As a small- to medium-sized business owner, it can be difficult to find a customer support system. After all, you know your business best and training others can be a challenge when you want to ensure that your customers have an exceptional relationship with your brand at all times.

But a support staff can be costly and even if you have a number of employees, there are better tasks they can focus on to ensure that your business is able to grow and thrive. This means that outsourcing support is one of the most cost-effective investments you can make, but how to do it?

Luckily, it isn’t too difficult to find a qualified customer service professional. Instead, you can just follow a few simple steps to ensure that your business is always well provided for.

Begin With a System

Any effective customer service support begins with a system. Now, no two businesses are alike in terms of their needs or what solutions will best suit them.

As such, it’s important to install a help desk or customer support email account you can rely on as the one location you go to give customers the help they need.

Next, Look for the Right Individual

Outsourcing is commonly done through freelancing websites like oDesk, Elance, or maybe even Guru or LinkedIn but this isn’t the only way you can find the individuals you need. In fact, it’s often best to first turn to your social network or even your blog to reach out to friends and colleagues that might be interested in providing the assistance you need.

Of course, local networking is also a great way to find not just any individuals, but individuals in your area. As you can imagine, this might cost more than outsourcing your needs to an individual (perhaps even to an individual in another country) but it is all dependent on how comfortable you feel with who you hire and how they will perform in the position.

If you do choose to hire an individual off of a freelancing website, there are a few steps you can take to find the right individual, including:

• Reviewing job descriptions others have used when looking for similar customer support assistance
• Creating a thorough description that provides all relevant details (working hours, skills, communication methods) to filter out undesirable candidates
• Posting your job on multiple outsourcing websites (after all, you never know where the right individual is hiding)
• Giving a trial job to several qualified candidates to determine which individual will be best

Of Course, You Can Always Turn to a Call Answering Service

At Flat Answering Service, we offer US-based operators to ensure that your customers’ calls are always answered. And, if you want to save yourself the hassle of searching for the right individual for your business, you can depend on our team to deliver the right individual directly to you.

Contact us today to learn more and discuss the right plan for your needs!