It’s Halloween season and I don’t know about you, but I like a good scare! Vampires, zombies, mummies — you name it, I love it! Although many of us enjoy the adrenaline rush from a scary movie or two, there are some areas in our life where we don’t appreciate an unexpected shock or sinking feeling in our stomachs. When it comes to my business and the partners I work with, I prefer something a little less scary.
Outsourcing your contact center support can be great for your business, but only if you have the right people, processes and technology in place. If you don’t have the proper metrics, management and expectations in place for your BPO, then it can quickly turn into a nightmare scenario. To remove fear, anxiety, and frustration from our system, we must identify potential mistakes that your BPO may be making. It is through self-awareness and proper “Trust but Verify” management that you can ensure a successful partnership.
Mistakes Your BPO is Making
1) Poor Communication
Transparency from your BPO partner is key to a successful business relationship. If you find that your BPO is dodging your calls or that you find that you have to hunt them down for reports, that is NOT a good sign. Communication, both good and bad, should be delivered to you as a client at agreed upon time intervals.
Another aspect to consider is that silo mentality and poor communication prevent our contact centers from meeting our customer’s expectations. Silo mentality reflects negatively on your business. This attitude is exhibited when several groups within a company refuse to share knowledge or information with their colleagues. It isolates departments from one another.
For your business to be really successful, Silo mentality has to be avoided at all costs so that your staff can deliver customer support in an efficient way.
If your teams don’t use organizational information properly and are divided, our company becomes inflexible. It won’t be able to adapt to big challenges like information overload and insufficiency in human capital.
2) Low-Quality Agents
Human capital is the experience, knowledge, and skills possessed by a population that is viewed in terms of their cost or value to a business. When employees know that their salary is lower than the average pay of contact center agents, they tend to perform poorly. When they’re not treated well, they become unmotivated. They may not care about their brands at all. This can be disastrous for your organization and the brand that you have so carefully built over the years.
3) Outdated Technology
All businesses need investment especially businesses in the IT sector. Most startup owners prefer to buy inexpensive systems and employ unrated consultants. If your BPO partner has outdated technology, it can have a huge impact in the customer service you provide your clients and the overall customer experience. This can reflect badly on our company’s reputation. If your partner cannot meet client requirements because of inefficient technology, you must lobby for a better technology platform or find a new partner.
4) Inadequate Training
Take a long, hard look at the training that is provided by your BPO partner. Sure, part of the training will be provided by your organization but it is also important to see how your BPO trains agents on topics such as soft skills and de-escalation techniques. Also, take a look at length of training. If training is too short, does not have scheduled, adequate ongoing training, or does not address key components to excellent customer service delivery, then that is a red flag. If your agents don’t have adequate experience in certain fields like customer service and customer support, you can lose revenue, clients, and reputation.
5) Reactive Approach
If your BPO partner is constantly on the defensive and putting out fires, it’s time to talk to them about changing from a reactive approach to a proactive approach. A Proactive approach focuses on preventing problems to manifest while a reactive approach is a method used for responding to issues after they’ve happened. Prevention is always better than cure. When everything is well, we tend to relax, rely on our assistants and team leaders, and refuse to fulfill our roles as managers.
Final Thoughts
When we know what we’re dealing with, we can be confident with our decisions. We can employ better practices for dealing with issues and potential problems. If you are seeking help in dealing with any of these problems we should talk! Being in contact center consulting space for more than 20 years, I have helped numerous clients overcome exactly these problems. You can contact me directly by clicking here.
