The Definitive Guide to Getting New Clients for Outsourcing Services

The “outsourcing” trend seems to have got a fresh lease of life in the recent years. But it’s not a recent trend so to speak. The USA has been doing it for the past twenty years getting highly talented individuals on board for various functions, at minimal cost. Till very outsourcing was dominated by large companies. But now small companies and mid-sized companies are also jostling for primacy in the outsourcing call center services.

A majority of US companies are under discussions to use outsourcing as a definitive way of increasing their business interests. Offshore delivery centers are a sure shot inclusion of strategically using outsourcing as a business move.

Off sourcing or offshoring?-The Main Difference.

Off-shoring means to hiring manpower on the basis of per headcount and the rate is counted on an hourly basis. Outsourcing is beyond this hiring manpower, it involves government plans, risk management, and SLA’s, which is actually long-term service level agreements that amalgamate business process services and technology.

When Should One Outsource

Outsourcing requirements for each company seem to be different. Some business has staff which looks after the day to day affairs of the company but some company needs additional help in the form of freelancers to cater to the rising needs of the company. This is when the need for outsourcing call center services.

Tasks which best need to be outsourced

The highly skilled person at the executive level. Yes, even if one is unable to afford highly skilled executives. Outsourcing enables skilled persons coming on board some days each month to put their expertise to best use.

Repetitive tasks like data entry account payable and shipping inventory.

Highly specialized Knowledge. You might be requiring a specialized knowledge of an IT support for your business. Employing the same in the garb of outsourcing can help your business flourish.

Finding the Right Clients for Outsourcing

A few pointers to employ specific market strategies to channelize outsourcing trends.

1.       Seek opinions of analysts: Setting up meetings with market analysts who cover outsourced call centers. Pay a visit to these analysts to give them a de-brief about your vision history and experience with the clients.

They can also help in thinking of a market approach and bring in clients and investors.

2.       Participation in various forums such as industrial and educational forums: Conferences such as this help to outsource in general and helps to portray the firm ’s success sagas and achievements. These conferences help to meet up common challenges and to meet up and know how they achieved success in outsourcing.

3.       Host webinars and seminars: Seminars are very successful when it is short and highly targeted and offer prompt solutions to specific business problems. Webinars are also successful as they are as effective as seminars and they do not require traveling as well.

4.       Engage the media: The media can be a powerful tool for educating potentially responsive customers about the continuously changing trends of the changing scenario of outsourced call centers and related paradigm. Contribution towards publications, featuring case studies on customers quotes by industry experts and opinion articles published by outsourcing experts.

5.       Partnership strategy should be clearly evaluated: Many small firms and mid-sized firms are attracted to large companies and their outsourcing abilities but are able to help themselves because of the dearth of financial resources. But an amalgamation of financial services industries, roping in clients and managing risks in similitude with large companies, but at lower prices.

What is the unique value you are bringing on the table? The market won’t be contented with another outsource call center services. So what are you going to do to attract clients bring services which are differentiated? What should be your buzz-word value or prize? If based on value, what should be your value count which gives you an edge over the others? Do you have a strategy to build on values? If it is the price which is helping you to compete then you have to ensure that you remain profitable after quoting a competitive price.

6.       Find your niche: It is important to establish your forte right from the very beginning. And establish your name in the outsourcing call center services. This can be achieved by attending trade shows and specifically their award programs, a sure shot way to announce to the world that you have arrived.

7.       Constantly prove and substantiate value. It’s not only important to establish your reputation but also keeping the reputation intact is another way to attract clients.

8.       The difference between benefits and features: If drawing clients are your primary goal then talking about the features of your business would not bring any results rather talking about benefits would lure clients and let them propose business to you. Features are in other words attributes of your company. The general details such as the size of the company, the ways of your working etc. The benefits, on the other hand, mean are the myriad benefits they would gain out of working with you.

9.       Know the target and ideal markets: By defining yourself very well you also define your target market pretty clearly, enabling clients to identify you and identify the benefits of working with you as well. Your target market would be the people who would want to buy the services you offer and pay the exact amount you quote. Knowing your target market and clearly defining the clients you would want to work with and benefits of having a target market are as follows.

Good customer services always teach us to the needful and do as the client wants. Flexibility and adaptability are admirable qualities but knowing your limit is certainly essential. As an outsourcing partner, you must know what does not work and what definitely works. Flaunt your best practices in outsourcing call center services and don’t be squeamish in suggesting the same to your prospective clients. Ask your clients for the required changes you have to make sometimes transparency works best for you. If you are overburdened and understaffed and having problems handling multiple jobs. Professionalism during these tiring times would help you that is owning up to the fact that you are facing multiple problems. Trying to be conversant with the client’s needs and adapting to the needs and demands of the clients can help keep things transparent.

Nine Steps to Run a Successful Business Process Outsourcing Service

If you want to be successful in your business, you need to ensure that you hold on to a successful partnership with offshore outsourcing, using the help of improvements in process, talent pool,  reduction of costs, improving the focus on core business and so on. But there are some risks attached to an offshore business and one must tread carefully to minimize the risks associated with offshore outsourcing.  It helps if you take things slowly at the beginning and then make informed decisions.

Nine steps to help your outsourcing Services                                                                                      

If your company is venturing into business process outsourcing services, keep the following objectives in mind and then steer ahead.

1.Do research and establish goals-You will outsource for the sole purpose of earning money, and if the basic idea is not fulfilled, that is if you are not able to select the right business provider, you will fall short of reaching your goals. You have to implement a bidding system to know whether you have selected the right provider and also a tracking system which will enable you to track the performance of the provider. If you do a lot of research and remain focused, you can avoid higher IT costs, resource wastage and lose out on business opportunities.

2.Set realistic expectations- After setting your goals and objectives, you need to reconsider them to make sure they’re realistic and achievable. You should not aim for forty percent savings or more because it is not realistically possible. Also, vendor selection costs,  the cost of communications, redundant oversight, the cost of infrastructure and a number of other costs which are seemingly not visible, will lessen your first-year earnings considerably. This doesn’t mean that outsourcing has been a total failure, it is just that if have your goals in sight, you will reach there sooner than later. Rather than hurrying up to achieve your goals, moderate your expectations so there will be fewer chances of you being disappointed for your failures.

3.Count the costs- Apart from maintaining a realistic goal; it is also important to keep a tab on the expenditure. Senior management executives want skilled offshore laborers, and for that reason, the costs can spiral way beyond expectations.

• Selecting a vendor: This takes quite a lot of time.
• Shifting work and business processes: This means knowledge transfer and loss along with process refinement.
• Attrition of existing workforce: Expenditure of removing existing staff.
• Handling with cultural differences: Cultural training is obviously needed, especially when it comes to offshore clients.
• Ramping up: Initial projects can help with your learning curve.
• Having superfluous management, infrastructure, and communications costs: At the beginning, there are many layers of servers, and communications systems which need to be bought and installed, on top of that there is infrastructure expenditure.
• Maintaining an offshore contract: The expenditure of maintaining a finished contract can indeed really be tough. Hidden costs can prove to be a real drainer, but careful analysis and management can reduce it considerably.

4. Risk Management- A successful offshore strategy is not only anticipating the risks associated with outsourcing but also preparing yourself as to how you will mitigate the problems coming your way.  It is best if you keep up-to-date mitigation strategies ready, and take measures to ensure that risks do not materialize.

• Though you are all up in arms against any unforeseen problems coming your way, you must fall back upon your plan to handle it well, by considering the following points:
• Effect: How can a particular risk affect your strategies?
• Probability: Do you think that there is a probable chance of the risks materializing?
• Ability to control: Even if the risk materializes is there any possibility to mitigate the risk?
  Productiveness: Is the team able to effectively deal with risks? An effective strategy will help lessen the impact of risks and effectively stop the risks from materializing.

Though there are some risks like political upheavals which cannot be controlled, most of the risks to a successful offshore outsourcing strategy like selecting the best vendor, hatching up a favorable contract, getting good quality deliverables, and controlling expenditures as well as controlling schedules can be managed with the help of careful management, strategies, and planning


5. Measuring and tracking the benefits-The natural consequence to counting expenditures is to measure the benefits. Let the benefits or results speak for themselves. Rather than overdoing or downplaying the benefits, say it as it is, and if they are lesser than the estimates, do your best to measure and track the benefits and also to increase the benefits.

If you segregate overhead costs from regular project costs, it’s important to add them together to find out the real costs. Some organizations prefer the average results which prove to be misleading and erroneous. You need to add the best practices to get the correct results.

6.  Use an effective outsourcing model- Another important factor in running a successful outsourcing process is choosing an outsource model which suits the circumstances and your company best. You can choose from different outsourcing models, each unique, depending on their strengths and weaknesses.  Offshore vendors may put up an outsourcing model for your reference, but you have to think about it to see whether it suits your company’s needs or that of the vendor.

There’s no dearth of models, quite like the number of vendors and companies. An outsourcing model has different variables, such as the distribution of responsibility, scope, flexibilities of contract, and duration, but the main variables can be the scope of outsourcing effort and tuning between the company and the outsourcing provider. The primary outsourcing model can be the following:
 

• Staff augmentation: Here you hire contractors to perform a particular role or job. The contractor gets the work assignments directly from your company, and then the job is done remotely.
• Project-outsourcing: This model is a self-contained one where a reliable outsourcing team is held responsible for submitting the complete project.  A small, well-etched out, the isolated pilot project makes a good beginning of an outsourcing partnership.
• Dedicated development center: This model has a pool of resources co-located at a vendor’s offshore site, resources that are there for your company’s use. 
• Functional outsourcing: This model outsources an entire business function, process, application, or department. This tends to be risky but it also earns you rich dividends.

7.  Choose complementary business partners- It is important to select an appropriate business model, but more important than that is choosing a good business partner to execute it. Many vendors have a pre-thought out plan, new-customer initiation model and want to rush through the process of preliminary rules and sign a contract without taking into account your outsourcing objectives.

8.  Slow and steady is the best way to go- With a little help from the outsourcing team, the senior management plans how swiftly you can move forward and set the ball rolling. The senior management's decision to move forward should be determined by the success rate.  Begin small with pilot projects and then start from there to get bigger projects. Do not expect that you will get a big return in the first project itself, instead aim big but start small.

9. Keep a track of your progress- As a company starts an offshore engagement, it’s imperative to keep a track of the guidelines to understand whether you are successful or not. To do this, you must begin with an estimation of current performance using the same process with which you should analyze outsourcing performance. Choose the metric that measures the aims and objectives of your outsourcing program, and find out who is to measure them, how to measure them, how would you report them and how to audit them. Before signing on the dotted line of a service-level agreement (SLA) or Statement of Work, make sure that the metrics are clearly mentioned and both the parties agree to it.

While there are numerous hurdles and problems, expenditures and risks involved in an outsourcing strategy, the benefits are huge, far more than the risks attached to it, in fact. Understanding the hurdles of offshore outsourcing provides the key to success. Success is then at sniffing distance for many companies not currently taking advantage of the benefits of outsourcing. Once they prioritize their plans and follow some of the strategies mentioned here, they will soon see the face of success.

If large-scale offshore outsourcing is not on your cards and you are not ready to consider it, setting targets for outsourcing can provide an effective solution for your existing predicament and broaden horizons as far as meeting various demands are concerned. They have to cater to an increasingly global business scenario. If you think the benefits of outsourcing are far beyond your capabilities, think again, because now it may seem more feasible and you can do it pretty successfully. So go for outsourcing and script your own success story.

Worried About A Call Center? Here are Five Reasons You Shouldn’t Be

In every part of the world and in all kinds of industries, you will notice a call center that makes mistakes. Even with good call center training and other helpful resources being made available, many businesses try to take a shortcut to slash expenditures.

Unfortunately, if one attempts to take this shortcut, it can lead to a ton of problems and the company will have a problem when it comes to satisfying and retaining customers. There are a few common errors committed by call centers, and when you are aware of these fallacies, you can do the needful to ensure that these mistakes are not repeated in your call center services.

Not Employing Enough People

When companies decide to use an inbound call center services, they are usually doing so as a way to keep their costs and expenses low. Companies decide to use call centers and make the decision to cut their staff. When there are not enough employees working, you will see a decline in your business’s efficiency and productivity.

When you do not have enough workers on staff, the employees you have left will have to work harder and longer hours in order to handle the pressures of the job. Employees will have plenty of calls to answer, and this can result in poor customer service.

The Common Problems faced by Customers at Call Centers

The main problems that the customers face at call centers are the following:

Customer Service- You would probably think that every business is centered around focusing on customer service and the customer’s experience, but this is not true everywhere. Many companies do not think about the type of customer service they can offer when they make their rules and regulations for call centers. When your employees feel pressurized in answering a deluge of calls, they will probably be unable to answer problems at the first call itself. Customers feel nettled and overly hassled to continuously call a center in order to get the answer to the problem they feel they should have received the first time itself. Customers are only content when they can receive answers to their problems the very first time they come in touch with one of your sales representatives.

•    Security: A business owner needs to watch their step at every point of outsourcing. Despite the fact that renowned outsourcing companies employ a myriad of security tools, they cannot pass on important information to call centers owing to security issues.

•    Communication Gap: Often, cultural and language issues create huge problems between agents and customers. This impacts the turnover rate. Thus, an organization has to be particular while laying down the rules and regulation of service with its outsourcing partner.

Troubling your Sales Rep: When you do not make your sales representatives read from a paper or pressurize them into talking to your customers within a stipulated time, you will give your sales reps a better opportunity to be more efficient and productive with customers.

You want to employ sales reps who are professional with a world of experience but in order to shine they need to be uninhibited and in a relaxed state of mind. When your sales reps do not have to read from a script and they can add their own flavor to the phone call and will have a better chance of getting through to the customers.

Choosing the Wrong Outsourcing Company-Outsourcing is not a very bad idea if you know exactly what you are getting yourself in to. If you make a blunder, everything in your business can be jeopardized. Sometimes there are cultural and communication differences when companies outsource their call centers and this can create confusion between customers and agents. So you need to be focused and think deep before plunging into a decision.

If you do want to outsource your call center, you should ensure that you have a plan and a strategy to overcome all problems. How many of your departments do you think you should outsource? What will your responsibilities be? How long will your association with the call center outsourcing company be?

You want to retain your customers so that your company also has a long and fulfilling shelf-life. If you deliver poor customer service, your customers will also look for greener pastures. If you are worried that your call center is not providing your customers with high-quality services then you need to re-strategize and mull over your plans once again so that you can lure your customers with careful planning and effective strategies, to avoid the above mistakes. Call center Philippines play an important role in helping with the growth of an organization. Although there may be a few glaring faults in the outsourcing process, it also offers many benefits which cannot be ignored. Thus, a company should keep these points in mind to surge ahead of the competition.