Retail and e-commerce are among the most demanding sectors for outsourced customer service. High volumes, sharp seasonality, multichannel complexity, and uncompromising expectations around speed: brands and online merchants have everything to gain from a specialist BPO partner — provided they choose the right one.
Customer service in retail has characteristics that make it a natural fit for outsourcing:
This is the baseline volume for any e-commerce operation. “Where is my order?”, “When will it arrive?”, “My order is incomplete” — these interactions often account for more than 40% of inbound contacts. They are highly processable and ideally suited to outsourcing, and increasingly to partial automation via chatbot with human advisor backup for exceptions.
Returns policy has become a major commercial differentiator in online retail. Its operational management — initiating returns, tracking, processing refunds, handling disputes — is time-consuming and follows the same peaks as sales. A specialist BPO provider manages it with proven processes and controlled timelines.
Helping a customer choose a product, answering technical questions, guiding them through their purchase journey: this type of interaction has a direct impact on conversion rate. The best retail BPO providers train their teams to act as genuine sales advisors, not just support agents.
Handling dissatisfaction, managing disputes, responding to negative reviews on rating platforms: an experienced retail provider understands the stakes of online reputation and frames its responses to transform a poor experience into a loyalty opportunity.
Loyalty programme management, satisfaction surveys, abandoned basket follow-up, retention campaigns: outsourcing is not limited to problem resolution. It can also cover proactive, commercially valuable interactions that drive repeat purchase and lifetime value.
Black Friday, the winter sales period, and the Christmas season concentrate a disproportionate share of annual revenue for most retail brands. These periods generate a surge in contacts: stock availability queries, order confirmations, missing or damaged gifts, exchange requests.
A BPO provider specialising in retail must demonstrate the ability to:
This is precisely where generalist providers show their limitations compared to sector specialists. Armatis manages seasonal peaks for major retail brands every year, with tested ramp-up frameworks and dedicated teams ready to activate at short notice.
The retail customer of 2026 will not tolerate broken experiences between channels. They begin their journey on a mobile app, ask a question via website chat, call if it remains unresolved, and post a review on Google or Trustpilot. Your provider must cover this entire journey consistently.
Essential omnichannel capabilities to verify:
In retail, the right BPO provider is not the cheapest — it is the one that delivers the best customer experience at the best total cost, in normal periods and during peaks alike. The key criteria are: proven peak management capability, genuine omnichannel coverage, technical integration with your systems, and the ability to train teams who truly speak your brand’s language.
For standard interaction types (order tracking, returns, basic complaints), two to three weeks of training is generally sufficient. For more technical product advice or complex ranges, allow four to six weeks including a supervised listening period. Experienced retail BPO providers have accelerated training methodologies designed specifically for this sector.
Yes, provided they are integrated into the relevant marketplace interfaces (Amazon Seller Central, eBay, Zalando Partner Portal, etc.) and trained on their specific SLAs. This is a point to verify explicitly during the RFP process — not all providers have this capability.
The transition should be planned over a minimum of eight to twelve weeks: process documentation, knowledge transfer, a pilot phase on one channel or geography, then progressive ramp-up. A good provider co-pilots this transition rather than leaving you to manage it alone.
It is one of the most compelling use cases. A fast-growing e-commerce business cannot build an internal customer service team that scales at the same pace as its revenue growth. Outsourcing allows customer service capacity to grow as fast as the business — without the HR and infrastructure constraints of mass in-house recruitment.
Armatis supports retail brands and e-commerce businesses across Europe in managing their customer service: omnichannel support, seasonal peak management, returns and complaints, pre-sales advice. Our teams are trained on the specific dynamics of the retail sector and integrated with the leading e-commerce platforms.
Contact our teams to discuss your challenges.
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