your product’s features, evolving technologies, and best practices regarding customer service.
This helps them become more efficient at handling customer queries, which leads to faster resolution times and more consistent service quality.
Aside from improving their skills, investing in your team’s development increases their job satisfaction and retention since they feel more valued at work.
Also, well-trained customer support specialists can better identify opportunities to segue offering additional products/services during customer interactions without relying on aggressive sales tactics.
Here are some ways you can support the continuous growth of your customer support team:
Provide Access to Professional Development Resources:
Give your employees access to online courses, workshops, and certifications relevant to customer service, sales, and related technology so they remain updated on industry trends.
Implement Regular Performance Reviews and Feedback:
Use these to provide constructive feedback, address any skill gaps, set goals, and recognize achievements so employees know what they’re doing well -and where they can improve further.
Clear Career Path Development:
Create transparent career progression plans outlining opportunities for advancement within the department like moving into supervisory roles or more specialized functions to boost motivation and retention.
Mentorship and Coaching Programs:
Pair new or less experienced team members with seasoned mentors to facilitate knowledge transfer, real-time feedback, and personal growth to the former.
Incentive and Recognition Programs:
Recognize and reward employees for exceptional performance with bonuses, awards, and/or public acknowledgment.
Invest in Technology and Tools Training:
Ensure your customer support staff remains proficient with the latest CRM, helpdesk, and communication tools.
Want to build your customer support team without breaking the bank? Here’s how:
Before you start building a remote customer support team, consider the following first:
Recruitment and Onboarding Costs:
Salaries and Benefits:
Technology and Tools:
Training and Development:
Here’s how to get the best possible customer service support while sticking to your budget:
Set Data-Driven Performance Metrics:
Before hiring a customer support specialist/team, establish their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), first response time, and resolution rate. This helps you track their performance and make targeted adjustments without overspending.
Consider Flexible Staffing Models:
Use a mixture of full-time and part-time staff to effectively manage customer demand. This flexible setup lets you scale your workforce based on seasonal peaks or changing call volumes.
Invest in Efficient Technology:
Use automation tools and AI-powered chatbots to help handle routine queries, reduce manual workload, and lower operational costs.
Selective Outsourcing:
Consider outsourcing certain functions (like after-hours support) to remote customer service specialists to maintain high service levels without needing a full-time, in-house team.
Planning on taking your business global?
Here’s how a remote customer support team can help you make this a reality.
Planning on taking your business global?
Here’s how a remote customer support team can help you make this a reality.
Having a global remote customer support team gives your business the following benefits:
Customer support specialists who understand cultural nuances help minimize misunderstandings with a global customer base and foster a more personalized service experience.
When customers feel understood and valued, especially if your support team empathizes with their cultural or regional background, they’re more likely to remain loyal.
Diverse perspectives drive innovation; team members from various backgrounds can offer unique ideas and solutions, leading to more effective strategies for resolving customer issues.
Having team members across different regions and time zones enables 24/7 support.
Expanding to a new market? A culturally diverse team provides valuable insights into local customs, preferences, and emerging market trends.
When expanding your business to a new market or region, it’s important to do the following:
Use surveys, focus groups, and local market data to understand your target audience’s specific needs, preferences, and pain points so you can tailor your products/services better to them.
Adapt language, tone, and communication styles that reflect your target market’s local customs and cultural norms.
This may involve hiring bilingual or multilingual agents for support.
Ensure that support is available during the local business hours for each region you’re operating in.
Consider setting up region-specific shifts or remote teams that cover different time zones.
Use technologies supporting various communication channels (i.e., email, live chat, social media) and integrate seamlessly across various regions.
Furthermore, tools like CRM systems and helpdesk software can be customized to manage region-specific queries.
Modify your FAQs, automated responses, and service scripts to address region-specific questions or concerns.
Use automation tools and AI-powered chatbots to help handle routine queries, reduce manual workload, and lower operational costs.
Let’s take a look at the crucial skills your customer support team needs and ways to hone them:
Emotional intelligence, effective communication, and efficient problem-solving are the cornerstone skills of effective customer service.
High emotional intelligence enables your customer support team to recognize and respond empathetically to customer emotions, which helps build trust and rapport.
On the other hand, clear and effective communication is vital for conveying information and providing accurate solutions to customers, whether it be through email, phone calls, or live chat.
Finally, at its core, customer support revolves around solving customer problems. Excellent problem-solving skills allow agents to quickly analyze a problem, identify its root cause, and offer an appropriate solution.
Aside from having a skilled customer support team, here are some ways you can further improve your customer experience:
Let’s take a look at some new strategies for affordably upgrading your customer support functions:
Customer service is crucial for building trust and creating lasting relationships with your target market.
By constantly providing prompt, friendly, and effective service, you ensure your customers feel heard and valued, which incentivizes them to continue patronizing your business.
Furthermore, effective customer support teams can help you gather valuable feedback during every interaction, allowing you to identify pain points and refine your processes.
Hiring effective customer service goes beyond having someone to answer customer complaints, it’s a strategic investment for your company’s future.
Having one enhances customer satisfaction, drives loyalty, and helps you stand out among your competitors – ultimately leading to further business growth.
Ready to start building your customer support team but don’t know where to start looking for skilled candidates? Remote Staff is here to help.
Aside from customer service representatives, you’ll also find skilled virtual assistants, virtual receptionists, and data entry clerks in our list of candidates.
So, what are you waiting for? Contact one of our Client Relations Executives (CREs) today and get started.
Ready to start building your customer support team but don’t know where to start looking for skilled candidates? Remote Staff is here to help.
Aside from customer service representatives, you’ll also find skilled virtual assistants, virtual receptionists, and data entry clerks in our list of candidates.
So, what are you waiting for? Contact one of our Client Relations Executives (CREs) today and get started.
