How to Outsource Customer Support
The New Era of Outsourcing
When you launch a successful game, you might not need a large support team immediately. But as your player base grows, a time will come when the volume of support requests from players exceeds what your current team can handle.
This can happen whether you have a single agent juggling all the support tasks or a well-established team of 10, 25, or even 100 agents. The challenge remains the same: do you keep hiring internally, or do you find a more scalable solution for an optimal player experience?
Outsourcing is the perfect solution.
Since the 1990s, businesses have recognized the financial and operational benefits of shifting customer support to business process outsourcing (BPO) providers.
In the early days, companies typically outsourced only to save money, and quality suffered as a result. But in the gaming world, where communities are tight-knit and rumors about poor support spread like wildfire, providing high-quality support is crucial.
Thankfully, the outsourcing landscape has evolved dramatically over the past decade. Today, companies of all sizes in the gaming industry—from small indie developers to well-established giants—have learned to outsource player support while maintaining high standards.
Outsourcing to a BPO can indeed reduce costs, but it can also streamline processes, boost quality, and make it easier to scale efficiently.
If you're a player support leader or a game founder thinking about outsourcing, this guide will help you assess whether it's the right move for your game. We’ll explore the benefits of outsourcing, key factors to consider when selecting the right vendor, and practical steps for building and launching a successful outsourced support team.
Why should you listen to us, and who are we to tell you how to outsource?
Founded in 2015, Peak Support is a boutique outsourcing company with enterprise capabilities. We have 2,000 employees working remotely across the globe, including the Philippines, the U.S.A., Colombia, Eastern Europe, and India.
We deliver incredible outsourcing for the most innovative brands on the planet, from customer service to finance to back-office to sales operations. We do it all by finding the best people, wherever they’re located, and empowering them to do what they do best.
We have a proven track record of building and scaling support teams for high-growth companies in the U.S. and abroad, and our expertise has been recognized by major media outlets and CX companies, including Zendesk, Inc., and Forbes. We were named Best Outsourcing Provider by ICMI and a finalist for Customer Contact Week’s Best Outsourcer award.
Perhaps more importantly (to us, at least!), we have the highest Glassdoor rating in the industry and a 96% CEO approval rating from our employees. That’s why we only accept 1 in 100 applicants and we have an average quality score of 95%.
We also serve a wide array of clients—from smaller gaming companies to high-growth ecommerce brands to Fortune 500 companies—so wherever you sit, we’ve probably launched a similar team.
We hope this ebook will give you the information and confidence you need to select the perfect BPO to support your users.
Benefits of Outsourcing Customer Support for Online Gaming Platforms
When people think about outsourcing player support, they often focus solely on cutting labor costs. And while reducing expenses is a significant benefit, it’s far from the only advantage you gain from partnering with a BPO provider to support your audience.
With recruiting operations focused on sourcing customer care talent, along with proven onboarding and quality assurance processes, BPO providers can onboard new agents much faster than your in-house processes would allow. For instance, at Peak Support, we can launch a new team to support your users in as little as one week.
BPOs also have access to vast networks of skilled agents, allowing them to bring in talent with expertise tailored to your technical requirements, whether you need proficiency in a particular programming language, experience in troubleshooting UI and network issues, or want to hire actual gamers.
According to a recent Forrester report, over 80% of US adults say that quick responses are the most critical factor of excellent online service.
This is where outsourced teams can make a significant difference supporting various schedules, including 24/7 coverage, to ensure your response time stays low throughout the day for an optimal user experience. This is especially important for supporting international users and VIP players, as well as managing seasonal spikes during holidays or major game updates.
At Peak Support, we can cover any shift and quickly add additional agents – up to 150 per week—easily scaling up and down to meet your requirements. Of course, the more complex your game, the longer the onboarding process will take. However, increased volume often involves repetitive queries, where new agents can be highly effective.
This flexibility makes it much easier to handle the challenges of rapidly changing demand, ensuring that your game’s support remains top-notch, no matter how much your player base grows.
50% of customers will stop using your services after a single poor support experience. When a low-quality support response is all it takes to lose a user for good, having a team of proven experts ready to deliver exceptional service becomes crucial.
BPO’s extensive experience in support operations enables them to set up streamlined processes and manage team performance effectively—leading to higher user satisfaction and more efficient scaling. For example, at Peak Support, we scaled Wildgrain’s outsourced team by 10x while maintaining their customer satisfaction (CSAT) score above 97%.
Because of their wide range of experiences, BPOs are often adept at finding opportunities to improve your player experience—including ones you may have missed or been too busy to tackle.
Outsourcing support to countries with a wealth of specialized talent, like the Philippines, can reduce labor costs. With over 40 million gamers and a relatively low cost of living, it’s a cost-effective place to build an outsourced player support team.
You can afford to pay top rates for the best talent in the country—and there’s plenty of it, thanks to decades of outsourcing experience—while still achieving significant cost savings. Most companies see at least a 10% cost reduction when outsourcing overseas.
In addition, you’ll save on all the costs of managing and scaling your support team.
At 5 or 10 agents, you may be able to get by with a team lead overseeing the support function. However, larger teams require recruiting, training, quality assurance, HR, workforce management, and more. An experienced BPO will bring all that support bundled into a single hourly rate, making it a streamlined and efficient solution for your growing support needs.
And salaries are just the tip of the iceberg.
Office space, equipment, benefits, and performance management all bring additional substantial costs. These expenses can exceed $7,000 per agent annually (before salaries) in major metro areas. Partnering with a BPO provider allows you to reduce these costs and allocate your budget to other strategic initiatives, such as innovation, technical infrastructure, community programs, and further game development.
Gaming platforms face unique challenges compared to other products, particularly when it comes to security. With the ever-present risk of fraud, maintaining a safe and positive environment for your players requires dedicated specialists who can not only identify and prevent fraudulent activities but also ensure that players adhere to community guidelines.
If your in-house resources are limited, partnering with an experienced BPO provider is a smart move. By doing so, you gain access to a team of experts skilled at spotting and stopping fraudulent activities, ensuring your players enjoy a secure and fair gaming experience.
These experts collaborate with you to design and implement robust systems and processes that effectively combat fraud, leveraging industry best practices.
At Peak Support, we bring extensive experience working with online gaming companies to detect and prevent fraudulent behavior. Our deep understanding of the various fraud schemes enables us to develop advanced systems that quickly identify and flag suspicious activities before they escalate into bigger problems.
By choosing a partner like us, you can protect your platform, maintain a secure environment for your players, and foster a thriving, engaged community.
3 Strategies for Outsourcing Support in the Gaming Industry
Outsourcing player support comes with unique challenges. Unlike most industries, where customers are driven by practicality or necessity—making purchases because they need a new product or have a problem to solve—games are bought for enjoyment and entertainment.
The passion behind these purchases leads to more intense interactions and a higher emotional investment from players. Because of this, and the often complex nature of support requests, building your player support processes requires careful planning.
While many gaming companies still manage plenty of high-volume, repetitive tickets—such as password resets—these simple queries are increasingly handled by generative AI tools, leaving a bulk of the support volume with very few “easy” tickets that you can answer with a macro.
Most of the remaining tickets are complex game logic or technical issues and bugs. And bugs cannot be resolved with standard responses or macros.
So, what does this mean for player support teams?
This means they need highly skilled agents who are not only technically savvy but also well-trained and adaptable to have a deep understanding of the game and navigate support processes that vary significantly from one company or game to another. Ideally, they are actual gamers with strong communication and technical skills, as well as an analytical mindset; and such agents can be hard to find without access to a broad talent network.
This is why gaming companies often need custom solutions to ensure top-notch support that truly benefits their players.
Here are three key strategies to successfully outsource customer support for your game:
By outsourcing basic questions to a BPO team, your in-house team can focus entirely on complex problems, supporting VIP players, and handling escalations.
For some gaming companies, it makes sense to fully outsource user-facing support work. At Peak Support, for instance, we manage all customer interactions for some clients as well as handle the escalation pipeline for internal support engineers, ensuring that any bug reports are promptly resolved by the in-house staff.
Tasks such as data entry, community moderation, and new user verification can be outsourced to free up your in-house team, enabling them to focus on further game development and strategic community initiatives. This approach is helpful if your ticket volume fluctuates, allowing agents to take on tasks outside the support queue when the volume is low.
By addressing the complexities of player support with a strategic outsourcing approach, you can ensure high-quality customer care, optimize operations, and drive growth.
Key Considerations When Choosing an Outsourced Customer Support Provider
With hundreds, if not thousands, of options available, how do you find the right BPO partner to ensure your users are in good hands?
Start by building a list of questions that cover everything from culture to technology, to scaling capacity, to training methods. Here are five key items to include.
The gaming industry operates on a global scale, spanning multiple continents and time zones, which requires extensive support coverage. But even within a single time zone, gaming is a 24/7 activity, and players expect quick responses to stay engaged and have their issues addressed promptly.
Ensure that your BPO partner can provide around-the-clock support and has a robust SLA that guarantees rapid response times. This is especially important for your VIP players expecting high levels of service.
By offering 24/7 support, you can maintain player satisfaction, enhance loyalty, and keep your gaming community thriving at all hours.
Does the BPO agency have experience hiring player support agents with technical backgrounds and supporting technical products?
If not, agents may excel at handling simple FAQ queries but struggle with more complex technical questions, bug reports, or inquiries related to game logic, which can lead to higher escalation rates and increased workload on your in-house team.
Does the BPO have experience managing support operations for other gaming companies? How do they approach training for new releases, especially when there aren’t any extensive troubleshooting guides or runbooks available yet?
It’s also important that their team leads, QA reviewers, and managers are actively engaged in the gaming industry to lead your player support team effectively.
At Peak Support, we utilize our extensive experience in the gaming industry to help you create efficient support processes and build meaningful player communities. Our team members have an average of 8 years of experience compared to the 1 to 3 years typical at most BPOs. This depth of experience makes a significant difference in building and scaling effective player support teams.
When selecting a BPO provider for the gaming industry, one of the most critical factors to consider is their expertise in Trust & Safety. Player support alone isn’t enough—effective community moderation and fraud prevention are essential to maintaining a secure and positive environment.
A BPO provider with a strong track record in Trust & Safety understands the unique challenges that gaming platforms face, such as the risks of fraud, illegal content, and community posts violating internal policies and legal regulations.
By bringing specialized knowledge and proven strategies to protect both your players and your brand, they will not only enhance player satisfaction but also build trust and loyalty within your gaming community.
Currently, most of the global gaming revenue—$127 billion—is spread across 10 countries. And players prefer to get help in their native language.
While many outsourcers mainly offer English-language support, some provide additional language options. It’s worth exploring them to ensure the best experience for your players.
- For example, nearshore options in Mexico or Colombia often supply both English and Spanish support.
- In the Philippines, many agents are bilingual, fluently speaking English and some other popular languages, such as Spanish and French.
- Similarly, Eastern Europe is a great region to consider for other European languages, as many customer service workers in this region are fluent in multiple languages – including English, German, French, and Italian.
However, with the development of AI tools, AI-powered translations are often as good as, or even better than, those provided by non-native speakers. Platforms like Intercom, Help Scout, and Zendesk now come with built-in translation services (if you’re on the right product tier).
If you’re only providing email and chat support, solutions like this may be sufficient to enable your English-speaking agents to translate inquiries and respond in each user’s preferred language.
In the gaming industry, some companies frequently launch smaller games, while others might have a game that suddenly takes off overnight. Given this wide range of scenarios, contracts with rigid terms can be challenging.
Many BPOs require a minimum of 25 agents or more, which might not be ideal for every situation. Others, like Peak Support, offer a more flexible baseline, catering to smaller companies and games.
It’s crucial to choose a BPO that can quickly adapt to your needs, whether that means scaling the team up or down. Be sure to consider how much notice they require and any fees you may need to pay upfront to reduce team size.
How to Ensure a Successful Outsourcing Partnership
Signing a contract might mark the end of the sales process, but it's only the start of your BPO partnership. Here are the key steps to ensure a smooth integration and long-term success of your partnership:
From the start, it’s crucial to communicate your quality standards and establish the benchmarks you’ll use to measure the partnership’s progress.
Develop a comprehensive agreement, including target KPIs and SLAs to keep both parties aligned, and assign a dedicated vendor manager to oversee the relationship with the BPO.
The vendor manager should be in sync with your senior management’s priorities to avoid sending conflicting messages from different levels of your organization. Their role is to provide clear direction, communicate requirements, and manage expectations throughout the entire partnership, ensuring any issues are promptly addressed.
Just like any new team member, your BPO team requires thorough onboarding to integrate effectively. Allocate the necessary resources to ensure a smooth onboarding process so your outsourced team can start handling tasks and adding value as quickly as possible.
Here’s a high-level plan to help you allocate resources and plan accordingly:
- Kick-off meeting. Once the contract is signed, hold a kick-off meeting with the BPO team to agree on key milestones and establish a collaborative working relationship.
- Align technology and tools. Ensure the BPO team has access to all necessary technology and tools they’ll need for remote meetings, communication, and data sharing. This may include platforms like Slack, Trello, Zoom, Google Workspace, and your internal applications to facilitate seamless collaboration.
- Provide training. If you have existing training materials, the process will be quicker. If not, your BPO partner might assist in creating them, but you’ll need to verify the accuracy of the information before training begins. Typically, training is required for the first BPO representative joining, who will then train other agents moving forward.
- Review drafts. Evaluate the initial responses drafted by your BPO team to ensure they meet your standards for customer support. If there are issues, provide constructive feedback so they can tweak documentation and training materials as needed. This helps correct any misunderstandings and refine the team’s approach early on.
Once you’re confident in the BPO team’s capabilities, they will take over handling support tickets and you can consider the onboarding officially done. Establishing a reporting system will help you stay informed about reported issues, trends, and the team’s performance as well as keep track of progress and address any concerns promptly.
Clear communication is the key to preventing delays and misalignments, enabling swift action when concerns arise. By establishing open communication lines, you can stay informed about customer issues and keep your outsourced team updated on the latest game developments and future plans.
Set up recurring sync meetings to provide regular updates and quickly address any ongoing issues. These meetings are invaluable for helping your BPO agents gain a deeper understanding of your product, mission, and company culture to provide quality support.
A successful outsourcing relationship is built on collaboration and mutual respect, so it’s important to approach your BPO partnership with an open mind. Remember, your BPO agents are on the front lines, interacting with your players every day which gives them firsthand insights into what your players love about your game and where they are encountering challenges.
These agents are not just there to provide support; they are your eyes and ears on the ground, offering valuable feedback that can help you enhance the player experience.
Encourage your BPO team to share their observations and suggestions. They can identify which manual tasks consume the most time and recommend areas where automation could streamline processes and improve efficiency. This input can help you uncover pain points that may not be immediately obvious from within your own team.
Need other resources?
Stay informed on the best strategies for successful customer support outsourcing!
For more questions to ask, check out Crafting an RFP to Outsource Customer Support - a complete guide to BPO RFPs. It includes an Excel template with dozens of questions you can ask potential partners.
For more questions to ask, check out Crafting an RFP to Outsource Customer Support - a complete guide to BPO RFPs. It includes an Excel template with dozens of questions you can ask potential partners.
Grow your player support efficiently through outsourcing
Whether you outsource just Tier 1 tickets or the entire support function, the goal is always the same—to use your company resources more effectively. When done right, outsourcing becomes a strategic advantage, helping your company thrive in the competitive gaming industry.
But the success of your outsourcing efforts hinges on choosing the right BPO partner.
If you’re ready to take the next step, book a free consultation with our team today to learn more about how Peak Support can drive player loyalty and optimize your support operations for the best customer experience.
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