Are you a newbie to Outsourcing? Planning to engage a BPO (Business Processing Outsourcer) to support your Customer Management? Wondering how to establish rock solid outsourced customer support operations, on which growth and scale will thrive?
Corinne Culloty, Head of Solution Design and Implementation, shares some candid advice and valuable tips as you anticipate and begin navigating your outsourcing implementation journey.
Navigating Your Outsourcing Implementation Journey: 7 Tips You Need To Know!
Tips:
#1: Choose the Right Time
Conduct the necessary due diligence during the planning phase to validate timelines. Strengthen your plan by building a roadmap, encompassing milestones around product launches, market rollouts, CRM(Customer Relationship Management) and other technology purchases along with channel diversification efforts. If you’re considering adding people to your team to conduct activities not part of your core business, very often it’s time to find a partner with necessary capabilities so you can focus on your business-critical interests.
#2: Assign an Owner
The assignment of a project lead on both sides, drives the most effective implementations. There may be inputs required across many workstreams, from Technology and Operations to Workforce Management and HR(Human Resources) but identifying a primary POC(Point of Contact) will drive cohesion, pace and quality outputs.
#3: Embark on a Process of Discovery
Expect the outsourced partner to examine, probe and challenge. Early engagement centres around understanding your strategy and vision, exploring your current state and fully grasping challenges and pain points. Be open, be transparent, be trusting. Full disclosure and healthy, unguarded sharing will drive an accurate diagnosis and constructive recommendations.
#4: Think about the Optimum Profile
The key to building a successful outsourced team is finding the right candidates, with the right attitude and the right skills. By articulating, not just your service requirement, but your brand values and operational vision, your new partner will be primed to ascertain the necessary talent profile and, consequently, an accurate job specification will ensue.
#5: Gather Materials
Training activities planning will feature early in the implementation phase. Begin assembling collateral, from basic manuals, product detail and company information. Your new partner will support you in developing and honing your training pack, ultimately transitioning information to a knowledgebase or an intranet in time.
#6: Build a Scaling-Friendly Operational Framework
Operational structure and rigour are paramount. Work with your partner to build out operational components including process/workflows, quality infrastructure, macros and sample case libraries and knowledge repositories, amongst others. These form many of the basic, foundational building blocks, on which a successful operating model will occur and on which growth and scale will in time flourish.
#7: Leverage Technology and Demand Insights
Aggregate all your contact channels in one platform, so you have one source of truth for reporting and forecasting. Establish reporting metrics and performance results early on and expect your partner to furnish you, not only with numerical reports, but also insights so you have a better understanding of your users’ journey and behavior's. Ultimately, these insights will, in time, fuel meaningful strategic discussion and will drive adjustment of your business practices, leading to the removal of inefficiencies.
At Otonomee, we provide people and technology solutions to help you move into new markets, grow your customer base and deliver stand out customer experience.
Want to read more? Visit Otonomee.com to learn about our outsourced solutions, our approach and how we will support you in championing growth and scale.
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