Collaboration in business is escalating faster than ever. Seeking help from third parties is now a very common strategy that companies use to scale up their business and pursue new opportunities in ...

As your business grows, so too will the customer support tickets, making it critically important that you scale your support team alongside your customer or order growth. Why? Because customer service ...

My previous articles in this column have explored the ways in which many marketing organizations are trying to better understand their customers by combining traditional market research with new ...

The mention of “outsourcing” in customer service brings up an image of a giant call center, in a foreign country, packed with people who work in 12-hour shifts. Companies partner with these centers to ...

Anyone who has exchanged stories about atrocious technical support calls will no doubt be aware of the horror stories that come from people who were shunted to a foreign call center where a person ...

It’s 8 p.m., and you find yourself chained to your desk, drowning in a sea of customer queries. If that sounds all too familiar, you’re not alone–I’ve been there myself, as have many other ...

Your clients might not demand 24/7 customer service yet, but they’re certainly hoping for it. But how can a startup with a lean staff provide round-the-clock customer care? There are several options ...

"Can I help you with your problem?" means the same thing all over the world. A new report from Jupiter Research finds that despite the hype around customers' aversion to outsourcing, only 17 percent ...

The No. 1 goal of customer service is customer satisfaction, but how you get there may not be as clear-cut and straightforward as it seems. It begins with a strong team, which is the result of ...

In 2013, TOMS made a terrible mistake: We outsourced Customer Service. Like the Portland Trailblazers selecting Sam Bowie in the 1984 NBA draft, TOMS’ outsourcing decision might have turned out well.

A trio of professors working with the national Quality Research Center at the University of Michigan finds that offshore outsourcing hurts customer service ratings, but farming out back office ...