2. 1 Introduction
2 The Evaluation | Knowing When It’s Time to Transition
4 The Proving Ground | Understanding Their Business Models to Transition
6 The Deep Dive | Leveraging Their Expertise
8 The Red Flags | Avoiding the Common Pitfalls
10 The Checklist | Confirming Your Need
Table of Contents
3. There’s no one that can take care of your business quite like an in-house team, right? Well, that’s not always
necessarily the case. In fact, many businesses look to outsourcing to provide flexibility and expertise. At some
point in your business’s lifecycle it might come time to outsource one of the key elements of your day-to-day.
A good place to start is customer service.
Working with a third-party outsource partner for your customer service is a very common development for many
businesses. Some companies look to outsource to reduce overhead. Many outsource because it takes pressure
off of valuable resources within their organizations or it’s a competency they neither have nor wish to master.
Other companies may be experiencing marked growth and need additional support or wish to expand
service hours.
Whatever the reason, a high-quality customer-service provider is one of the best steps you can take to raise the
profile and response time of your company as a whole and improve consumer satisfaction and appeal.
The following will guide you through the key elements of
selecting an outsource partner, from knowing when it’s the
right time to transition to analyzing your options to getting
the most out of a partnership.
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Introduction
4. The Evaluation | Knowing When It’s Time to Transition
Analyzing your expenditures
Whether you’re seeking out your first third-party call center or considering a move to a new one,
analyzing your current expenditures is a key first step. After all, if the amount of money your
expending is no longer financially viable, it’s time to try something new. Consider the salaries and
benefits you would afford an in-house team and whether this same level of service can be provided
by an outsourced call center. Additionally, consider the expenses that come with space rental and
management to support an entire customer service department. Another key expenditure to consider
is the cost and time of maintaining and keeping up with the technology and phone systems. Has your
need outgrown your current service provider or support model?
Gauging satisfaction
Not every call center is created equally. Whether you’re getting restless with the results of your
current outsource partner or looking to take on a call center provider for the first time, defining and
understanding the key performance indicators that drive customer satisfaction are important. The key
call center drivers to measure might include average order value, average handle time (AHT), average
speed of answer (ASA), abandon rate (ABN), service level and quality scores. Customer satisfaction
or transactional surveys, as well as Net Promoter Scores, help determine if you are meeting customer
expectations. If those numbers are dissatisfactory and the performance of your current team or
outsourcer is not meeting your needs, then it’s time to try something new. Are customers feeling
truly served?
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5. The Evaluation | Knowing When It’s Time to Transition
Determining your service needs
Before you barrel into the world of vetting third-party service providers, make sure you have clear, established
goals and define what services you need them to perform. This will dictate your decision-making and winnow
down your options once the search begins. What are your focuses? They could include handling a high volume
of calls, managing after-hours support or handling overages or seasonal spikes in call volume. Do they need to
demonstrate expertise in a niche industry and are they knowledgeable with your products and jargon? Will they
be able to emulate your brand voice, and how do they deliver a seamless customer interaction? Ultimately, do
you want your customers to know they are not talking to you directly?
Defining your customer experience goals
It’s important to determine if your current customer service strategy is meeting the needs of your consumer
base. With a new partnership, it might provide expanded or reduced capabilities and can affect your ability to
meet the needs of your consumers. Are you currently providing the type of communication channel that your
demographic prefers? Do they use email or chat? Do your consumers prefer to call to order or only resolve
issues? These are all import questions to consider. What are your deal-breakers?
Planning for your future
If you anticipate growth and expansion in the near-term, only offer limited hours of service and wish to expand
customer convenience or are in need of a disaster recovery or contingency strategy to ensure your business
still operates during a natural disaster, it might be time to switch to a new customer-service setup. Entering a
new stage of development will likely require more agents to continue to provide the same standard of service
you’ve set with your customers up to this point. Analyze your business patterns to determine where you see
numbers going in the next few months and years, and plan ahead with an outsource partner that has the history
and skills to deliver. Set yourself up for success.
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6. The Proving Ground
Level-setting their sizes and capabilities
When vetting third-party outsource partners, step one is to weed out the ones that aren’t large enough
to handle your base-level or projected call volume. And it’s not just bodies in seats that count – there
should be a logical hierarchy of managers, associates and support staff. Seek out companies who
have people covering the key positions, such as account relationship manager, IT, hiring and recruiting,
training and quality, workforce manager and implementation manager. And make sure it’s not just one
or two individuals covering all of these positions.
Knowing their pricing practices
One of the biggest priorities when selecting a call center (and one that will hugely affect your bottom
line) is how it prices and bills for its services. While some outsource partners promote an “all inclusive”
package, some promote a lower agent fee but then charge for reporting, account management and
queue time. Consider that a monthly minimum or retainer, ranging anywhere from $2,000 to $20,000,
should be in place at any truly reputable contact center. Centers that round to the nearest second
get you even closer to paying for exactly what you get and can cut significant costs in the long run
compared to an outsourcer that rounds up to the nearest minute. Every penny (and second) counts
when you’re weighing billing practices.
Understanding Their
Business Models
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7. The Proving Ground | Understanding Their Business Models
Getting the most out of reporting
There’s no better way to determine your success in customer service
than by reporting and analysis. So when it comes to selecting an
outsource partner, reporting transparency and quality is paramount
to proving a return on investment. The frequency and availability of
reporting varies widely, from no reporting at all, to monthly reports,
to a variety or tiers of reporting, depending on budget. Whatever the
case, don’t get shorted on a much-needed aspect of managing and
monitoring your business.
Weighing the benefits of domestic vs. abroad
Besides simply the negative public perception that comes with
outsourcing customer service overseas, there are a variety reasons to
opt for a domestic or abroad third-party provider. Some international
companies are able to offer much cheaper rates as a result of lower-
waged workers. This, however, typically goes hand in hand with poor
infrastructure. Also consider language barriers and a caller’s ability
to easily understand an agent and how it will positively or adversely
affect your customer experience. If brand voice is important to you,
an overseas contact center will not sound like you sound or be able
to replicate your voice. One-call resolution and customer satisfaction
is an important factor in keeping your costs down. Ensuring that
your outsourcer can maintain these will often help justify keeping
business domestic. Is the upfront savings enough to balance out
potential costs incurred from frustrated customer loss and brand
inconsistency?
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8. The Deep Dive | Leveraging Their Expertise
Identifying their contingency plans
Once you’ve analyzed the basic attributes of your potential outsource partners, it’s time to evaluate on
a deeper level. First off, weather, natural disasters or other emergencies can have an adverse effect on
your ability to serve your customers. Ask your potential partners about their redundancy or contingency
plans for these instances. Are they able to shift traffic to second locations or utilize alternate “hot” sites
in their immediate vicinities? Do they have a group of associates that can work at home or remotely?
Keep your eyes peeled for centers that make use of multiple locations.
Measuring their speeds and reaction times
Depending on your business, there may be seasonality to your customer service call volume. Your
chosen outsource partner should be able to both plan for and react to these ebbs and flows with real-
time adjustments as minutely as throughout the day. Human resources is unpredictable – a call center
worth its salt has a system in place to accommodate unexpected influxes of calls and staffs accordingly.
They do this by watching and reacting to real-time changes in volumes and employee coverage.
With a universal system of cross-trained employees, a good call center is able to move volume to
maintain service levels. How they staff is also important. Many over-forecast so that they have a
sufficient number of employees to cover unexpected spikes. How proactive and reactive are your
outsource partner options?
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9. The Deep Dive | Leveraging Their Expertise
Understanding their commitment to quality
One of the most measurable ways of analyzing the optimum outsource partner is by looking at how they
create and customize quality scorecards. A lot can go into these scorecards, depending on the company’s
priorities. From agent demeanor and vocal inflection, to information and data entry accuracy, to efficiency and
speed-to-resolution, to breadth of subject-matter knowledge, identify which elements are most important to
your business. Getting an understanding of what they have in place and what they are willing to customize is
important. It’s also important to determine the type of quality-control monitoring a center is utilizing, including
live, side-by-side and audiovisual recordings. Maintaining quality interactions is vital to ensuring
customer satisfaction.
Seeking skill-based routing and automation
One of the most effective determinations of a quality outsource partner is its ability to incorporate skill-based
routing. This entails sending calls to agents that are most qualified to deal with a given customer need, rather
than selecting the first available agent. If a partner knows its employees well enough and stacks its team with
specific skillsets, call time decreases and order value and customer satisfaction increase. They profile every
agent and team, while constantly monitoring performance to maintain this skill-based system. Satisfying your
customers’ inquiries with the most qualified agent vastly improves your long-term program success.
Finding the best of both worlds
Outsourcing provides significant flexibility in managing your contact and call volume when you have a
small or existing in-house contact center. With the right amount of volume, you can easily move calls and
correspondence between your in-house and outsourced partner. A 70/30 to 50/50 (internal/outsourced) split
gets you the most flexibility and benefits in an outsourced scenario. With this mix, your outsourcer is able
to gain experience and efficiency through repetition, allowing you to easily adjust volume for call spikes,
absenteeism, after-hours and holiday coverage and disaster backup. With a minimum call volume of 500 calls
a day, this becomes an option that you can leverage. Balancing an internal and outsourced call center has
additional benefits.
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10. The Red Flags | Avoiding the Common Pitfalls
Is there reporting in place?
One of the biggest mistakes in settling on a third-party call center is selecting one with limited or no reporting.
A standard report should include answered and abandoned call numbers, service levels, talk- and wait-time
averages, average order values, call type summaries and after-call work. What’s more, your access to these
reports should be ample, and the contents should be consistently and frequently updated. Consider the
delivery method as well – do you need to request reports, or are there self-service portals? Having the ability to
output to a spreadsheet and view on mobile devices may also be important to your business.
Is workforce management leveraged?
Workforce management is hugely important to the success of your customer service goals. If your third-party
provider doesn’t take the time to manage its workforce real-time at all hours of the day, it could indicate
an inability to manage your business. A partner needs to be constantly monitoring proficiency, trends and
occupancy of its workforce so it can react to business changes. A good workforce management system
provides security and scalability for your program. It ultimately ensures the long-term success and improvement
you should expect.
Is implementation seamless and well managed?
Adopting an outsource partner, particularly when you’re moving from one customer-service provider to another,
can get cumbersome without an implementation manager to guide the way. A third-party provider should
have a detailed plan in place to ensure your customers don’t feel the effects of the changing of the guard
through a seamless transition. A typical program implementation should take 30-90 days. With an experienced
implementation program, you can expect to be on the shorter end of that range.
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11. The Red Flags | Avoiding the Common Pitfalls
Is there a specific point of contact?
A one-to-one relationship with your provider will simplify your processes
and program management. Your outsource partner should provide a
relationship manager who can regularly touch base with you to identify
opportunities to processes and your business. This individual should work
to meet your financial goals and provide continuous improvement. Plus, this
person can serve as your conduit for needs in other departments, such as
technology, training and quality, thus simplifying your life, since you have
one main point of contact to service your needs.
Are agents vetted sufficiently?
There’s almost nothing more detrimental to your success with customers
than unqualified or poor agents. Ask your potential outsource partners
about their agent vetting process. They should value communication skills,
experience, active-listening abilities and genuine enthusiasm. Agents
should also have undergone a hands-on evaluation by way of actual call-
handling to see first-hand whether they’re appropriate for the position.
Are agents trained adequately?
Once qualified agents are in the door, are they receiving training or do they
have experience in your specific industry? Partners should have curricula in
place to give trainees instruction in your products and services and in the
legal implications of handling sensitive customer information. And it goes
beyond just knowledge – agents need to be experienced or trained in tone,
empathy, upselling and cross-selling.
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12. The Checklist | Confirming Your Need
Is it time to start the search? Check your math.
Questions?
Any questions about selecting your
ideal call-center outsource partner?
Midco Connections is here to help.
Contact 800-843-8800 today!
¨ Has your need outgrown your current service provider or support model?
¨ Based on your quality scores, are customers not feeling truly served and satisfied?
¨ Is your brand voice during customer interactions emulated unsuccessfully?
¨ Are you not meeting your sales and average-order-value goals?
¨ Are you anticipating future growth or in need of contingency strategies?
¨ Are you dissatisfied with current customer-service department’s or provider’s size and capabilities?
¨ Are you looking for a simplified pricing structure to help budgeting?
¨ Do you feel short-changed on customer-service reporting and monitoring?
¨ Have you experienced customer dissatisfaction with non-domestic providers?
¨ Are you dissatisfied with the lack of proactivity in your current service provider?
¨ Are you interested in implementing skill-based routing and automation in your customer service?
¨ Does your customer-service setup lack effective workforce management?
¨ Is your current outsource partner not providing improvements or additional value?
¨ Are you dissatisfied with the quality of customer-service agents managing your calls?
Midco Connections offers
the support you need –
let us take your customer
satisfaction to the next level.
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