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Many businesses, whether large or small, find that outsourcing customer service to call centers to be beneficial. When thoroughly planned, outsourcing your business customer service plays a vital role in ensuring that your productivity is high; enabling business owners and leaders like you to focus on your business development and innovation.

Outsourcing some of your customer service operations to a well-run, experienced and reputable call center company is a great way to guarantee that your customers’ needs are being met. However, failing to hire a reliable and professional outsourcing provider can cause irreparable damage to your business. Put simply, business growth will be stunted. In light of this, below are some things to consider when outsourcing customer service.

Pricing varies widely between call centers or outsourcing providers. Outsourcing is typically less costly than a company having dedicated call center representatives, but the costs of outsourcing shouldn’t be your only concern. There are a lot of outsourcing companies that offer inexpensive services, but poorly-trained customer service agents, so make sure that you look beyond cost and be certain that the outsourcing company you hire has a verifiable track record of quality and performance at the volume of calls you are outsourcing.

QA should be the cornerstone of your call center strategy and outsourcing can feel like you’re losing some control. Make sure you partner with a BPO company that takes quality assurance seriously and treats your customers as their own. With today’s technology call centers should have the ability to record every call made or received as well as logging every chat and email conversation. This is just a start; it’s what they do with that information that makes the difference. On average how many calls/emails/chats are reviewed or monitored by a QA Specialist? While monitoring or reviewing calls make sure there is a mechanism to rate the calls using a call scoring and evaluation form. And lastly, what is the company doing to provide constructive feedback and coaching to their call agents.

2. Security and Infrastructure

The privacy & security of your clients’ data is paramount to the success of your business and these values should carry over to your BPO provider. Information Security has emerged as a significant concern for any businesses that use call centers or business process outsourcing. Below you will find some (but not all) of the best practices your business partner should have in place.

• A paperless environment, prevent employees from writing down and removing information by ensuring that ALL work is done on the computer without having to record anything on paper.
• Restrict the use of cell phones and/or cameras on the floor by providing secure lockers.
• Key-logging, security cameras and restricted call center entry should be a part of their plan.
• Restrict access to any web address outside of core business functionality.

3. Breadth of Services

Ideally, if you can find a trusted call center company in the Philippines that offers a full range of telemarketing and customer support services from customer acquisition to technical support your company will benefit the most. Selecting a company with multiple service offerings allows you to expand or retract based on your company needs which will allow you to focus on handling the other aspects of your business.

Most importantly, you need to do your homework and find a true partner, not just a call center, but a company that will treat your clients like they are their own.

4. Quality Assurance

QA should be the cornerstone of your call center strategy and outsourcing can feel like you’re losing some control. Make sure you partner with a BPO company that takes quality assurance seriously and treats your customers as their own. With today’s technology call centers should have the ability to record every call made or received as well as logging every chat and email conversation. This is just a start; it’s what they do with that information that makes the difference. On average how many calls/emails/chats are reviewed or monitored by a QA Specialist? While monitoring or reviewing calls make sure there is a mechanism to rate the calls using a call scoring and evaluation form. And lastly, what is the company doing to provide constructive feedback and coaching to their call agents.

5. Where to Outsource Philippines vs. India

While India (1^st place) still has the edge with the Philippines in a solid second place, it has seen a significant drop off in outsourcing around 10% of its global share. India has over 460 million workers between the ages of 25-54 where the Philippines for the same age group hovers around 35 million. But India may have some barriers for growth as it’s seen that India’s government is not as helpful to the BPO business as the government in the Philippines. Accent is a factor as well, Indian accents when speaking English means that people from other countries may not be able to understand the conversation. Filipinos carry with them a similarity to American culture which leads them to having better sounding spoken English which leads to a better connection with the customers they’re speaking to. If your organization is only outsourcing email & chat support these factors may not be an issue.

Another factor to consider is what type of support is needed, Technical or Customer/Product Service. India is extremely dominant in software technology outsourcing where the Philippines have some catching up to do in this area. The Philippines is starting to establish its dominance in the business and knowledge voiced based services because of the affinity to American Culture and English Accent.