One of the common outsourcing delivery models being offered by many service providers is project outsourcing, or the process of transferring small, one-time requirements to a service provider. These projects can be anything - from logo design and creation of marketing materials, writing a certain number of articles for two months, to website design and site optimization for four months. In other words, these are client requirements that can be done without hiring a full-time employee in-house. These can also be projects that fluctuate in volume over time and/or those that your team can no longer handle.
In the Philippines, the project outsourcing delivery model offers a lot of flexibility. After assessing your requirements, the reputable service provider can work around them and find a setup that is suitable for your business needs. Western companies that outsource work to the Philippines can take advantage of the difference in time zones. Talented Filipino employees can work on your projects while you sleep, so it's like having employees working round the clock.
Pricing remains a major deciding factor for many clients who consider project outsourcing, and the Philippines can offer much lower labor and operational costs. The country has a huge talent pool, producing about half a million graduates every year. Also, their cultural compatibility with their counterparts in Western companies will enable them to have a better understanding of the needs of their clients. Government efforts are also evident to further hone the skills of current and would-be employees of the outsourcing industry, and to maintain or improve the favorable business environment in the country.
Many service providers in the Philippines offer a wide range of project outsourcing services including creative design, software programming, data entry, data mining, transcription, content moderation, game moderation, and voice-based work. Outsource small, one-time projects to the Philippines so you can focus on your other business tasks and get high quality deliverables at relatively lower costs.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Outsourcing Vendor
Outsourcing customer centric services and other part of work is more of a need than trend now. It is a very important decision which could have an everlasting impact upon your work operations, market reputation and profitability. So, we present ten tips for you to ponder upon to consider before you close on the search of the right call center outsourcing partner for you.
1) Experience and Expertise: The trend of specialized services providers call centers is gone long ago. Seeing the times of increased competitiveness and advances, BPOs have become multi-specialty contact center and one stop shop for all your business needs, however you need to know that they have the capabilities, infrastructure and manpower to do so. Along with that they should have proven track record to back up their claims and promises. Check their references and talk to their previous and existing clients to know more about their service policies.
2) Price: Always make it a policy to compare the prices with other vendors regarding number of agents, call charges, technology deployed and set up. Check with your vendor, if the prices are based on the actual usage. Always make sure to check the SLA and read between the lines before signing. Just for the sake of prices do not compromise with quality of services and your brand image.
3) Locations: The offshore location can be even of great value. For instance, many companies are attracted toward offshore destination India because of its geographical advantage and thus, able to provide customer centric services and support on 24/7 basis. Moreover, all the call centers are based around National Capital Region which facilitate transportation and infrastructure.
4) Infrastructure: A robust infrastructure ensures robust performance. Make a point to take a tab on phone systems used, computers and software being utilized there.
5) Customer Support Executives: See, the kind of training being provided to them. Their language skills, soft skills and attitude should be top notch yet pleasant. Also, check the retention behavior of agents there. If most of the agents leave the BPO in less than one year, do not select it.
6) Tracking: A reputed call center that provides call center outsourcing services would send you monthly track report in simple excel sheet to let you know and evaluate the performance regarding call duration, calls made per time, average speed to answer a call and the rate of satisfaction among customers.
7) Monitoring: Call centers thrive on quality and to maintain this, they always perform call monitoring on agents from time to time. You should be able to monitor them as well.
8) Volume of calls: Your call center should be able to handle any pressure and volumes of calls.
9) Needs: They should have resources to handle all your needs that relate to customers be it scripting, multi-language support or 24/7 assistance.
10) Account Management: The project manager assigned to you should be capable to handle all the projects with ease.
1) Experience and Expertise: The trend of specialized services providers call centers is gone long ago. Seeing the times of increased competitiveness and advances, BPOs have become multi-specialty contact center and one stop shop for all your business needs, however you need to know that they have the capabilities, infrastructure and manpower to do so. Along with that they should have proven track record to back up their claims and promises. Check their references and talk to their previous and existing clients to know more about their service policies.
2) Price: Always make it a policy to compare the prices with other vendors regarding number of agents, call charges, technology deployed and set up. Check with your vendor, if the prices are based on the actual usage. Always make sure to check the SLA and read between the lines before signing. Just for the sake of prices do not compromise with quality of services and your brand image.
3) Locations: The offshore location can be even of great value. For instance, many companies are attracted toward offshore destination India because of its geographical advantage and thus, able to provide customer centric services and support on 24/7 basis. Moreover, all the call centers are based around National Capital Region which facilitate transportation and infrastructure.
4) Infrastructure: A robust infrastructure ensures robust performance. Make a point to take a tab on phone systems used, computers and software being utilized there.
5) Customer Support Executives: See, the kind of training being provided to them. Their language skills, soft skills and attitude should be top notch yet pleasant. Also, check the retention behavior of agents there. If most of the agents leave the BPO in less than one year, do not select it.
6) Tracking: A reputed call center that provides call center outsourcing services would send you monthly track report in simple excel sheet to let you know and evaluate the performance regarding call duration, calls made per time, average speed to answer a call and the rate of satisfaction among customers.
7) Monitoring: Call centers thrive on quality and to maintain this, they always perform call monitoring on agents from time to time. You should be able to monitor them as well.
8) Volume of calls: Your call center should be able to handle any pressure and volumes of calls.
9) Needs: They should have resources to handle all your needs that relate to customers be it scripting, multi-language support or 24/7 assistance.
10) Account Management: The project manager assigned to you should be capable to handle all the projects with ease.
Mistakes to Avoid
Treating Virtual Team Like Machines - there are employees who are so stern when it comes to their Virtual Assistants, that they neglect to establish a good relationship with their employees. This aspect should not be taken for granted because this is the key factor that makes employees productive and stay in their job longer. The relationship you build with them will shortly translate into loyalty and motivation.
Not Having Enough Tasks for Outsourcing - some people, so eager to join the outsourcing bandwagon, sign contracts and send out payment without really having prepared tasks to be outsourced. In businesses, there is no room for wasting time, so before forming your virtual team, make sure that you have their tasks laid out 2-3 months before their official start date.
Disorganized Schedule - with this item, we mean your schedule. Of course, your virtual employees already have their fixed working schedule, but it should also be clear for them at what time of the day they can reach you, or how often you will check on their output. This will not only comprise the consistency and accuracy of your employees' output, but will also create clutter in your E-mail, Skype, Gtalk, and even Phone. Moreover, because of this clutter, there is also a greater possibility for you not to properly address all their concerns.
Procrastinating - well, in almost any project, this is a big mistake. It becomes even more important to avoid this when you are outsourcing. There are times when you trust the output submitted to you too much, just because you get too lazy to validate them. Leaving mistakes unnoticed or uncorrected can gradually impede your business operations and image.
Not Having Enough Tasks for Outsourcing - some people, so eager to join the outsourcing bandwagon, sign contracts and send out payment without really having prepared tasks to be outsourced. In businesses, there is no room for wasting time, so before forming your virtual team, make sure that you have their tasks laid out 2-3 months before their official start date.
Disorganized Schedule - with this item, we mean your schedule. Of course, your virtual employees already have their fixed working schedule, but it should also be clear for them at what time of the day they can reach you, or how often you will check on their output. This will not only comprise the consistency and accuracy of your employees' output, but will also create clutter in your E-mail, Skype, Gtalk, and even Phone. Moreover, because of this clutter, there is also a greater possibility for you not to properly address all their concerns.
Procrastinating - well, in almost any project, this is a big mistake. It becomes even more important to avoid this when you are outsourcing. There are times when you trust the output submitted to you too much, just because you get too lazy to validate them. Leaving mistakes unnoticed or uncorrected can gradually impede your business operations and image.
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