Call Centre Blog
04.01.08 |
|
|
I know a lot of local outsourcers who have been searching the markets for offshore partners for quite a long time. Most of them find a business partner in the end, but it strikes me that they have to make such an effort to achieve that.
From my perspective, there are two options for an offshore provider to offer BPO services: through a broker or launching a company in the target market.
The broker can be a local outsourcing bureau (discussed above) or a professional brokerage firm. The former will usually take complete project ownership and manage the offshore provider. The latter will resell “call minutes”, “numbers of contacts” or whole projects. By the way: Jens Moeller Consulting is NOT a broker.
A company in the target region will typically be a pure Marketing and Sales organization, while all operations are being run offshore. This is the main difference to the mentioned local outsourcing partner who may offer a mix of local and offshore “seats”. Such concepts usually require one or more persons who are familiar with the target market.
However, many offshore outsourcing providers still try to sell their services remotely. They ask people on local shows whether they might resell their services. All they have to give is a small brochure and some price ideas. OK, this is the low end of the market, but it is happening over and over again, often driven by companies with a few hundred seats! In Europe, this is considered a large call center with respective expectations towards their management. They usually do not have any concept only looking for somebody who might be interested to win clients for them. Who will define and visit prospects, present their company and even close deals for them. Typically, they would pay such a person commission only, no basic fees for the marketing and sales efforts they take. Such offshore outsourcing providers don’t want to launch a local company either – or “maybe at a later stage, when first sales are in place”.
There is no problem with offering your services on another local marketplace. The key is, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Call Center business might be run on a global scale, but decisions are local business. You need to have the trust of key decision makers in the prospect’s headquarters or regional headquarters. How on earth can anybody expect a local business developer, consultant or outsourcing bureau to risk his reputation and his business relationship’s trust? The answer is short: he can’t. In positive terms, this means, an offshore outsourcer must undertake some effort to win business partners in the target country.
He must present his company properly, making clear his positioning, USP, strategic and cost advantages, company abilities in matters of language, culture knowledge, technologies and service quality. He must invest in readiness of marketing and sales operations: this means at least to provide local language and culture-close marketing collateral (brochures, website, presentation slides at least) plus enabling the local partner financially to focus enough to succeed.
What do I mean here? If you are working with one business developer only, you will either have to hire him and pay a salary or pay a retainer, a monthly fee that the person can make a living on. On top of that there will be sales commission. If you are working with a local company, it depends on how well your services fit in their portfolio. If they are selling outsourcing services anyway, you might get away with commissions. If it is a Brokerage or Business Development company or an enterprise from a different market - but targeting the call center industry as well - more fees may apply. Consulting companies will work based on fees with commissions on top. Further there will usually be some third party costs for lead generation (telesales, web marketing, shows etc.).
In a nutshell, at this market stage there is no success without investment. This is an old saying, but true enough. Offshore BPO companies on the top show which efforts to take. But in the end, this will lead to success. The key is to earn trust on the target market – trust by your business partners and trust by your future clients. It is no magic and it really works, but it takes commitment.
|
|
19.10.07 |
|
|
Last time we ended with some common selection criteria for outsourcing providers which you should be able to find in their proposals: finally, look out for an e
xplanation of optional add-on services which could improve achievements – including pricing, for instance broken down into the following categories:o One off costs for initiating the project and installation of necessary technology: concept, briefing, training, technical set up, operational readiness test (ORT)
o Ongoing Project Management: Quality Assurance (reporting, monitoring, mystery calling or mystery shopping, supervision & coaching), administration, Controlling, management of operational interfaces (update cycles, responsibilities etc.)
o Ongoing operations: costs per agent hour, per contact (or call, email, letter etc.), per contact minute or per achieved process goal (e.g. % of bad payers turned into good payers, conversion rates of any kind). For outbund operations the definition of what is a contact is essential (is it a target person from a list, any person in the company, a specific decision maker etc.). Further, commissions based on general business figures are common: top level such as turnover and profit or sales specific such as number of agreed personal sales visits. Finally, there are third party costs such as postage, service numbers (0800, 0845 and the like), fulfillment and lettershop (sending brochures, proposals, contracts etc.).
Buyers should verify the source of information about analysed call centre outsourcers. It should be as neutral as possible (a call center news resource, analysts, call centre specific publications or even call centre consultant’s specific analysis and short list). Awards should be considered with caution, checking carefully the selection process, which call centre organisations were considered in the first place (do they happen to be the large advertisers?) and so forth.
The most reliable source of information are usually references of existing clients. The latter should still use the respective service at the time of verifying them. Often, simply calling them provides best insight into the call centre’s performance.
The Call Centre outsourcer’s sheer size might be some indicator whether it can manage the buyers workload. On the other hand the importance of a specific contract for a call centre should be considered. If I outsource a medium sized process of, say 100,000 calls a year to a globally operating outsourcer with more than a million calls per month on each site, chances are that my contract will not be considered as important as some much larger contract.
That said, a good guideline is that no side should ever be dependent on the other because of the specific project in question. If the client’s project is too large for the outsourcer and covers more than half of their business, this would certainly be the case. Vice versa, as mentioned before, a small project might not be important enough for a big call center outsourcer. When visiting on-site, one can expect creative proposals from the call centre outsourcer regarding how to meet your challenges. Take into consideration and make sure that the people with the respective ideas and concept will lateron be the ones you are working with.
The more you will need to exchange confidential and business critical information, the mor likely you want to meet your call centre outsourcer’s project staff personally and regularly. In that case, it is important how quickly and easily you can reach them. Do not count in miles, count in hours.Some places are farther, but easier to reach, due to their good traffic infrastructure.
Your leading technical staff should check the technical infrastructure of your future contact centre outsourcing partner. They should meet their counterparts on the contact center’s side. If you are considering offshore outsourcing, take the geographical infrastructure into consideration. For instance, in many emerging contact center countries only the capitals provide sufficient telecommunication lines with the bandwith you may need.
Try to specify as precisely as possible which kind of technical infrastructure you need and whether the call center outsourcer can provide it. You may not need e.g. web collaboration during your customer calls, but you would prefer a lower cost per contact instead. Don’t believe in words, but test your future’s call center outsourcer’s technical and other capabilities. Pilots are industry standard, but even besides that, operational readiness tests often do not get the attention they deserve. Include the call centre agents’ performance in your testing: are they familiar with the ITC technology they have to handle in your project? Or do they just cope and lose attention on the customer interaction? Are they keen to gain / retain / serve your customers?
Special attention is required when evaluating the call centre’s performance, especially relative to their operating costs. If you can out some trust in your call center company, you may want to check the final achievements only (e.g. total sales, number of arranged meetings, conversion rates in winback processes) instead of focusing on classic contact centre metrics (e.g. service level, lost call rate, call duration). It all depends on your goals and relating Key Performance Indicators. Make sure you have them in place , BEFORE you outsource, otherwise you will likely never really get anywhere.
Send your topic enquiry now to info@jmoellerconsulting.com!
|
|
15.10.07 |
|
|
To begin with, it is vital to double check why you have opted for call centre outsourcing (and not a pure in-house solution) in the first place. Have a look at the reasons why you have decided this way - your future call centre outsourcing partner should be strong in these very points. For instance, you may have opted to outsource call center outbound campaigns because they require sales skills beyond your staff’s abilities. Or, you want need a quick solution to go live with customer support for a new product. There can be many reasons. It should be noted, that selection criteria for call centers may vary a lot depending on the scale and scope of activities - especially the client’s industry and the type of process(es) being outsourced. That said, there is some common ground for all projects.
In the first place, you should feel comfortable when calling your desired call centre outsourcing provider for the first time. Staff on the other end should make a good impression. The call center’s activities and core competencies should fit with your requirements. Hints can be found when checking the call center’s references, the jargon used and particularly the roots and visions of the call center company. I always check where a player is coming from. What made the call centre succesful? How is this key strength embedded in their vision – and how is the latter supposed to unfold?
Brochures, websites and other collateral may be a first indicator. However, a visit on-site is a must, when the call center is already on your short list. Therefore, try not to have more than 3-5 call center companies on your list, to limit the effort. When on-site, check to which degree the promises made are kept.
Competence and creativity should be verified when contacting the potential project and account managers – and further members of your project team on the call center outsourcer’s side. To get an impression of the service quality, ask for quality assurance methodologies. Many call centres are certified, even if in Europe there is no international certification standard to which all countries agree so far (this is an an ongoing process). Still, certification is a good indicator, and you should look behind the scenes what this certification method was or is about.
The call centre service provider’s proposal is a good indicator of the degree of commitment you can expect during the project. It should definitely show that the call centre partner has understood your challenges and has a robust concept in place to meet them. Make sure you understand all services offered and the way they will be charged. Particularly have the call centre explain how the fixed costs are calculated and check whether it is possible to limit them to an absolute maximum. Also, many vendors will be happy to send a standard contract in advance including their terms and conditions.
In the following you find some common selection criteria for outsourcing providers which you should be able to find in their proposals:
To be continued…
Send your topic enquiry now to info@jmoellerconsulting.com! |
|
01.08.07 |
Call Centre Outsourcing on the US market |
|
Steve Morrell, and his Analyst and Market Research company Contact Babel have just released their US Market Report. I like the insights into the Outsourcing section, so I publish them with his permission. You can find more extracts regarding other Call Center topics on the Call Center Management Software Directory and Resource Softigator. Here is the summary of the Outsourcing section: The US Contact Center Operational Review 2007 - Outsourcing (by Steve Morrell, Contact Babel) A judicious use of outsourcing can assist a contact center with its operational and strategic goals:
Outsourcing allows businesses to focus on their core business, and to benefit from the experience and knowledge of specialist contact center operators. It is a sector which has been hit in recent years by the increase in outbound legislation and the competition from offshore, but which still accounts for over 10% of US agent positions.
The use of outsourcers’ services vary greatly between vertical markets, with the transport & travel sectors being the most likely to use outsourcers’ particular skills, especially overflow and out-of-hours. 55% of respondents used outsourcers in some way.
The use of a third-party to survey customer satisfaction is a strong trend which is likely to become even more popular as the needs to improve customer satisfaction continues to strengthen its position as the no.1 priority for contact centers. A significant number of respondents also use outsourcers on an ongoing basis to provide customer service, whether scheduled, or as overflow, thus working in a more long-term way with the outsourcer. However, most of our respondents did not outsource all of such work. Some businesses which provide long opening hours do so through the use of a third-party, as their customers expect 24/7 service, but it may not be economical to provide this in-house, especially in smaller operations.
Although a contact center agent can be trained to operate a keyboard more quickly, or even modify their behavior to be more empathetic, it is impossible to teach them a new language quickly and cost-effectively. Forcing a customer to speak in a language that is not their first choice will hardly provide high levels of customer
satisfaction, and is also prone to error and misunderstandings. As such, especially in a multilingual country like the United States, businesses have the need - if not always the in-house capability - to provide multilingual resources, and one way to do this is through outsourcing.
As we would expect, Spanish is the most needed non-English language, with 73% of respondents requiring some agent capability in Spanish (there are 40 million Spanish speakers in the US). Perhaps more surprisingly, 20% of respondents believe they needed French language skills, perhaps to take calls from Québécois. A smaller proportion also needed Chinese, Italian, Korean, German and Portuguese, a true sign of America’s high international population.
The US Contact Center Operational Review (1st edition - 2007) is a study of the performance, operations, technology and HR aspects of 204 US contact center operations. Download this Study for free at www.contactbabel-downloads.com. info@contactbabel.com Send your topic enquiry now to info@jmoellerconsulting.com! |
|