Fully-Remote Customer Service Specialists – with GQ Fu of LTVplus

GQ Fu and LTVplus

GQ Fu is the CEO and co-founder of LTVplus, an outsourcing firm specializing in customer service.  It primarily focuses on the e-commerce industry but has since expanded beyond the field.

GQ and his partner are advocates of remote work and have been digital nomads themselves for some years. Their company, LTVplus – which stands for lifetime value – is 100% remote and aims to help businesses increase the lifetime value of customers.

LTVplus aims to understand the entire customer journey to provide the best experience across channels like chat, email, text, and voice. It eventually expanded from live chat into omnichannel support.

In this episode, Derek and GQ talk about remote work, the role of AI and automation in businesses, and convincing clients to try outsourcing.

The road to remote

Recounting the stories of the people they worked with in the Philippines is among the reasons that made GQ embrace remote work.

“I remember one thing that really resonated with me before we started [the] business was when we were working with people from the Philippines, for example, hearing how people had to commute like one way, at least one to 3 hours every day.”

“That’s like basically two to 6 hours minimum… and if you’re working a night shift – having to do that [is] just insane.”

For GQ, “there really is no way of going back because people are realizing [the value of remote work]… I think that we will never go back to before 2020. There was no reason to. But I think that there is benefit in having on-site meetups from time to time.”

“[Remote work] is productive. You get a lot of stuff done, and you don’t necessarily have to be in the office.”

Even so, GQ acknowledges that “there are things that can be done a lot quicker in person, but it doesn’t have to be enforced per se.”

Embracing AI

Touching on the subject of AI, GQ remarks, “I don’t think it will destroy jobs [in the customer service and customer experience industry] per se. I think it’s going to enable people to do more.”

AI helps “lessen the workload on your customer support team.”

With AI, [customer support can “filter out the more repetitive inquiries and complex inquiries at the first level. And then [the] second part is that when it does reach a human agent, the human agents will have so-called superpowers through AI assistance.”

“As a result, customers are very happy because they either do not need to spend much time with an agent because they got their responses really quickly or they will get a really good and fast response.”

For GQ, using incorporating AI tools “allows your team, your current team, to support many more customers at a higher quality as a result.”

“I think that the one thing [we need] is to embrace the technology and understand how well you can use it for your business or for your customer support team.”

Bringing clients aboard

When it comes to convincing clients who aren’t yet keen on outsourcing, GQ underscores the importance of “understanding what [they are] looking to achieve when they outsource.”

“For companies that are still on the fence [about outsourcing], think of outsourcing as becoming the extensions of your business at a much more affordable rate.”

“Usually, if you work with an outsourcing partner today, they would do their best to figure out which agent or which person you’re going to get, and ideally, they’re going to deliver a great candidate to you on the first attempt.

For businesses thinking about outsourcing, GQ states that “the first thing to understand is what can you outsource? What are some of the things that you rather delegate? Because they are not necessarily the ones that generate the most income.”

For more details on LTVplus and its services, visit www.ltvplus.com, or email [email protected]. Alternatively, you can also reach GQ through his LinkedIn.