One of the biggest mistakes retail businesses make is using voicemails as their receptionist. We understand you’re on vacation, and a voicemail can make your business reachable.
However, the average voicemail response rate is just about 5%, and 67% of customers don’t pay attention to voicemails. If most of your sales calls end up in the voicemail, you are giving your prospects the worst customer service, and you are losing a lot of potential revenue.
While you’re using voicemails, your competitors are dominating the market by having 24/7 customer support. Whether they’re at work, or on vacation, someone is taking orders for their businesses, and no, they did not spend an arm and a leg hiring a team to work around the clock.
They are outsourcing their order taking answering service! Doing so means customers always have someone to talk to, and you never miss a chance to take their orders. Learn more about how outsourcing your order taking answering service can transform your business!
What Is An Order Taking Answering Service?
An order taking answering service is a type of customer support that takes and tracks online orders from the time it’s placed until it gets delivered. Retail businesses outsource this service for easier and faster completion of order taking over the phone, web chat, and email.
The function of order taking answering service goes beyond processing online order entries. In general, it answers all customer queries from picking, packing, and shipping products to ensure customers receive their orders in a timely manner. Here are the critical functions an order taking answering service can perform:
- Taking the order. This is the process of taking orders and handling the first contact; the agent provides the customer with in-depth information about the product.
- Processing the order. Once the order is placed, the agent processes the item in a back-office system and sends the request to the fulfillment team for product shipment.
- Tracking the order. The agent notifies the customer that their order is in transit and keeps the customer updated on the delivery status.
- Fulfilling the order. Upon successful delivery, the agent notifies the customer and the retailer that the transaction has been completed.
- Providing customer service. If there are defects in the item, the agent communicates with customers to process product returns, exchanges, or refunds.
- Upselling and cross-selling. Based on previous purchases, the agent may upsell or cross-sell products to customers and help retailers get the word out about their latest offers.
Top 5 Benefits of Outsourcing Order Taking Answering Service
1. Extend your order taking service hours
Typically, your business operates for only 8-9 hours. After 6 pm, you or your order taking staff will go home, and your order taking service will resume the next day. By following the traditional business hours, you’re abandoning customers who usually place orders outside work hours. That means you’re losing a lot of customer orders that could have been processed on your website.
Outsourcing your order taking answering service expands your available hours to accommodate more customers. An outsourcing vendor can provide you with customer support agents who work on night shifts, weekends, and even holidays. Whether your order taking service happens in your social media, phone, email or live chat, you can ensure that you won’t miss customer orders any time of the day.
2. Reduce shopping cart abandonment
When customers reach out after your business hours, they are sent to a voicemail telling them what to do after the beep. But modern customers are impatient and will hang up right away. They want to place their orders immediately, not tomorrow or even next week. Without a person attending to their needs during their most convenient time, they are likely to abandon an item in their carts, and worse, you lose them to your competitors.
Cart abandonment costs retail businesses $18 billion in lost sales revenue every year. If you want to reduce your cart abandonment rates, it’s smart to outsource your order taking answering service. A customer support agent can provide after-hours support, ensuring the uninterrupted processing of your customers’ orders. With constant availability, you can boost your shopping cart conversion rate resulting in increased online sales.
3. Increase average order value
One reason businesses are struggling to increase their profit margins is they lack strategies to increase their average order value. Perhaps their order taking staff are too salesy, and it drives a lot of customers away. It may be that they don’t have a good pricing strategy around their high-value products. Whatever it is, outsourcing order taking answering service has all the answers to increasing your average order value.
An outsourced customer support agent is skilled at finding upselling and cross-selling opportunities across your site. They can increase your average order value by providing customers with attractive offers and recommendations they’ll actually love. As you increase your order sizes, you’ll find out which products are purchased most frequently. This will help you manage your inventory and create better pricing and marketing strategies.
4. Empower your in-house staff
During business peak seasons, your in-house staff may need an extra hand in processing high-volume orders. You don’t want to max out your staff’s bandwidth, which may result in higher turnover rates. As much as possible, you want them to focus on their expertise and allocate less time on administrative tasks. By outsourcing order processing services, you optimize your operations and improve your staff’s productivity levels.
When you partner with an order taking service provider, not only do you augment your existing order taking staff, but you also get to reduce your labor costs by not adding another staff to your payroll. Hiring a customer support agent also comes with the necessary tools required for a seamless order taking process. That means you don’t have to purchase the latest software to start hitting the ground running.
5. Encourage more repeat business
Providing 24/7 complete answering service to your order taking can benefit your business in many ways. By being responsive round-the-clock, you build a good reputation among your customers. This encourages more repeat business and gives you positive word-of-mouth advertising. When you let customers experience a frictionless order taking process, they may recommend you to their friends, which increases your customer acquisition rate.
When you boost your customer satisfaction by providing a responsive answering service around the clock, you increase customer satisfaction, you get higher store conversion rates that translate to increased online sales. Not to mention, you get a leg up on your competition and become a formidable competitor in your niche.
Get the Best Customer Care with ManilaPros
If you want to experience outsourcing in all of its glory, consider outsourcing to the Philippines with ManilaPros!
The Philippines is hailed as the world’s call center capital and home of world-class talents with superior English proficiency and literacy skills. When you outsource to the Philippines, you not only access a highly-skilled workforce, but you also reduce your labor costs by up to 70%.
ManilaPros offers a full-service, five-star customer care for retailers aiming to have the highest level of customer service possible. We'll provide you with customer support agents who went through comprehensive on-brand training and certification assessments, as well as a dedicated manager that will oversee your retail CS operations for you.
Book a call with us today to learn more.
