Bhushan Bhad Managing Editor
V walk on. As one establishes a business, there are multi-diverse operations to conduct and various processes to streamline that cater to a mass consumer base.
enturing into a business is a tricky road to
Unlike a one-man army approach, businesses depend on an integrated workflow. To propel product development, organizations conduct market research, coupling it with the business operations that facilitate the marketing and sales needs and connect with the desired consumer. This streamlines the business process with an adequate demand-supply mechanism.
Such a rollercoaster ride that justifies the emergence of an idea and developing it into a business demands more than one can imagine. Solving these business challenges with innovative technological advancements, the world has shrunk its geographical boundaries and sprouted as a global community. As a consequence, business corporates have successfully penetrated into the utmost sequestrated region irrespective of its equatorial dynamics. Today, a company may be operating from North America, outsourcing
human resources from Europe while opening its offerings to the Asian markets. Catapulting these strategic developments in industry operations, entrepreneurs have ushered a new era of integrating global resources and managing the supply chain dynamics while facilitating business process outsourcing services worldwide.
Across the globe, technology is playing a significant role in driving business operations. With the hybrid work model accepted globally, it is the need of the hour to have an organized system that satisfies the needs of various industries as per their specific requirement.
Sprouting from the agile development of B2B services, business process outsourcing companies contribute a giant share of the world economy and is transforming the world for the better.
Acknowledging the marvels of such creative and innovative business solutions is our new Edition, “The Rise of Global Business Process Outsourcing Companies 2022.” While you scroll through the pages that narrate the inspiring business stories, enlighten yourself with the insightful articles written by our editorial team.
I hope you have a happy read!
Bhushan Bhad
,,In an age of ever evolving technology transformation, future awaits for a systematic management of global talents and outsourcing companies is just a start for the prosperous business future!
D'Souza
Anish
Kelly,
February, 2022
of
GLOBAL BUSINESS PROCESS
Companies 2022
CallForce Outsourcing Specialists callforce.co.za
Bill Gosling Outsourcing billgosling.com Genesys genesys.com
Infomatic Solutions infomaticsolutions.com
MattsenKumar LLC mattsenkumar.com
Mazars mazars.com.br
SYKES sykes.com
Candice Roberts CEOBill Gosling Outsourcing has over 65 years of experience supporting the contact center and customer service needs of its clients in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
CallForce delivers innovative, customised contact centre solutions from South Africa to the Global market.
Telelink telelink.ca
Corey BischoffSVP, Global Sales Operations
Genesys is the global leader in cloud customer experience and contact center solutions.
Pradipsinh Jadeja Network Administrator
Francisco Salgueiro Director, Business Development
Mike Mattsen (Co-founder and CEO) Aarati Kumar (Co-founder and COO)
Eduardo Cabrera PresidentJennifer Ching
Vice President Lucas Dower Director of Marketing
Infomatic Solutions is a professional and well-established outsourcing solutions. Infomatic Solutions' deep-rooted experience and highly skilled expertise in the industry have transformed it as one of the popular outsourcing companies in USA.
Konecta is a multinational company that offers customised multichannel solutions to provide the best customer experience.
MattsenKumar was founded in 2010 and boasts a vast array of global clients—many of whom have collaborated with the company for ten-plus years.
Mazars is an international audit, tax and advisory firm committed to helping our clients confidently build and grow their businesses.
SYKES is a leading provider of multichannel demand generation and customer engagement services for Global 2000 companies.
Telelink provides live call answering services to keep our customers business lines open 24/7, improve customer service, and ensure no calls go unanswered.
TOTVS totvs.com
Marcio Viana CEO Totvs Curitiba
TOTVS is a Brazilian software, platfrom, services and consulting company. It is the absolute leader in Brazil and Latin America and is a major integrated management system developer worldwide.
Enhancing Client Communications Through a State-of-the-Art Outsourced Solution
Our breadth allows us an invaluable wealth of knowledge that we've worked hard to develop over the last six decades.
Dave Rae CEO Bill Gosling Outsourcing
Outsourcing has been heavily practiced in the industry since the late 1980s and early 1990s when outsourcing core business functions became a popular strategy to keep up with the growing labor costs and a more global economy. Business owners soon understood the importance of outsourcing and how it extends their team’s reach beyond the confines of their offices and workstations.
Today, outsourcing has become a buzzword, as more and more cost and quality-conscious firms around the world are outsourcing their non-core business procedures. It speeds up the product development process and ensures on-time delivery in the manner agreed upon while negotiating with the vendor. Outsourcing has a variety of compelling advantages that can help a company reach zeniths.
If a firm lacks the necessary resources to complete a project, outsourcing is the greatest approach to substantially shorten the turnaround time while working with industry experts. The fundamental advantage of outsourcing is that the less crucial aspects of a project can be outsourced, saving time that can be spent on the business's highervalue-added objectives.
Looking at this ever-growing sector, many companies started delivering outsourcing services. One of the prominent names on that list is Bill Gosling Outsourcing, which helps companies build a perfect outsourced communication solution to reach their customers.
Bill Gosling Outsourcing has over 65 years of experience supporting the contact center and customer service needs of its clients in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Operating from 10 global facilities with 2700+ production seats and offering three core services (live agent support, technology solutions, and professional services), the company is positioned as a strategic partner for developing and implementing an all-encompassing customer contact solution strategy.
With clients past and present from many different industries (primarily FinTech, FSIB, E-commerce, Retail, Automotive, and Utilities), Bill Gosling Outsourcing is a well-oiled contact center hub with the functional experience, industry agility, and global flexibility to meet any challenge with confidence, eagerness, and a steady, capable hand. As the company draws strategies, techniques, and experience from a myriad of diverse programs and services, its breadth
allows it an invaluable wealth of knowledge that its team has worked hard to develop over the last six decades.
The company has created a unique culture that helps it to stand out from the crowd. Bill Gosling is focused on its five core values:
• Never Satisfied – Never resting on the laurels or relying on the status quo.
• Creativity and Innovation – Thinking outside the box and pushing innovation to its absolute limits in order to achieve success.
• Make Others Better – Engaging every relationship as an opportunity to learn and become better and make others better.
• Able to Grow with Eager – Constantly and hungrily accepting new challenges and opportunities for growth.
• Have Fun, Energetic – Remembering to be human, having fun, and engaging with energy.
Bill Gosling provides contact center support in the following ways:
• Customer Care
• Customer Sales and Acquisition
• First Party and Third Party (under the name Allied International Credit [AIC]) Accounts Receivable Management.
• BPO (Business Process Outsourcing)
• GooseTek – Technology-based solutions to enable clients to interact with their customers with and without live operator support, an ideal solution for any business application.
• Contact Center Training Outsourcing Solution (content creation and facilitation)
Throughout all of the offerings, the company’s clients choose it because it is trusted to do the right thing, and, regardless of the situation, Bill Gosling will always guarantee certainty of supply to keep its clients' business running smoothly.
Bill Gosling’s omnichannel support, facilitated via voice, SMS, email, video, digital letters, chat, social media, IVR (Interactive Voice Response), and a customer-facing collections website, allow it to remain agile and flexible when meeting a wide array of client and industry needs.
Compounded by thorough digital integration and constant
innovation – call centers can no longer solely rely on phone calls and analog support; they must become innovative, cross-channel contact centers to survive – Bill Gosling remains at the forefront of the contact center industry and the needs of the modern client.
Kenny Johnston is the President of Bill Gosling Outsourcing. He brings 28 years of industry expertise in customer care, collections, and outsourcing strategy.
Alongside Kenny, Bill Gosling’s CEO Dave Rae and the Executive Team manage global operations and strategic growth with clients and Goslings.
A few major things that the team has overseen in recent years:
• Introducing the company to the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) at the beginning of 2019. Based on the learnings from Gino Wickman's classic business book Traction, the formalized EOS system structures the internal culture of Bill Gosling and how its team operates with its clients while helping to produce better outcomes as measured by client engagement, bottom-line results, and collective trust.
• In 2013, the company invested in a new ERP System, ' Workday' (HR, Financials, and Payroll platform), which made the working more efficient and globalized. Workday provides the team with real-time, accurate information; automated business processes drastically reduced manual work, analytics, and dashboards at an operational level, as well as a learning portal that offers on-demand training to the Goslings.
• In 2015, the company bought Alliance iCommunications in London, Ontario. This acquisition increased redundancy
in the Ontario area and vastly increased the sales and customer care experience by incorporating long-standing service relationships that Alliance had already built with some premier client partners.
• A continued push into more technological and digital methods of communication with clients' customers as well as digitizing and streamlining all business processes where possible.
Modern technologies have impacted the industry massively, especially in the equalization of the relationship between outsourcer and customer. In the past, the outsourcer defined the timing and method of all interactions, and customers fell into a response pattern based on the outreach strategy in question. Modern tech has allowed outreach to become fully omnichannel and much more self-serve, customerdriven, and autonomous.
The relationship between outsourcer and customer has become symbiotic as the dialogue of interactions is now much more equally informed than it once was; technology has empowered the customers. Additionally, tech has helped with the outreach and response accuracy across all channels – allowing more conversations and interactions to occur with customers than ever before, while also allowing for more rigorously tracked output data and analytics to continue to improve the strategies, and the client and customer experience.
Kenny said, “In the future, I see more predictivity with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning continue to take hold and inform outreach and interaction strategies. But I also see the need for what I'll call 'acceptable predictivity'; predictive data – i.e., best channel and time of day to contact customers, as well as chosen tone, calls to action, etc. – must allow the customer to feel empowered, not controlled or force-fed. Advanced tech needs to assist customers without restricting their autonomy or wholly prescribing their response options.”
When COVID-19 hit, the proactive planning and structuring of Bill Gosling's Business Management System – including its Pandemic, business continuity, and crisis communication plans – prepared the team for massive changes to their operating procedures, and they were able to provide very minimal downtime to their valued clients.
We engage every relationship as an opportunity to learn and become better and make others better.
Regardless of the situation, the company guarantees certainty of supply to keep its clients' businesses running smoothly and hitting SLAs and KPI metrics – as always.
“We began preparing for the specifics of the COVID-19 Pandemic in late February 2020, and weekly planning committees were arranged that required the invocation and deployment of the aforementioned plans. We worked with our clients to determine which programs could and should be migrated to work-from-home (WFH) models, as well as confirming which ones would be placed on hold,” said Kenny.
Folded into meeting service targets was their need to take care of Goslings. When lockdowns were imposed, it was important to support the employees' safety and allow them to continue to deliver for the clients. This included arranging safe, reliable transportation to and from work and providing hotel accommodation in regions with extreme restrictions. Providing facemasks and shields, regular deep cleaning of facilities, temperature screening, and paid leave as required have been routine since the Pandemic's onset.
“As challenging as the pandemic has been, it was an opportunity to deliver for our clients and our Goslings, and we are proud of our ability to rise, in the spirit of our Core Values of ‘Able to Grow, Eager’ and ‘Never Satisfied’, and meet the challenge head-on,” added Kenny.
Bequeathing the Keys to Excellence Kenny advised young entrepreneurs to take advantage of the modern technological and entrepreneurial landscape. Never in the history of technology has there been so many low-cost and open-source options to utilize and play with. And the ability to leverage that tech with DIY and entrepreneurial learning is equally unparalleled. The outsourcing market – as well as many other industries across the world – is extremely fertile for experimentation, low-risk, highreward speculation, and technological trial and error. For those willing to teach themselves and take informed risks with open-source tech, the industry is a sandbox to play in. Get out there and assess what makes outsourcing work from new and exciting perspectives; one never knows where that path can take them.
Bill Gosling reviews its one-year and three-year business plans every 90 days as part of its EOS (Entrepreneurial
Operating System) review cadence. Major strategic goals include (but are not limited to):
• Continuous review of the current and expanded physical footprints to accommodate human capital needs and growth in domestic, near, and offshore locations.
• Continued investment into technology and data analytics framework and impact to operational capacity, core network, cloud, and digital strategy.
Expansion and new locations to further support the clients is always top of mind at Bill Gosling, and its team is actively looking at new market opportunities in nearshore and offshore locations to support the continued growth of the company. The team is also investigating the possibility of a new nearshore center in the CALA market to be operational in 2022.
Kenny said, “We also embrace our Core Values of 'Able to Grow, Eager' and 'Creativity and Innovation', strap on our VR helmets (well, not really), and step eagerly into a fully digital world. We spearhead this with a vigorous commitment to our technology solutions enabling clients to interact with their customers with and without live operator support.”
“We push to be the best Flock we can be for ourselves, our clients, and our shared customers,” he added.
Within this continued investment into technology, the management has identified areas for growth and is currently working with a variety of vendors on discoveries for Machine Learning and AI-driven technology from a telecommunications perspective. This includes STT, ChatBots, Inventory/Account Modeling, and a variety of other internal functions. As part of the company's security programs, the team has deployed an AI product, Darktrace, that monitors and digests network traffic for unusual traffic or behaviors, with automatic alerting and response.
We constantly and hungrily accept new challenges and new opportunities for growth.
Green Apple Award – Bill Gosling is passionate about being green, so much so that it has been awarded the coveted Green Apple Award. This award is given to those organizations that demonstrate outstanding environmental practices.
Healthy Working Lives – Bill Gosling's UK branch, AIC UK Ltd., is thrilled to be a Gold Award winner of the Healthy Working Lives award presented by Public Health Scotland. The Gold level award demonstrates that the organization has a long-term commitment and culture towards improving health, safety, and wellbeing both within the workplace and in the broader community.
GTACC Team Award – Company's Newmarket client-launch team won a Team Award from the Greater Toronto Area Contact Centre Association in 2020. This award was presented to the client launch teams, who were very successful at launching a new program amid the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Deloitte's Best Managed Company – Platinum Status (Bill Gosling has been an award winner since 1999. Canada's Best Managed Companies set their sights on global competition, defined purpose, and investing in technology and innovation.)
Achievers 50 Most Engaged Workplace Awards – Bill Gosling was honored to be the recipient of this award in 2021. This award recognizes top employers displaying leadership and innovation in engaging their workplaces.
When it comes to client feedback, Bill Gosling's working mantra underlines all about the company: "No matter what adversity was thrown at the Bill Gosling team, we never heard one complaint, or one person doubting the success of our program launch – it was a manifestation of the alignment we originally felt with Bill Gosling. Their 'Can Do' attitude was going to make it happen."
Employment is the basic need of human beings to survive in this competitive world. Competition between people and the organization has taken a rise alongside technology. Even in the pandemic, unemployment numbers were rising due to lockdowns.
During this hard time, outsourcing helped a lot to organizations and aspiring young generations to grow financially. The organization gets the manpower from outsourcing which is needed to do the work on a bigger scale. Organizations require employees to do front office and back-office operations.
Outsourcing companies hire and appoint people to do the work for the client organization. Business process outsourcing is subcontracting various business-related operations to third-party vendors.
Operations include accounting, payment processing, IT services, human resource, regulatory compliances, and quality management. Companies choose to outsource to improve performance, accurate reporting, productivity growth, and to create an identity in the global market.
South Africa-based, CallForce Outsourcing Specialists, is providing customized and innovative contact centre solutions to the Global market. The company has a global footprint in over five continents, Africa, the United States, the United Kingdom, Asia, and Australia. The organization is a self-funded and 100% women-owned company.
Candice Roberts, the CEO, is a person who is behind the success and innovation of the company. Specialization in
We have recruited, trained, and deployed contact centre services for local and international clients to over 10 000 sta over the past 22 years.
being an endeavour entrepreneur helped the company to reach outstanding achievements.
In a recent interview, we asked a few questions to CallForce Outsourcing Specialists Team.
Please brief our audience about CallForce, its USPs, and how it is currently positioned as a trusted outsourcing partner.
Delivering innovative contact centre solutions from South Africa to the Global market is at the heart of what we do with the goal to streamline the operations of an existing contact centre or create a custom contact centre solution that transforms the experience customers have with a brand.
Our service offering is underpinned by our vision to create Five Lakh career opportunities for the youth of South Africa while contributing to the growth of the South African GBS sector by 2030.
CallForce CEO, Candice Roberts, is a thought-leader in the Outsourcing sector, currently sitting on the BPESA industry Exco committee, the board of Endeavor South Africa together with the CEO of Accenture and EY and is an Alumni and mentor for the EY winning woman programme globally.
Her entrepreneurial journey with CallForce (BEE LEVEL 1) started 22 years ago as a flexible staffing company achieving 100% year-on-year growth prior to the economicfinancial crisis and procuring blue-chip clients such as Standard Bank and Vodacom in our first year.
It is all implemented with our successful and proven formula that combines the right people and optimised processes with cutting-edge technology and digital skills to deliver an exceptional customer brand experience.
Our formula for success is continually optimised with an integrated omnichannel strategy supported by smart technology platforms and a tech-savvy, accent neutral talent pool that creates agility in this highly competitive landscape.
By outsourcing to the right partner like CallForce, it can be an enabler to outperform your competitors and retain your position as a leading brand.
Shed some light on your offerings and how they impact the industry and your clients?
We service and support businesses all over the globe by understanding the geographic requirements and local challenges to successfully create, implement and manage unique BPO solutions specific to our client's business needs.
Our client experience spans across a number of different industry sectors including Telecommunications, Financial Services (Banking & Insurance), EdTech, Ecommerce, Logistics and Energy to name a few, where we are particularly focused on Asia, UK, Australia, Europe, United States and the local South African business market.
A digital mindset was our theme for 2021, not just with the implementation of technology, but the strategic planning of the right technology coupled with cultural alignment to ensure we professionally support our clients in this rapidly evolving digital world.
To keep up with changes in customer expectations and demand, it has been important that we reimagine products and services with technology as the driver and continually improve and optimise our digital journey both for our clients and for our teams to ensure the connection to our brand starts from the inside.
Being an experienced leader, share your opinion on the impact of adopting modern technologies within the business outsourcing space and what more could be expected in the future?
Technology is only meaningful when combined with strategic thinking and a human touch, that is why we must
Best External Service
– Finalist
Winning Woman Programme – 2017
EY South African Entrepreneur of The Year
Finalist
CCMG Best International Outsourcing Contact Centre – Finalist 2018
GSA African Outsourcing Project of The Year – Finalist
Endeavor High Impact Entrepreneur
BPESA GBS Top BPO Operator – 2019
Finalist: Best in Class Contact Center
100+ Seats
GBS Top Offshore Campaign
Empowerment Job Creation – Finalist
Asia Pacific Paragon Awards
Excellence and Woman in
Paragon Excellence Award
EMEA Regional Winner: Best Public
Centre
Empowerment Job Creation – Finalist
Empowerment Customer
understand the pain points in order to map out the right process to create optimisation and efficiency, which speaks into the CallForce proven formula for success.
Some of the solutions we have implemented include speech analytics, AI-driven customer conversational analytics, digital engagement solutions, interview and preemployment assessment tools, software to increase contactability, an ATS system that digitally streamlines our recruitment process, a CRM system to manage our marketing and sales efforts as well as our very own videobased digital communication and performance management tools.
The digital transformation journey is continually evolving, where our future success lies in listening more to the needs of both our teams and clients in order to effectively optimise and digitise contact centres of the future in a meaningful, humanly connected way.
Considering the current pandemic, what initial challenges did you face and how did you drive CallForce to sustain operations while ensuring the safety of your employees at the same time?
Under the leadership of Candice Roberts, our business growth trajectory has built even further momentum despite managing 3 Covid waves. CallForce has achieved 159% gross profit growth between September 2020 and 2021, having created hundreds of new jobs in South Africa.
We successfully navigated the COVID crisis and deployed a 300-seater contact centre during level 5 lockdowns within just 8 days to support our country in giving 300 families much-needed income during the global crisis.
A 100% virtual agent training program was designed and deployed to support this brand-new operation. Agility in adapting, streamlining, and distributing the ever-evolving process was key.
What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the business outsourcing services market?
Over the years of our entrepreneurial journey, we have learnt the importance of celebrating success even in the face of adversity such as the pandemic that has affected us all on so many fronts.
Our advice is to keep challenging yourselves, your teams, as well as your processes and their supporting technologies because refinement comes from the incremental improvements.
Identify your blind spots and take ownership of them –growth is not always a comfortable process, but fortune favours the brave.
Taking calculated risks needs courage, but you don't have to do it alone, there is so much power in numbers. Never underestimate the power of your network – that includes your clients, mentors and teams. By collaborating and staying connected to other business professionals it will support you as you continually develop and refine your strategy and don't forget to factor in agility, which will be key in helping you innovate during times of unprecedented change.
How do you envision scaling CallForce's operations and offerings in 2022 and further?
We aim to continue the momentum of our excellent growth trajectory as we extend the operations of our business into the USA, UK and Australian markets.
Our continued investment in smart technology as a fundamental enabler to digitise the customer journey and empower our people with relevant insights and learnings to support their career growth is critical as we continue to optimise the customer experience.
We are excited about the digital community we are building that supports both our hybrid office and work-from-home teams. This is enhanced through Engage – our digital communication platform, and Transform – our performance enhancement tool which brings our highly effective performance management methodology into the palms of our teams' hands.
We are very proud of being a wholly South African owned company that is self-funded, and 100% woman owned.
Businesses run in a competitive environment. With the digital revolution and technological advancement, it has become more competitive. Thus, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has come up as a new revolution for companies of all sizes to counter the challenges and for achieving great heights in their respective industries.
Outsourcing business processes, Revamping the Future Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is used by many companies throughout the world to outsource their various business tasks. Whether you are a start-up, large entrepreneur, or small-medium enterprise (SME), expanding your business needs more than just budget and workforce.
Today's business outsourcing can be a win-win situation for your company and for your outsourcing partner, too; however, it is necessary to understand what it's all about.
For outsourcing, you look for a third-party company to perform the non-core functions of your business for a significant period. Offshore outsourcing is generally preferred when you send your work to an overseas country where the cost is lesser.
This process requires to be done with the right understanding so that you will find it highly beneficial for your growing business.
It is used by companies for two types of tasks:
· Back-Office
· Front-office operations
- Accounting, quality assurance, human resources (HR), information technology (IT) services, and payment processing are examples of back-office tasks, sometimes known as internal business functions.
- Marketing, customer service, and sales are examples of front-office tasks.
In 2019, the global market size of outsourced services was estimated at 92.5 billion U.S. dollars, increasing approximately seven billion U.S. dollars from the earlier year. The returns of the global BPO industry amounted to 26 billion U.S. dollars in 2019.
Its's benefits the industries in the following ways:
The most significant advantage of outsourcing is cost savings. But while outsourcing, how can you save money?
You see, you don't have to spend money on infrastructure, technology, or employee benefits because BPO firms will handle everything for you. Thus, outsourcing can save a large portion of your investment.
Outsourcing boosts efficiency and production. To supply specific-skilled services from internationally competitive companies, you merely need the correct BPO provider. The Philippines provides superior products to foreign enterprises, with a literacy rate of 97.5 percent based on a national census. As a result, it has been named the world's top outsourcing location.
For many years, China and India have been popular for offshore outsourcing in manufacturing jobs. Today, with access to the digital world and technological advancement, outsourcing is not limited to manufacturing functions only.
Now BPO has developed as a highly strategic solution for IT operations, business marketing, customer service jobs, HR administration, and other operational functions.
4. Legal liabilities are decreased
Now legal liabilities are reduced in business outsourcing. The reason behind this is that it is your BPO contractor who takes charge of it. Your BPO partner completely shoulders any legal risk that comes with outsourcing.
BPO companies are experts in different fields, and they are performing at the top level. They also adopt best practices and use the most recent technology. It easily results in higher efficiency and greater productivity.
To summarize, it can be said that outsourcing business processes will help in streamlining your processes. Not only this, but also it will increase internal productivity, enhance competitiveness, improve customer support, and much more.
However, this requires a lot of planning, patience, adequate foresight, and attention to detail. Implementing all these will not only lead to successful outsourcing but also improve the profitability of the business in the long run.
- Nidhi Vishwakarma
In recent times, the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry has emerged as the most effective costsaving alternative for organizations of all sizes. A vast number of day-to-day office tasks can now be outsourced to BPO companies. It has come to this stage that you can form a company and deliver your intended products and services without actually having an office space.
The BPO industry offers you accurate and high-quality work submissions at a given deadline. The ever-expanding eCommerce industry is using outsourcing services increasingly to serve consumers better, faster, and everywhere.
When it comes to outsourcing the work, one of the most important factors considered is the reliability of the BPO firm. Reliability comes from years of hard work in delivering satisfactory results to the client organizations. MattsenKumar LLC, founded in 2010, has a decade plus experience in providing reliable, result-oriented BPO services.
MattsenKumar is a privately held global BPO led by a team that averages 20 years of international BPO outsourcing leadership. Its founders, Mike Mattsen (Co-founder and CEO ) and Aarati Kumar (Co-founder and COO) have worked together for 22 years, and this is their third global outsourcing success story.
MK is a unique BPO company that focuses on meeting specialized voice and back-office needs for well-known global brands. Through its value-added data analytics, MK ensures the highest ROI for its clients. The company assures its clients that they get nothing but the best solutions for high-value and quality BPO and process consulting.
In an interview with Insights Success, MK's Mike and Aarati discussed their BPO company's journey as well as its specialized outsourcing services.
Please brief our audience about your company, its USPs, and how it is currently positioned as a trusted outsourcing partner.
MK was founded in 2010 and boasts a vast array of global clients—many of whom have collaborated with the company for ten-plus years. It is a full-service BPO with multiple sites and several thousand employees. MK has never sought to be the biggest but is proud that, with many long-term clients who utilize several global BPOs, MK is often ranked number one and almost always in the top percentile for every client they serve.
Shed some light on your offerings and how they impact the industry and your clients?
MK is a full-service BPO, providing a wide array of voice, text, email, and back-office support for clients throughout the globe. MK is vastly experienced in eCommerce support, including several years of varying online content creation support for some of the globe's largest eCommerce organizations.
We also founded the world's first dedicated third-party quality company—and has completed well over 100 million evaluations for many global brands. MK CX Support is also vast and includes inbound and outbound customer care, sales, issue resolution, and tech support, to name a few specialties.
Please brief us about the featured person(s), their journey in the industry and how they have contributed to the company's success.
A differentiator within MK is that it is a team of many talented people. It has one of the largest female supervisory
Transparency with integrity are hallmarks of the MK approach to service delivery and to growth.
Words of Appreciation from the Clients
Your team is one of the reasons why our customer support has been meeting its goals. We gave them challenging deadlines and still, they were able to meet it with the needed quality on a demanding Go Live date. Lastly and most importantly, from a client's perspective, they have been easy to work with. As of the moment, MK is our top choice and with your team's ability to deliver, MK would continue to be the first choice. Congratulations!
It has been excellent! We have had an inordinate number of new hires; we added another site. This resulted in a lot of changes, many last minutes. The team responded quickly to that and also BAU requests. The team is very responsive to any and all requests. This is especially true if I come up with something last minute and unplanned. They are so accommodating.
- Client from a leading American daily newspaper
as a direct result of the pandemic (their business initially dropped 90%, and they released over ten BPO subcontractors) and added 12 new logos (four in 2020 and eight in 2021).
We regularly hold town halls with the team to share current happenings. The MK leadership and team continue to follow pandemic protocols established early in the crisis to ensure prompt, smart decisions that are client and employee-centric.
What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the business outsourcing services market?
Anyone wanting to get into the global outsourcing industry must be nimble and ready to embrace an evolving service delivery market. Some of this evolution came from the pandemic, but just "normal" technological gains also
created "moving target" client business objectives that successfully outsourced must embrace and quickly adapt to. If one cannot accept a 'no two days are alike' situation, they probably do not belong in this industry.
How do you envision scaling your company's operations and offerings in 2021 and further?
MK grew by double digits from 2020 to 2021 and expects in excess of 25% growth in 2022. We have no full-time sales people and gain new clients primarily through "word of mouth" and then do precisely what we say we will do. Transparency with integrity are hallmarks of the MK approach to service delivery and to growth.
You are a leader irrelevant of your position, to take charge and lead a fulfilled life, fall in love with your self – Meher
What is Self-Love?
Self-love is a process of connecting to your inner being to know yourself more, identifying self-limiting beliefs, reprogramming your subconscious mind, letting go of everything that doesn't serve you, and finally falling in love with yourself. Being in love with yourself for who you are! Only when you are in a loving relationship with yourself can you reflect that love in other areas of your life.
In this article, I will share with you why is self-love is important and how does it impact your personal life, you as a leader, and your impact on the organization.
Why is it important?
Impact on your personal life
The relationship we have with ourselves determines the quality of all relationships we hold.
Ÿ
Self – You will accept and want to connect to yourself, which will make you feel alive and soaring.
Ÿ Family – There will be compassion for parents and extended family. Rather than judging them, you will be able to allow them to experience their journey.
Ÿ Spouse/partner – When you start loving yourself and stop expecting that love from your partner, you develop
Ÿ
a stronger bond of strength and unconditional understanding.
Children – You will be able to live in the NOW if you are connected to yourself; you will be able to cherish the moments.
Ÿ
Friends – You will be grateful for your friends, and you will be able to let go of the ones that are not aligned with your values.
Ÿ
Health – You will feel emotionally and mentally strong, you will be able to set aside time to focus on exercise and care for yourself.
Leadership is not about title or designation. It's about impact, influence, and inspiration. – Robin Sharma
Ÿ
Inspire - When you become that person you aspire to be, you will be able to inspire other leaders and peers in your organization.
Ÿ
Leading by example - When you consistently work on growing yourself, you drive your team to propel in the same direction of greatness.
Ÿ
Connect - As a leader, when you are in love with yourself and connected to yourself, you will be able to connect to your team at a deeper level which excludes
An award-winning entrepreneur, author, healer, and coach, Meher is the Director of Manrre Logistics Fund and Managing Director of Palmon Group. She is a maven who balances her various roles with equal ease and persistent hard work—whether it is that of a business leader, decision-maker, wife, daughter, or a devoted mother to her twin daughters. An inherently empathetic leader, she is a source of inspiration for her core team of leaders and leads by focusing on conscious leadership based on her personal and her company's values.
As one of the Forbes top Indian leaders, Meher believes that culture is the cornerstone of an organization, and she is responsible for creating and building a culture with a growth mindset at Palmon and Manrre that empowers leaders to be their best on all fronts of their lives. Her leadership principle is "Success is something you attract by the person you become. It is your dedication to consistently grow yourself that will yield you the life you desire."
Her personal journey has brought about a breakthrough and transformation in her, which she shares in her first book, 'Come Alive.' Come Alive addresses the answer to the question, 'Are you truly Alive'? Her book uncovers that there is nothing missing in life and that you are enough and limitless! It helps you understand that you are complete. It sheds light on the fact that the relationship we have with ourselves is what determines the quality of every other relationship in our life.
Her journey concludes that the feeling of something missing is nothing else but the connection with ourselves. Through this
book, the author guides you to know, nurture, appreciate, and fall in love with yourself. Her five-phase process will lead you to prioritize yourself, love yourself, and ultimately come alive. Being alive is being in love with yourself for who you are. Her mission is to evoke the transformation in you, so you honor and celebrate yourself for who you are!
empathy and compassion. Improves internal and external communication
Ÿ Team Performance - When you are genuinely concerned about your team member's growth at a human level, then performance follows.
Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first – Simon Sinek
Ÿ
Profit – when you are driven by love rather than ego, you will be able to maintain and retain relationships with customers and suppliers.
2. Journaling: Gratitude is the highest form of receivership; when in gratitude, energy changes, and that's the energy you need to attract more of what you are in gratitude for. When you journal gratitude or forgiveness, it helps reflections, provides an emotional outlet, helps reduce stress. It puts you in an elevated state of being. Journaling positive attributes about yourself love letter to yourself also help start to reprogram beliefs as it is received as affirmations in the subconscious mind.
Ÿ
Intrinsic motivation – when your team is connected to themselves, they will be intrinsically motivated.
Ÿ Customer engagement – when you value relationships over transactions, you always win.
Ÿ Overall Alignment – conscious leadership will prevail as alignment is key to a successful organization.
Now that you have read why self-love is important, I will share how you can start connecting with yourself and falling in love.
Can you imagine living with someone you don't know?
Imagine being with a companion you don't know and have no inclination to do so. How would that feel? Walking life with a stranger with no idea what's inside his/her mind, heart, and soul.
There are many ways to know and connect to yourself; below are the five most effective ways
1. Silence and Meditation: Meditation is a means to move beyond your analytic mind, so you can access your subconscious mind, and that's where you need to reach to be a better version of yourself and influence change in your life. When you sit in silence, you can reason out your thoughts and feelings and dig deep to release them. Most of the time, it happens on its own. Meditation empowers you to become more you. It gets you in the calm zone that you need to run a conscious day.
3. Reading and Learning: When you commit yourself to learning new information every single day, you biologically wire that information to your cerebral architecture. And this new information helps you view life, circumstances, and feelings from a new perspective. When you have a new perspective, you make informed choices of your thoughts and actions. It also helps you react better. "The quality of our life, fulfillment, and success is not dependent on our circumstances but how we respond to them."—Miles Hilton Barber. Learning is for the mind what air is for your body.
4. Exercise: Exercise stimulates the body to release proteins and other chemicals that improve the structure and function of your brain. Exercise helps maintain your health, so you remain fit. It helps with mental fitness, and you are able to focus on all the above things. It also provides renewed and increased energy to manage our day with more power. It increases your strength to deal with all fronts of life with elevated energy.
5. Getting out of your comfort zone: A comfort zone is a psychological state of mind in which things feel familiar to a person, and they are at ease. When you step outside your comfort zone, you will find out new things about yourself that you didn't know; you will experience parts of life that you haven't experienced before. Pushing yourself outside your comfort zone to perform your best every single day is what will bring you the life of fulfillment that you desire.
Every day you must jump out of bed as a better version of yourself, charged with the energy of being in love with yourself and your life. If you are unable to feel this, then make the shift now with the five ways mentioned above. All you need is an additional sixty minutes a day to shift your life. This will impact all areas of your life.
Tsuccess of a business, it needs healthy and fit employees. Employees' contribution is the key to success for any organization. This is the reason that it has been observed that in the recent past, among various services, food services are one of the most outsourced functions in the business community.
oday competition is increasing rapidly, so for the
The most significant benefit of outsourcing food services is the ability to stay focused on the important tasks and operations of the business. Focusing more on the required task will ultimately increase the Return on Investment (ROI).
· Satisfies compliance requirements
To offer effective and efficient food services to its staff, a business needs to have the required equipment as well as staff, which is not only expensive but also a difficult job in most organizations.
Thus, to provide their employees with a nutritious and healthy meal, businesses require to leave this work to professionals. Here outsourcing becomes the most logical thing to do. It offers high-quality food services and fulfills the demands of the organization as a whole.
The benefits are very amazing for businesses because this helps to improve effectiveness and efficiency. Even if the business community outsources the food services functions, it will be easy to focus on its core business activities.
Outsourcing has a lot of potential benefits for an organization. Here we are discussing five common benefits; just have a look.
An organization with highly trained customer support staff who have years of experience will provide your customer with excellent services so that they will keep coming back. The professional services provided by an outsourcing company will leave your customers feeling valued and appreciated.
With lots of potential benefits outsourcing the food services also fulfill the compliance requirements and provides flexibility to professional representation.
· Financial savings Outsourcing the food service will allow you to tap into the manufacturer's cutting-edge technologies, top-quality materials, and innovative marketing solutions. In this way, it saves your money too.
Because food manufacturers are industry experts and trained professionals, their work helps to improve the efficiency and accountability of operations. With dedication, experience, and great knowledge, they focus on meeting all applicable regulations.
In conclusion, food services are one of the most significantly outsourced in the business community. It is because of the need for the expertise required in the field and also the need to cut costs and increase the entire productivity.
Outsourcing not only helps in sharpening food service skills but also improves the maximization of customer relationships, which increases the organization's profitability and growth.
-
With the digital progress that is happening all around the globe, it has become necessary to give resolutions to any problems that arise at the earliest. Customer service is valuable for the company to stay active in the market and respond appropriately to any problems that customers might experience.
Keeping current customers happy will result in more revenue and a good reputation. Nowadays, every company that comes under daily needs and upgradable services provides customer care service on call 24/7. Some companies do it on their own and some outsource the service to enhance productivity.
Telelink is a service provider to other companies that need 24/7 call answering solutions to improve their customer service. Dedicated emergency response, journey management, 24/7 front office support service, and inbound call centre services are expertise of Telelink.
To stay in the market, just providing good services will keep you stable, but by doing marketing and sales will boost up to new achievements, Lucas Dower, the Director of Marketing worked well with Telelink's sales team to make the company reach new heights.
In a recent interview, we asked a few questions to the team of Telelink, read the following Q&A to know more about the organization and the featuring person.
Please brief our audience about your company, its USPs, and how it is currently positioned as a trusted outsourcing partner.
Telelink is a Canadian Response Centre that has been in business for over 55 years. Telelink provides live call
answering services to keep our customers business lines open 24/7, improve customer service, and ensure no calls go unanswered. What we do, however, is almost as important as what we don't do, which is outbound sales and outbound calling. At Telelink, we train and hire for a specific set of skills; customer-oriented thinkers, and customer service specialists, not salespeople. Knowing what we don't want to serve makes us better able to focus on what we do want to be great at.
Telelink is the only ISO 9001:2015 certified call centre in Canada and is known for its dedication to continuous improvement and innovation. This certification ensures that all of our processes are documented and refined consistently.
Telelink serves a diverse range of clients including municipalities, law firms, utilities, and property management firms.
Shed some light on your offerings and how they impact the industry and your clients?
Our fastest growing, and one of our most popular offerings is our 'Property Management Specialty' division. The impact this division is making is truly incredible. Often times, property management firms, or smaller property managers will come to us overworked and overwhelmed. Property Management is a demanding industry and managers are often dealing with high on-call maintenance costs and an inconsistent triage process, which further frustrates tenants.
With Telelink's specialty property management division, the customer feels like their properties are maintained and their tenants have been heard. Our custom reports highlight the
key trends that enable preventative maintenance, and they have a feeling of accomplishment after reducing overtime costs. Ultimately, they are able to respond to tenants quicker, make tenants happier, and even have a better worklife balance themselves
Please brief us about the featured person(s), their journey in the industry and how they have contributed to the company's success.
Lucas has been with Telelink for nearly 3 years. With a background in Digital Marketing Lucas helped propel Telelink's lead generation strategy to new heights since he's joined the team. Telelink's marketing strategy went from ad hoc campaigns to implementing marketing strategies that align with Telelink's corporate objectives.
Success in b2b marketing cannot be found without a great sales team backing it up. Lucas works closely with Telelink's amazing sales team who help buyers make informed decisions and provide the marketing team with real-time feedback on lead quality and messaging with their target audiences.
Being an experienced leader, share your opinion on the impact of adopting modern technologies within the business outsourcing space and what more could be expected in the future?
One thing we know for sure: customers want to be served when and where it is convenient for them – and they don't want to wait.
One of the biggest reasons customers choose Telelink for 24/7 call coverage is because they know that if a potential
customer calls them and they are not open, the customer will not wait until the following day; they will call a competitor immediately.
It's critical to any customer retention and satisfaction strategy that customers are able to reach you when they want, and through the preferred channel. For some, that's a phone call with a live person, for others it's email, and for the younger generation it's often through social media.
Considering the current pandemic, what initial challenges did you face and how did you drive your company to sustain operations while ensuring the safety of your employees at the same time?
Telelink quickly mobilized our entire workforce to become a fully remote operation in March of 2020. Within 3 days we had moved from our office of 80-100 people to a fully remote operation. I can recall, at the time of the first wave in the pandemic how some call centres were devastated by the COVID-19 virus. The nature of the layout of call
At Telelink, we train and hire for a specific set of skills; customer-oriented thinkers, and customer service specialists, not sales people.
Lucas Dower Director of Marke ng Telelink
centres makes outbreaks a very real possibility, so we knew that Telelink couldn't take those chances with our team.
We faced some of the same challenges as the rest of the world, labour shortage, unpredictable cancellations, but also unpredictable spikes in our call traffic as well. We've leaned into a rural hiring strategy which has allowed us to hire some of our best talent ever and found some truly amazing people to add to our team. All told, we increased our workforce by roughly 50% during the pandemic.
What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the business outsourcing services market?
It's funny, the same advice a BPO firm would give to its clients is probably the same advice they ought to follow. That is, know what you do well, focus on it, and outsource the other stuff!
If you're a graphic design BPO firm, don't worry about being the best SEO firm too, just focus on your core strengths. For Telelink, that meant focusing on providing exceptional customer service and not worrying about outbound contract opportunities.
How do you envision scaling your company's operations and offerings in 2021 and further?
Telelink is scaling through acquisitions right now. In June of 2021, we completed our first strategic acquisition with the purchase of Big Sky Call Centers based in Calgary, Alberta.
The addition of Big Sky gives us important boots on the ground in western Canada, where many of our customers are headquartered. As we keep our eyes open for the next acquisition, we'll be looking for organizations that have a similar culture to Telelink as well as a diverse customer base.
