For tech companies, choosing to hire additional employees is not a decision made lightly. But when all other options have been exhausted, adding team members becomes necessary in order to meet customers’ needs.
Offshoring is a great option fortech companies looking to scale their customer success teams quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively. By adhering to offshoring best practices, businesses can grow sustainably while keeping overhead costs manageable.
But when it comes to scaling your customer success team with offshore resources, one of the trickiest questions is not if, but when.
These are the situations in which offshoring your customer success team is the best option.
Your customer base has outgrown your team’s capabilities
The transition from a small, nimble startup to a large company can be difficult, especially in technical fields (like IT security, software development, or finance) where staffing can be particularly costly.
Your customer success team may simply not have enough hours in the day to manage their accounts, or they may lack the skills and experience necessary to solve complex customer problems.
In either case, when your team is pushed beyond capacity, it’s the customer who pays for it.
How can you tell when it’s time to scale?
The industry standard for customer success managers (CSMs) is to manage accounts equalling roughly $2 million in annual revenue, though that number can vary by industry and business model. If your CSMs have too many accounts to manage, it can lead to burnout, lag, and churn.
This is the most obvious time to scale your customer success team. Handing some of this responsibility to additional team members will stave off burnout. And if you choose to hire a remote team, you can access additional capacity and skills without the time investment or risk of hiring in-house.
Your customers are global, but your onshore team isn’t
The sun never sets on a global business. For customers in far-off places, having to hold their questions until your in-house customer care team clocks in can be a deal-breaker.
Many companies try to take their customer success operations around the clock from the home office, only to discover that providing customer success and inspiring delight this way is easier said than done.
Finding trustworthy and qualified employees to fill late night, early morning, and weekend shifts typically proves difficult within a limited local talent pool.
That’s why many companies turn to offshore teams to bridge gaps and build connections for a global marketplace.
An effective offshore team strategy covers time zone gaps to ensure customers get the care they need, when they need it.
Your budget has changed
Financial instability is often the engine of innovation. Market uncertainty, macroeconomic forces, or changes to your funding can make offshoring an urgent necessity for startups.
Many companies fall into the trap of pulling resources from customer-facing teams to preserve funding elsewhere. But cutting budget from your customer success team can exacerbate financial shortfalls by fuelling customer dissatisfaction and churn.
The resulting feedback loop can become fatal for a startup.
Instead, companies should seek out cost-effective alternatives to in-house customer success teams, like AI, self-service, and offshoring, to mitigate the effects of budget shifts without impacting customer success.
Conclusion
Growth comes with its own challenges. When you gain more customers and more revenue, changes to your internal team or operating model will become necessary.
In this sink or swim moment, offshore solutions providers can be your lifeguard. A remote staffing agency like Bolton Remote can help you build custom solutions for quality, around-the-clock customer success.
