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Questions to Ask When Outsourcing

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Cory Bennett
Cory Bennett
05/05/2011

Geoffrey Best is the Director, Program Manager at NCO Customer Management. Geoffrey assists a wide range of companies in implementing on-shore, near-shore and off-shore solutions.

Geoffrey will be a presenter at this year’s 12th Annual Call Center Week in Las Vegas. His presentation, "10 Ways to Evaluate a BPO" will address practical approaches to simplify the tasks involved in defining and deploying outsourced call center operations. CMIQ spoke with Best recently. Below is an abbreviated version of the conversation. To hear the full interview, check out the above podcast.

To begin, can you give an overview of the process a company will go through when deciding to outsource?

Perhaps the first step in the decision process is to ask, "Why outsource?"

Your outsourcing solution depends on your business expectations, goals and objectives and you will want an outsourcing company that is capable of meeting your expectations for cost and customer service.

Handling inbound customer relationship calls can be complex, more so than outbound marketing/sales or collections. CRM agents need to be trained in all facets of your product or service and sometimes that training can be unique. Your CRM agents should be dedicated to your customers, not shared between clients.

Another point to add to your process: If your company is considering going offshore or near-shore, you may also need to do some cultural training.

Think about an agent in Central America helping a customer in Upstate New York with a snow blower when the agent has never seen snow. He has no way to personalize the differences between wet snow and powdery snow and how that may affect the snow blowers operation.

Then there is the voice communications process to consider. Delivering inbound calls to an agent outside your company has any number of technical variations. You may want to allow customers to call directly to the outsourcer or go through your IVR. You may only want a percentage of calls to be sent to one or more outsourcers and the balance sent to your internal call center.

What are some of the main, practical ways you have identified that companies can simplify the complex task of outsourcing call center operations?

There are no real shortcuts in the outsourcing process. The best way to simplify the process is to minimize the unexpected and correct issues before small issues become big problems.

If you have answered the first question of, "Why Outsource?" then you will need to go further and ask, "What type of outsourcer do I need?" "How will my business change?" and "What are the risks?"

Once you have asked these questions, you need to create a strategy. One of the best strategies is to segment, or break-up, your outsourcing approach into segments. These segments might be to

  • Gather requirements from your existing operations,
  • Understand your technology options,
  • Identify changes in your business processes,
  • Evaluate and select your outsourcer,
  • Prepare for your first go-live call, and
  • Organize your on-going management.

By managing smaller parts, you can simplify what can initially appear to be complex.

What are some of the most important factors are to consider about your businesses’ needs before making the decision to outsource?

Again, perhaps the most important factor is to understand WHY your company wants to outsource. For example, if your executives want to improve profits by up-selling customers to improve revenue and you focus on reducing handle times to reduce costs, you are not going to be successful and perhaps unemployed. Unless you understand the reasons behind your outsourcing project, you cannot meet the goals and objectives set by your company.

Getting your management commitment is another important factor. You will also need both operations and technology management commitments. Companies new to outsourcing tend to include their technology teams as an after-thought. The reality is that while you may be reducing the head count in your call center, you may need to increase the head count in your technology area. This means your voice communications may have to be upgraded and your network security improved.

Finally, you will need to accept that disasters happen and that disasters usually don’t happen as a single event. Storm, for example, usually involve the loss of electricity and flooding which may affect transportation and subsequently the ability for outsourcing personnel to get to their jobs.

No matter what the disaster, you and your outsourcer need to have a plan for business continuity and disaster recovery. This plan should pre-define what both your team and your outsourcer’s team will do to reestablish operations.

When interacting with an outsourcer you have identified, you want to make sure the outsourcer is capable of meeting your cost expectations while servicingyour businesses’ needs. What type of questions should you be asking them to ensure this occurs?

Successful outsourcers have made the major investments necessary to meet industry-accepted functionality. You need to be wary of outsourcing vendors that need to upgrade their systems, facilities, or security at your expense or adding upgrades as line items in their proposals. If you are being charged by your outsourcer to meet your basic requirements, you most likely have the wrong one.

So, how can you be sure the outsourcer is the right one?

Here are some of the questions to ask.

Security is always an issue. Find out about the physical and environmental security policies where agents will be taking calls.

  • Ask if access to the building is controlled.
  • If there is a data center on the premises, is access to the computer room secured separately?
  • Are there multiple tenants at the outsourcers building?
  • If so, is there separate access control to ensure there isn’t unauthorized access?
  • Does the outsourcer have other clients at the proposed facility?
  • Will there be dedicated seats in a separate area to your agents?

It is also important to know if your outsourcer is outsourcing their technology. If they are, you need to know how to evaluate not only the capabilities of your vendor, but also the capabilities of their subcontractor. If the carrier doesn’t provide the service needed, the primary outsourcer should be responsible and they are the people you need to hold accountable.

You also need to understand the outsourcer’s network topology. Most call center outsourcers work with multiple clients and should not be sharing their entire network since it compromises security, as well as the security of their other clients.

You may want to request a diagram of the network that will be used for your program that should include the location of primary connection points, firewalls, routers, switches, and portals to the Internet. Again, your company should not bear the expense of network changes unless it is directly related to providing connectivity to your data center.

You should ask if the agents work in a brick and mortar site or are they virtual or remote, such as work-at-home agents. If agents are working remotely or at home, is there a financial break in pricing? More importantly, how is security handled? If there are security breaches, how are incidents reported.

You should ask about the desktops that will be used.

  • Have the desktop computers been recently purchased from a major vendor?
  • Does it meet the requirements for your application?
  • Are the desktops locked down to prevent confidential information from being sent externally through e-mail or Internet sites?
  • If customer information is shared, who is responsible for covering any loss?

You should also ask what type of reporting the outsourcer can provide.

  • Do the reports include metrics associated with call volume such as average handle time, calls answered, calls abandoned, calls offered, and hold time?
  • Will the outsourcer provide a daily forecast of calls for the next business day?
  • Are there reports that show employee attrition and future hiring to meet your call volume forecasts?
  • Training costs money and if there is a high level of attrition, who pays for the re-training?

How will the quality of calls be managed and can remote access to the call recordings be provided to you for your own quality monitoring? This is an important question. If the calls you monitor for quality are not up to what you expected, you are a risk of losing your customers, which is an intangible cost outside the money being paid by your company.

To generalize, what are some of the characteristics of companies that are successful with BPO?

From a Wall Street perspective, successful companies maximize their profits from their revenues. For a successful BPO, it is a little different. I believe we are in an "Invest or Die" situation – where successful BPOs must increase management and technology investment.

Let me explain. Companies that are successfully outsourcing will have dedicated teams for managing their BPOs in areas such as training, operations and quality service. Moreover, they require their outsourcers to have equivalent teams as a compliment to their own teams. There should be a single point of contact between the two.

As I mentioned, successful BPOs need to continually invest in technology and be responsive to changes in your company. In addition, your company is outsourcing to a BPOs, not only for the service, but also to advise you when technology upgrades will improve performance, reliability, or the customer experience – they are supposed to be the experts.

Finally, BPOs should continuously monitor and report on everything from agent performance to networking statistics to operational metrics. Paper or static reports are good; real-time portals are better, and nothing promotes confidence like a real-time dashboard on your company’s executive computer.


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