5 key elements of successful contact centre processes outsourcing

Customer service outsourcing has existed in Poland since the end of ‘90s. In those early years the core of the outsourcing industry contracts comprised the key mean industries: telecommunications, banks, insurance companies and publishers.

Others either did not outsource at all or the scale of outsourcing was marginal and scattered across several isolated campaigns. Gradually, the idea of transferring not-essential processes outside of one's own company progressively spread to other industries along with more service providers and a growing awareness of potential benefits.

In the last several years, I have noticed a trend of growing popularity of out sourcing among industries that previously withheld everything at their own premises. So what should be checked when you company decides to outsource contact centre operations?

1. PURPOSE OF OUTSOURCING

Is the purpose to support for internal sales or customer service departments? Is your company moving just one isolated process or all customer service processes will be handed over to an external company? In any case, it is important to start with a needs analysis. At what cost of customer acquisition or contact service, outsourcing will be profitable for us and the partner? It is worth estimating your own costs, including, in addition to the employee costs, other related costs and overheads?

In the case of very short marketing cam paigns, running the process internally may be more worthwhile, at least in the initial stages. Most contact centre companies have a minimum project scale that they are willing to take in. These differ of course depending on the company, but generally such limitation is needed due to the time and human resources commitment required to launch each new campaign. Furthermore, in the case of outbound campaigns (sales, leads), almost all companies use automatic dialling systems. These are the most effective with 5,000-10,000 records in the database at their disposal, hence the minimum required scale is also dictated by technological limitations. responsible for the implementation of quantitative and qualitative results. The largest companies engage their specialized departments, even resort to hiring specialized external companies that prepare a due diligence analysis of a potential partner. If using them is not an option, it is really worth taking the time to meet two or three potential contact centres to see what their premises look like and what conditions our future employees will work under. For instance, staff turnover rate is an important point as it revels and ample amount of information about team's experience.

2. OUTSOURCER EVALUATION

Once the outspring decision is taken, the next step the selection of your partner. It is one of the most, if not the most difficult element of the process. As in any industry, it is sometimes difficult to look behind a curtain of marketing to reveal a genuine image and capabilities of a selected company.

The price of the service is only one of the criteria. It is very easy to start a cooperation that will end after a few weeks with lost time, funds and without achieving the expected results. There are several key points that should be taken into account, e.g. the experience of the management team, especially the middle level staff such as team leaders, because they are I suggest paying thorough care to the analysis of internal documents such as procedures and e.g. cards for assessing the quality of calls, frequently referred to as coaching sheets. They prove the level of professionalism and structured customer service processes in the organization.

3. 2X „I”, OR INTEGRATION AND IMPLEMENTATION

Another important and frequently neglected aspect is the integration of outsourcing services with internal company processes. Looking from a wider perspective, BPO is a part of our organization, which is merely placed in a different location. One of good practices is designation of the main person responsible

for cooperation with a partner, whose task is to monitor reports, recordings, supervise training when new products or procedures are implemented and act as a liaison for daily exchange of information between the outsourcer and internal company departments. Without such person, misunderstanding and dilution of responsibilities may lead to serious problems. This is particularly important in the initial period of cooperation.

4. REPORTING

Once the cooperation has started, we reach another milestone in successful outsourcing implementation – communication and results reporting. Firstly, when outsourcing a project based on success remuneration, frequently no KPIs are reported. This may seem irrelevant as long as the stream of leads or sales is coming. However, when things go astray, or even worse, the partner ends the cooperation by terminating the agreement due to too high costs at their and, reports help to dig down to the source of a problem.

Secondly, while most BPO companies offer extensive reporting capabilities, companies that order such a service often forget about providing feedback. Improving the quality of cooperation, means sending information back, for instance, whether our sales rep was not satisfied with the meeting arranged by call centre or some parts of the sale could be improved. The liaison person, mentioned in the previous point, comes particularly handy in such situations. Both I, as well as my colleagues from the industry, have several cases when we learned about important.

Call recordings are an integral part of reporting processes and you should verify how quickly they are made accessible. This has paramount importance in an event of any complaint, but it is also extremely useful in a daily monitoring of the contact centre. Gone are the days when one had to wait for several hours before a file was available for download. Nowadays, it should be accessible immediately or just minutes after the conversation. Live call barging is also possible. your operations. When outsourcing, starting from the analysis of company's financial credibility may be a good idea. Technical facilities guaranteeing uninterrupted service provision are also vital, particularly for helplines and help desks. It is worth verifying business continuity and contingency procedures, including access to doubled and independent telecommunications and ISPs. Frequency of backups is another key element one should pay attention to. In the context of GDPR, personal data security procedures are a must, and these should also be verified.

Important and frequently neglected aspect is the integration of outsourcing services with internal company processes. Looking from a wider perspective, BPO is a part of our organization, which is merely placed in a different location.

One point worth mentioning, is that access to, e.g. all recordings or all effective and ineffective recordings (without call back, etc.) should be provided, so that a full picture of the situation could be obtained.

Sometimes, if possible, it is worthwhile to send off one of the employees to spend a few days with a partner. It is much easier to give quick feedback and suggestions directly, particularly in the first days of the cooperation. Basing on my own experience, I can say that such an approach significantly accelerates the implementation process.

5. SECURITY

It is a very wide notion and its scope de pends on the complexity and nature of Although it may not appear as such, contact centre services are complex and multifaceted services that are comprised or several variables, which have to work unison to be successful. If one element is missing, the cooperation with outsources may not bring expected results. 

Author:

Marcin Łukasik,

Commercial Director CEE, Unicall

OFFICE REVISITED?

MAKE THE MOST OF THE LOCKDOWN EXPERIENCE

The more we contain the epidemic, the more we feel pressed to return to the office setting, to re-establish the relationships with other people, exchange information and ideas. But after our understanding of work has changed in the new reality, is it possible to resume our duties and start functioning as if nothing happened?

The pandemic has forced us to change the way we work. This is nothing new – we’ve all heard it before, so we won’t be dwelling on it any longer. What I want to do is look forward and wonder what is about to change. What do we have to consider? What should we make allowances for?

TRANSFER TO THE VIRTUAL WORLD

Before the pandemic we talked a lot about the multitude and diversity of tasks you perform at work and the related need to provide relevant space for these tasks in the office. Project work, brainstorming, ad hoc meetings with colleagues, meetings with third parties, focus work – to mention just a few. As regards operational work, not much changed when the pandemic broke out. Most tasks were simply moved to the online space – video call software or applications for managing a dispersed team became essential for the completion of work-related tasks. It’s good to note that a similar model was popular among sales reps before the pandemic, as it was directly related to the nature of their work. And now it’s become even more popular, and what is more important, in many cases it proved successful.

HYBRID MODEL – A GOLDEN MEAN

During the pandemic, some tasks and processes were completed in a more effective way, but on the other hand, information exchange and a sense of belonging to the team or organisation clearly suffered. Deepening sense of isolation, being out of touch with the team, plus the everpresent issues with information flow – all of these suggest that a search for intermediate models might be a good idea. We need models that will create a space for us to use the skills, tools and frameworks developed and tested during the pandemic. But full-time return to the office as we knew it seems only too abstract. After all, we have come to realise we don’t have to waste more than one hour stuck in traffic jams (make that double – you still have to come back home after work), only to sit behind the desk to reply to all the e-mails. This can be done virtually anywhere, provided you have Internet access. Sometimes the best solutions is to find a golden mean – and it could be the abovementioned hybrid model.

Anyway, each organisation will have to decide on the shape and framework of their own hybrid model. You should bear in mind that certain professions require 100% office work for a number of reasons (these could be technical, safety-related etc.). Plus, there are employees who simply prefer to work in the office for personal reasons. This is another thing we should consider when planning an office of tomorrow. In the end, it’s not about “whether or not we return to the office” – what we want to know is “what kind of office we return to.” Just as before the pandemic we tried to accommodate the offices to your working style, now we need to think of the activities envisaged in the office of tomorrow and see what we have to do to create a space that supports creativity, knowledge exchange and effective work. The analysis of trends already points to certain tendencies and directions that will continue to shape the layout and functions of the office of tomorrow.

COMMUNICATION HUB

An office will definitely be a place designed for the integration of the company teams. It will be the centre and medium of the organisational culture – a place that supports the onboarding process for newly hired employees. This is because it will become a communication hub. And it’s not only about communication among the employees who come to

the office on a specific day. The office will be a centre from which you can connect to any place, any partner, any employee in any location, to someone who happens to be working from home on a specific day, to a contractor, supplier etc. This will be possible thanks to a number of meeting rooms and individual offices with a video call system.

The latest publication by Nowy Styl – Workspace of tomorrow. Communication Hub – presents a vision of the office whose key function is communication. Communication Hub is an office of a company following the hybrid model – a place for meeting, exchanging ideas and building interpersonal relations. Formal and informal information flows make it possible to maintain business continuity and improve the existing processes.

WORK AS YOU LIKE IT

Another consequence of the changes we witnessed over the past year will be more flexibility as regards working hours and workspace. Since the team can perform their tasks effectively (sometimes even better than before) while working from home, why make the employees return to the office full-time? If you grant your employees the freedom to choose where they want to work, if you decide to trust them on this and provide them with the tools necessary to work in the office or from home – you will be following the increasingly popular pattern of tomorrow. As you enable the staff to work from home, you will also embrace desk sharing, where a number of employees share a single desk. And this is because you will see it’s a waste to see some of the desks standing empty most of the time. In order to create a comfortable space for those who do come to the office, you will come up with a variety of specific zones that support ad hoc consultations, formal meetings or brainstorming.

Thanks to technological advancement, communication within dispersed teams will be much easier, too – everybody will be able to participate in the meeting and be treated as an equal – no matter where they are.

AN OFFICE OF TOMORROW

I have presented a vision, which used to be merely a dream of the distant future, at least for most organisations, especially as regards their readiness for and awareness of such changes. Nowadays I can safely say that this is a vision of an office of tomorrow – and it’s within reach. This is because certain changes cannot be undone, while others are actually most welcome. That’s why it’s good to reflect on what our workspace should look like once we return after the period of mandatory remote work. We knew many of these solutions back before the pandemic. Others were introduced while it lasted. Of course, there is still a long way to go, but it’s good to realise that many of the things we are currently using may effectively support us in implementing the hybrid work model.

You will find more inspirations and solutions that can be adjusted to your office of tomorrow in our publication titled Workspace of tomorrow. Communication Hub – a reservoir of possibilities and ideas we can use together to come up with your own office of tomorrow.

Author:

Mikołaj Tarnawa,

Senior Workplace Research & Analysis Consultant, Nowy Styl You can download free copy of the report here: