No matter how amazing a product is, once the order is placed, the customer experience has to be taken care of with utmost courtesy. Hence, that’s how your referrals are increased, giving your product a wonderful identity.
But did you know how a Direct-Selling industry looks after their back-office operations while they are busy producing mass products for their consumers? Well, these much-important operations are handled by a reliable outsourcing company who knows-it-all about Business Operations Support Services and delivers the delegated works with utmost sincerity.
The foundational function of a product-selling industry- from placing orders to Inquiries & Complaints, Billing, Refunds and Returns, After Sales Support, Warranty Management, a company’s operational elements has to be consistently maintained and constantly updated as without these deliverables a company eventually grinds to a halt.
Not just this, a retail industry also has to keep them equipped with other unsung components like Data management, CRM support, Marketing Intelligence, Digitization, and much more. You see, direct to consumer industry is beyond the bounds of just selling and purchasing a product. It brings a plethora of operations that a BOSS vendor takes care of.
These elements managed by a Third-Party vendor have the power to either break or build a business if performed efficiently with their expertise. Thus, to understand the prominence of Business Operations Support Services, we bring you a compiled editorial that summarizes its contribution to a Direct-Selling Industry.
Customer Support
We are in an era where competition is immensely high, and differentiating your brand solely based on your product offerings is becoming more challenging. In the circumstances like this, consumers tend to go to the brands they perceive will offer better value than their competitors.
Delivering exceptional customer experiences is a great way to create this value and acquire a competitive advantage against other rivals in the market. In a Direct-Selling Industry, great customer support plays as the cornerstones of a memorable customer experience.
Simply understand, customer support is a dedicated function of Business Operations Support Services that offers all the necessary support to customers in regards to the product.
A good customer support representative has a thorough understanding and logistic know-how of the company’s product. Here in the outsourcing industry, the agent also possesses excellent listening and communication skills since support communication with customers involves high levels of patience, coherence, and concision. Further customer support services in the retail industry include:
- Inquiries & Complaints: Inquiries and complaints are the most unpredictable part of customer support. Hence, it must be handled by some experts who can promptly respond to the customer. You never know the mood of the customer and what type of query or complaint they have. Thus, in such a case, a skilled representative who knows the ins and outs of your product is certainly the need of the hour. Sometimes, responsiveness also plays a major part in your customer relationship. Hence, it is crucial to provide your customer quick and accurate assistance.
- Billing, Refunds, and Returns: Billing, refunds, and returns – these three elements are yet another aspect that you can’t neglect. Not to forget, if these things are not taken care of, then your product can face negative reviews too. Selling a product is not just about delivering it to the customer and receiving the payment. Customer’s mind can change at any moment, and they may want to return, replace or directly want reimbursements, and you have to respect their decision.
- After Sales Support: As we know, a customer relationship is not just limited to selling the product. It’s beyond that. Therefore, after-sales support is equally important as other factors associated with Business Operations Support. It can include some sort of assistance your representative has to offer to operate the product or the methods of using it.
- Warranty Management: Warranty management is a typical endeavor for the manufacturing industry and focuses on the product’s effective creation or implementation. Warranty management can potentially have an incredible impact on final profits for a company, as inappropriate management may cost businesses a great deal of money.
Technical Support
Technical support is one of the crucial operations in the manufacturing industry that deals with after-sales technical assistance to the consumer who has very limited knowledge about the product in the technical aspect.
For example, if you buy a laptop and face some sort of issues operating it. Hence, it’s here where technical support extends its hand in solving your problem. It is crucial to ensure that the representative has the domain expertise.
Also, technical assistance is one of the toughest tasks that have to be taken care of because it involves a lot of complexity and requires handling the frustrated mood of the customer. That is why hiring a Business Operations Support Vendor is a smart choice as they hold incredible experience in maintaining these factors.
The following comes under the Technical Support that benefits the retail industry.
- Application Support: Applications support ensures the operational processes in a business work smoothly and enables customers to conduct their requirements. External applications support primarily focuses on customers or end-users. Application support usually offers a blend of both technical support and human support.
- Help Desk: A help desk service, oftentimes, is seen as a central point where clients/customers can talk about any business or product-related problems, and they can also acquire solutions from the expert call center executives, who also happen to be the subject matter experts.
CRM Support: CRM is a short form for customer relationship management. It’s a category of integrated, data-driven software solutions that enhances how you interact and do business with your customers. CRM systems help you handle and maintain customer relationships, track sales leads, marketing, and pipeline, and deliver actionable data. Zendesk, Zoho Corporation, Teledesk are popular CRM used by outsourcing companies.
Operational Support
Operational Support is important, but unfortunately, some manufacturers ignore this essence of business because it doesn’t contribute profit directly. But in contrast, Operational Support is one of the vital assets that back the company and provides immense profits indirectly. How? Because Operational Support includes an array of backend works like documentation, online research, Data entry, and so on.
Thus, these aspects are effortlessly managed by Operation Support Services with their insightful mastery over the operational management of the business.
Remember, an outsourcing company is dedicated only to Business Operations Support Services; hence, they are clearly master over tackling these sets of activities that you might sideline.
Therefore, Operations Support works closely with internal and external customers as well as partners. The closely involved decision-making processes give them the adaptability to constantly influence future developments impacting Operations along the whole value chain.
- Data Management Services: Data Management is the process of collecting, maintaining, and securely managing a company’s Data. The policies, procedures, and practices are among the broad range of Data Management tasks in an organization.
- Digitization: Digitization here refers to Digital Marketing that helps you increase your product or brand’s identity online. Digital Marketing is a prominent subset of Business Operations Support Services that manufacturers must consider elevating their products online.
- Data Mining: Data mining is a systematic and successive approach to identifying and discovering hidden patterns and data throughout a big dataset. Also, it is used to build machine learning models that are further used in artificial intelligence.
- Data Analysis: Data Analysis includes extraction, cleaning, transformation, modeling, and visualization of data with the purpose to extract essential and helpful information which can be additionally useful in deriving conclusions and making choices. The primary goal of Data Analysis is to search out some crucial information in raw data so that the derived knowledge is often used to create vital choices.
Sales Support
Sales support is defined as a company’s representative that assists with sales activities. It is easy to understand that if there is no one to explain your product to the customer, there is no point for the consumer to purchase your product. Regardless of any industry, a salesperson is one of the most crucial wings of a company that makes your brand fly higher. And in the manufacturing domain, it turns out to be more important than in the retail sector, as consumers are directly involved with the seller.
The concrete sales support strategy makes it easier to discover and attract your target audience or consumer, better manage customer relationships, and enhance your sales team performance. Sales support roles and responsibilities can include customer service, lead generation, communications, and product training, and much more.
An outsourcing company makes sure to focus on the selling and closing of your product efficiently as they are aware of the fact that the sale of your product is the primary factor that a retailer considers. They professionally initiate the selling process with your potential customer, explain your product, and convince them to make the purchase decision.
Once the deal is closed from their end, they forward or hand over the rest to the authorized department. This can be precisely understood with the following subsets mentioned below.
- Market Research & Intelligence: Market Research and Intelligence examines the wider range of companies in a market and can include a deeper investigation of key competitors. Insights involve competitors’ corporate activity, products, and sales channels, positioning, and potential consumers. Additionally, research may combine market monitoring to stay updated on competitor developments by providing a spot-in-time analysis.
- Pre-Sales Support: Pre-sales support helps with finding, obtaining, and keeping customers. In B2C and retail sales, the pre-sales support focuses on answering your consumers’ questions about the product as they make their decision according to the understanding provided by the representative. It has to be convincing so that you can win your customer for the long term.
- Lead Generation: Just immediate to pre-sales, Lead Generation is a process of grabbing the consumers’ interest in your product and nurturing them in your sales pipeline, later converting them into your customer.
- Upselling & Cross-Sell: Upsell is the practice of encouraging the consumer to buy a comparable higher-end product than the one in question. On the other hand, cross-selling invites customers to buy related or complementary items.
So we explained each and every factor of Business Operation Support Services and how it is vital for the Direct-Selling Industry. Often manufacturers neglect this crucial aspect of this business, yet it has emerged as the most optimal choice in this modern time.
Summing it Up
Today, everything is turning digital, and hence, customers seek assistance online from buying the products to tracking down their delivery and much more. These elements of the retail industry couldn’t be handled better than the BOSS vendors.
Tru Performance, holding a great insight into the Direct-Selling industry, has offered these core operational services for ages. If you’re looking for a reliable company, who can understand your requirements and most importantly has the proficiency of handling the customers. In that case, the team here at Tru Performance is the apt choice.
Contact us now!
References: McKinsey, Capgemini