If you are running an e-commerce startup business, the order-taking process is one of the most tedious areas. After all, you need to quickly respond to hundreds of customer inquiries and get their orders prepped up. That can often end up overwhelming your small business.
Here, outsourcing will be an excellent option. It will allow you not just to strengthen your order-taking process, but also to expand it further. Let’s explore how you can pull it off with the help of Virtua Solutions.
The Benefits Of Outsourcing Your Order-Taking Process
By now, you are already aware of the different general benefits that outsourcing offers for your startup business. However, there are more specific ones for the order-taking process. These will give you a clearer picture of what the strategy can bring to your sales pipeline.
Increased Operational Time
With the growth of e-commerce, customers now expect that your business can take orders 24/7. However, regular business hours limit your ability to do that. Through outsourcing, you can have an external team handle orders during off-hours. They can then pass these to your processing team during the next business day.
Error-Free Orders
Another consequence of a small team trying to take on too many orders is that they can make errors. Outsourcing won’t just give you a larger team to take on the increased volume. You can also get an expert team that will take the time to go through every order and ensure that all the information is correct before handing it over to you.
Cross-Selling And Upselling Opportunities
This one might come as a surprise, but an outsourced order-taking team can indeed help you open more cross-selling and upselling opportunities. They do this skillfully, as they have undergone plenty of training as part of their work. With that, you can open a new revenue stream more easily.
Greater Customer Satisfaction
Ordering is just the start of the buyer process, but it can go a long way to influence customers’ overall satisfaction. An outsourced team will help you in improving that initial customer experience. That helps customers get a more satisfactory purchase in the end.
Staffing Flexibility
Your order demands can quickly change at any time. For instance, you might launch a new product to widespread fanfare. In this case, you want your order-taking team to expand faster. An outsourced team will let you do that easily. You can expand the team as needed without having to go through hiring.
How Your Startup Business Should Outsource Order Taking
With it being an essential part of the order fulfillment process, you need to think about how to outsource order taking the right way. The first thing to determine here is whether to outsource the process on its own or as part of the broader order fulfillment process.
Outsourcing order taking as part of your larger order fulfillment outsourcing has its advantages. Here, you don’t have to worry about the singular process, as the outsourcing provider will handle it as part of their whole service strategy. With that, you get a more consistent workflow.
On the other hand, outsourcing your order taking on its own can result in a more focused service. That is because it will be the only thing the provider will do for you. The option is suitable if you are looking to deal with only a small volume of excess orders. You can quickly have the team deployed as needed.
Using Order Taking Call Centers
A common way to outsource your order-taking process is to hand it over to a call center. As their name says, these providers will take on call-based orders from your customers and process them for you. They may also take on orders coming from other channels.
These call centers are great if you expect to deal with a large volume of phone orders. However, some of them might have a minimum volume requirement to be viable. Thus, make sure that these would suit your needs.
An alternative to full-blown call centers would be remote ones offered by Virtua Solutions. Unlike traditional call centers, these are not housed in a single office space. Instead, the agents work remotely from different locations. Because they do not need a permanent office, these remote call centers cost less than the former. As such, they are well suited for smaller businesses like yours.
Making Your Startup Business Order Taking Process More Efficient
Outsourcing already provides you with a way to make the process more efficient. However, you can help the external team do it further through some simple strategies. These simple steps will make it easier for the external team to process orders and move them to your fulfillment queue.
To start, catalog your product inventory properly. Use a simple product numbering system so that your external agents can quickly determine which items are included in the order. That also ensures that checks down the line can be quickly facilitated.
Additionally, you can develop a call center-specific version of your website. This one will be a more simplified version that lets external agents quickly lookup products. You can also create a simple checkout page for their use.
Providing Your Startup Business With The Right Team
When you outsource your order-taking process to Virtua, we guarantee that you are getting a highly competent team. Our agents have years of experience in business processing and can readily jump to handle your customer orders.
Beyond being quick to respond, we have also developed our order-taking strategies. These let us process a large number of inquiries faster. We can readily integrate these strategies into your own, creating a more efficient order fulfillment process.
Furthermore, we can tailor our team to match your needs. Need only a few agents at the start? We can provide them on the fly. And when you expand your team, we expand alongside you. We can take care of the hiring of additional agents.
With all that, you can be sure that your startup business is ready to face more customers. Give us a call today and we will demonstrate our capabilities. Get ready to grow faster and reach more customers with our help.