Your Ultimate Contact Center Outsourcing Guide

00:00Hi, guys. Tom Laird here. You've heard me break down contact center technology on the podcast time and time again. Now, it's time for me to help you with your challenges. As your contact center technology advisor through our new company, Expivia Digital, I can help you with things like CCaaS selection, any type of AI implementation, and nice studio and integration services. It's the same honest advice you hear on the geek applied specifically to your operation. Visit ExpiviaDigital.com to get started. That's ExpiviaDigital.com. This is advice from a call center geek, a weekly podcast with a focus on all things call center. We'll cover it all from call center operations, hiring, culture, technology, and education. We're here to give you actionable items to improve the quality of yours and your customer's experience. This is an evolving industry with creative minds and ambitious people like this guy. Not only is his passion call center operations, but he's our host.

00:54He's the CEO of Expivia Interaction Marketing Group and the call center geek himself, Tom Laird. Welcome back everybody another episode of Advice from a call center geek, the call center and contact center podcast where we try to give you some actionable items to take back in your contact center to improve the overall quality, improve the agent experience, hopefully improve the customer experience as well. How's everybody doing? My name is Tom Laird. I am the CEO of Expivia Interaction Marketing. Expivia is a contact center outsourcer. We to work for lots of different clients dealing with kind of excited I've been planning some conferences this week. I will be at call center week I think not only will Expivia have a booth but we're trying to do something pretty cool with the podcast there as well so if any of you are going to be at call center week or contact center week in in December in Vegas you know shoot me shoot me a note on LinkedIn or shoot me an email I'd love to be able r

[Gap 02:08–02:31: no reliable transcription]

02:31We just I don't know if you've seen this on LinkedIn out with a about a 25 page It's a blog post, but it's basically a 25 page paper on the ultimate guide to call center outsourcing I want to kind of do an episode on that today. We've we've done some things that have piece mailed, mailed some Some things together like, you know why you should outsource and some things to look for and those kind of things, but I don't want To tell you why you should outsource right? I think that's that's almost salesy and it's kind of played But, let's take it one step further and say you've already made the decision that you think you want to outsource, you need to outsource. Maybe you've grown, maybe you're scaling at a level that you can't really keep up with. Maybe you don't want to deal with it, maybe your quality is poor in your internal call center, whatever the reasons are.

03:21I want to talk to you about the things that you should be looking for and basically how to outsource your contact center. All right, so again, we're going to stay away from the why. a lot of business with us, and he's helped a lot of organizations that are outsourcing because he has the Rolodex, and a lot of the brokers have, well they have the Rolanex, right? To say, you know, what are you looking for? What are the contact centers that they know are high quality that can fit? Because there's so many out there, right? And it is difficult if you just kind of go online and do some searches and throw some things out there. Or if you're going to do an RFP, because a lot of times you're going to get responses about E if it's the first time that you won't really even and understand, so I can help you with that.

04:25A contact center broker can help you with that, but make sure that you get some help. If you have some experience and, you know, or maybe you've already kind of whittled things down to a couple centers, right, here's some things that I think you need to look at. Number one is obviously you want a high quality center, right, and how do you know what's high quality? One of the main things is I think to do references and to call references are really important. Ask them for some customers that you can talk to. Most of the time, if you have a really good conversation, can get some really good feedback. If there's. Any push back on giving you some some customers to call you know that's kind of a maybe a little bit of a red flag. Make sure they're experienced. And I kind of I don't know maybe I don't feel as good as saying that but you know we were start at one point and I'll tell you what we we did struggle with certain things because we didn't have the infrastructure or the tools when we were first starting right. You know that 10 12 years ago that we have now. So I think it's it's important that there's a little bit of a track record with the contact center that you're working for.

05:25It might not be the most shiny bell and whistle type contact center, but make sure that it does have experience. It's run the types of programs that you've had in the past. When it comes to experience as well though, I find it very difficult when a customer will ask me, I hate that because we're trying to be a BPO that that. It really looks at lots of different clients. So we're in every thing from care to financial services, to retail, to tech support. We're kind of hitting all those and we try to diversify our portfolio. As you guys know, or if you've been listening for a while, I came from a contact center that we specialize just in financial services. So Bank of America, Citibank, CHG, Capital, HSBC. We were working for all these guys. It was great and we were doing a really good job until 2008, 2009, 2010 happened.

06:23You go from thinking you're in a really good spot to not being diversified enough and it really hurt the organization. I think we're both well rounded because we can handle lots of different things and I see so many different things so don't shy away from a call center that maybe is doing a lot Instead of just, you know, we're a financial services or we only do tech support Because you know, I think that they focus and sometimes you can be so close to the trees So how's that go so close to the forest? You can't see the trees. It's kind of one of those things Alright, the. Next. The next thing is make sure that the contact center is scalable for what you're looking for, right? So, you know, you don't want to just be stuck with a teeny tiny center that maybe if you need to go to 10 10 to 20 to 30 reps All the way to maybe 200 300 reps. What do you need? Can they scale on that number Have a real partnership with these guys Right if you are going in there or if you have the attitude that they're a vendor of yours It's going to be a miserable experience If you're going in there with a partnership attitude that you're going to work together on a lot of the things You're going to find that the contact center outsourcer will bend over backwards for you I've never seen and we have gotten rid of clients that treat us like a vendor that it is just a negative feeling, like we're below them and it can't be that we're dealing with your customers, right?

07:51BPOs are dealing with your customers,, outsourced are dealing with your customers. It's gotta be a really good relationship with really a good communication culture between the two of you. Cost-effective Cost-effective pricing, you want to look at some things, and I'm going to get into pricing here in a little bit, but from the high level, you want to make you understand where you should be from a pricing standpoint. I'm going to give you those in a second, but if you don't understand that again, that's why you need to go to a broker. But I think that's a really important piece of this done if you're.

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08:31How does that work? Make sure that it works for your structure. The next one is advanced technology. There's so much. Technology out there right now that you want that to be part of your experience. That's one of the reasons that you do go outsource. I'm an expert in call center outsourcing. contact center has all the bells and whistles and all the tools. You you might I have that internally. That's one of the main reasons to outsource is that you get everything, right? Because this is all we do. All my investment doesn't go into building a the a widget. It goes into the customer experience. technology that's around it. Alright, so having kind of get into just some of the things to kind of look for, let's look at some of the red flags, right? So some of the things that I would be a little nervous at if, if you heard, right?

09:15Number one is high setup fees. Now this does depend, right? Now if you're doing a 2,000 to 5,000 seats, right? Huge thing. You're going to pay a large percentage in setup fees, right? But if you are anywhere in that 500 seat under, which I think probably 90% of the centers here are, there are setup fees that are reasonable and there are setup fees that are not. Understanding that setup fees are a way for the contact center to and recoop some of this initial investment but I'll give you an example really for us anything under 500 seats and most of our clients are in that 30, 40, 50 to 100 range. [pricing remark omitted]

10:17Now granted, if there are integrations and there's a full IVR build out, that's a whole different thing. But we're basically just saying how to get set up, to get kind of that auto a crazy cost. The other thing that's a huge pet peeve of mine is having to pay for client support. [pricing remark omitted] And that for me sounds crazy. They should be rolling that into just the cost of the agent. for for client support now Maybe if you have again, we're talking the a monster programs right the the 2,000 seater the 5,000 seater, there could be some extra client support needed right because Those are those are much more robust. I programs so you might pay a little bit of a fee for that But for the most part, you should not be paying additional costs for glared support All right. The next one is what is an unreasonable?

11:32per hour, per minute charge. Let's just kind of do what costs are now so that you guys have a rough ballpark of what you should be paying. So if you're looking for USA contact center outsourcing, customer service, kind of the basic thing, right? We're not talking extra for tech support. We're not talking about license insurance agents because those will be higher. [pricing remark omitted] If there's something that is extremely easy, extremely quick, just chat, we could be as low as 25, 26. But we've gone up as high as 40 to 45 for licensed agents or some type of very technical tech support people that we've needed for that.

12:33[pricing remark omitted] That's kind of Mexico believes those kind of areas.. And then, offshore varies widely. [pricing remark omitted] And then, just correlate that with your per minute charge. because this is how some contact centers, I don't know, play a little bit of a game, is they'll give you a per minute charge. And what we do is we take a per minute charge. [pricing remark omitted] Because you have to give rep break. That's kind of the normal way to do this. [pricing remark omitted] So, you know, and then you can kind of see really how much you're paying.

13:30Now here, here's where it gets a little dicey, is that some outsourcers will include everything. So you have to be careful what is included in the permanent charge. Is it the whole talk time? Is it talk time plus after call work? Really? Is it ring time? They try to stretch things out as much as they possibly can. Make sure that if after call work is included, because sometimes that should be included, that there is a a up to a certain amount of time that you'll pay for for So you don't wanna have reps that are an after co-work for two minutes every time if they should only be an after co-work for 10 seconds and you're paying for that, right? That's a metric that you need to make sure that you're watching and you understand. So there can be some, I think more, you can kind of seem like you're getting a good deal, I guess, when you're looking at a per minute, but the outsourcer probably knows more than you about it, so you gotta make sure that you really break down the call and what you're paying for.

14:31Make sure- that you're not getting kinda taken because the per- per minute charges kind of ebb and flows, right? You can go really high, right? If you're not careful and you and you could be paying more than what you'd be paying by the hour. I prefer by the hour because clients can budget exactly what they need. [pricing remark omitted] We know that they're not gonna pay for lunch. Lunch is on us. Breaks are normally paid for by the client and they're seven and a half hours out of that eight hour day that is being built. It's just a little bit easier for me and then that way there's no questions on what's going on and to be honest, the math is just a little bit easier. All right, next is attrition training.

15:14One of the greatest things about outsourcing is that the outsourcer should always pay for attrition training. So the client will pay for the upfront charges for training. So if you want to train 30 reps, the full cost comes in from the client, comes from you. But then if it's six weeks later and we lose a rep or lose two reps, we have to pay them in to backfill those two agents agents and train them. That's on the BPO or the call center side. Some people like to play games with that or they like to just say at cost. You know, make sure in your contract that you're not paying at all for for attrition training. one of the big perks about outsourcing. The other thing that I like to look for is make sure that you're getting more than you think. And I guess what that means is don't look just at your contact center and what you're doing now, but look for the kind of the dream. Do you want speech Do you want, you know, maybe you're just doing voice now, do you want email and chat added on?

16:18Ask for those types of things. Make sure that they can provide those types of things and then ask them what the road map is. You know, that's a really cool thing too about outsourcing is the technology, the new technology that's going to come out, I'm going to get it first, right? Because, again, I can have an ROI on that and it's just, it's something that I know my clients are going to want. You know, and we just kind of roll that in to what we're doing. It's kind of like almost a SaaS model, right? Like if you're with TalkDesk or if you're within contact or you're with any of these kind of Five9, right? Just every quarter kind of an update comes out and. you'll get more features. And if you do it right, you know, that can happen as well with your BPO partners. So ask for a roadmap, ask for what technologies, you know, they play on implementing down the road.-road and how will that affect your program and how will that make your customer experience better.

17:09I think that's another really cool kind of way to do that. All right, and then let's just kind of finish here with some of the things, again, that I wrote down in notes, right. So when I'm consulting with an organization, and let's say that they have a program that's maybe too big for me, but they say, hey, Tom, will you be on our procurement team to help? And I say, absolutely, right? and we kind of go out or a lot of times we'll see too that clients with larger programs want to break it up with four or five different contact centers, right? So there's been times where we have been kind of the lead contact center and kind of been the program manager for all the other centers as well. So when we go out and kind of look, some of the things that, again,-.I'm looking for, which kind of correlate to some things I talked about at the beginning, but this is kind of my personal kind of checklist, you know, is number one is the size, right?

18:05If we want to make sure that if there is a small, if you have a smaller type program, maybe it's a 10-seater that you're not going with an organization that's gonna put it into a 1,000-seat contact center, or is a huge, huge, huge contact center because they're not gonna care about your program, right? If you have a 10, 20, 30, 40-seater, you should be probably looking at a boutique. Boutique meaning anything under 1,000 seats and to be honest, probably anything under 500 seats, I think that's really the right play for you. - Number two is the track record of management. Make sure you're talking to management, a lot of contact centers, you're gonna get a program manager that's maybe brand new on the job, right out of college, not saying that that's wrong, but make sure that depending on the type of program that you have, that you're getting the right type of a support.

18:51With that is the client support method. We have, have SLAs, and I know a lot of BPOs have SLAs for getting back to clients, right? So if you send an email to one of our client services managers, if they don't answer right away, they have 15 minutes to get back to you because I think we think that's really important. Same thing with the phone call, 99% of the time you're gonna get the person you need but make sure that you're just talking to one person, one or two people, right? Maybe a core person and a backup but you don't wanna be calling or putting tickets in for issues, you don, you don't want to be calling production for a production issue, IT for an IT issue and some contact centers are kind of spread out. So ask for one client service person or kind of a dedicated person for it for your program.

19:36The other thing that I look for is associate match and kind of culture match. So- so again if you're a skateboard company or a t-shirt company and you're kind of hip and cool, you want to make sure that the demographic of people in that call center that are going to be dealing with your program, are the same type of individuals that you want to be the voice of your program. That might be totally different for a financial services organization, right? So a financial services organization might want someone that's a little bit older, more stoic, I don't know, you know, playing through those stereotypes, I don't know if they're right or wrong, but really, that's kind of how we've seen that. And that's how it, it works the best when we try to match the voice of the agent with the voice of the customer. that, you know, if you need call recording, virtual queues, you know, if you need a VPN set up, if you want speech analytics, if you need chatbots, if you need an omni channel with digital support, make sure that you can see that, do a demo of their of their software, see and make sure that all that stuff is kind of scoped out Another question a lot of people ask is, should I go onshore, should I go offshore, should I do a hybrid model, right?

20:56And for us, it kind of makes sense sometimes to do both. If we have larger a clients that are doing chat and emails offshore, and they're doing voice here with us in the States, and that makes things a little bit more cost-effective for them for sure. Understand the type of client what they'll handle and. what they can deal with if there's a little bit more security aspect maybe you need this to be in the states but you know that's a question that is not just culture Rishi because there's financial implications,. Rishi. a training how do they do training we prefer I love when clients are all hands on deck for that first initial train right soI how we would do training and how I would would re suggest you do it is if you wanna outsource, meet with their trainer, meet with the client service rep, to give a couple hours of a 30,000 foot view of kind of what you're doing, what you're going over, what. are the materials that are going, to be needed.

22:04And then have the client really do a lot of the first initial training, having our trainers kind of learn it all, right? So now after this first class, we can handle it from there, but we really want the you to b a part of, and that first initial train so make sure that if you're out-sourcing for the Even if I don't have a, if I'm consulting, And even a That's just something for me, so I think PCI compliance is kind of, it's- it's kind of like a college degree kind of thing. It doesn't mean that you're good, right? But it means that you've at least, you know, taken some... steps to try to better yourself. So I think that that's kind of the big piece of where that is. So guys, those are some of my thoughts on outsourcing, some of the things to look out for For some of the things that are really important, outsourcing when done right is a huge boon to your organization.

23:41When you pick the right contact s you pick the right contact center to deal with your customers with higher-end technology that you have, it can be amazing. If you pick the wrong It is the biggest headache that you're picking the right person. If you're not picking the right person, you have to get on and you have to get a consultant or broker. Let them guide you through, let them use their Rolodex to point to contact centers. They know are going to do that, do a really good job. Because there's so many of us out there that it's very difficult to just go on the internet and out there that it's very difficult to just go on the internet and pick and choose. I'm struggling with that even and I think people are starting to learn that. Most of our business is now broker driven. We still see a lot of word of mouth.

24:28Which is awesome for us, right? But when you're first starting, that's difficult. It's very difficult for BPO to do SEO, right? Because there's very few unless you're a maybe a startup and you have, you know, seven or 10 seats. that you're just kind of looking to outsource, those people might be more inclined to go online and go search. And I think that's why we do a lot of content, right? for those type of individuals, or at least to make sure that we're trying to get our name out there from more of a a branding standpoint. And I know I'm kind of going off on the tangent here, but I think that's important, right? It's more kind of branding than it is, you know, kind of looking us up and saying, hey, who's a good call center, right? Because if you're doing that, you're going to put yourself through a lot of, I think extra stress that you don't need.

25:12And you're going to talk to a lot of people that are going to just take you down a little bit of a path. So. You got to have a plan. I'm more than happy to talk to any of you out there if you're looking to outsource, not even saying to come with us, but if you'd like just, hey Tom, I'm thinking of going with this contact center. This is kind of what they said. This is the RFP. If you ever want my help with any of that, I'm more than happy to kind of parse through that and at least give you some questions to ask them. I'll say that too on the contact center technology side, if any of you guys are looking to, we've done a couple episodes on that. Check out the one with Brandon Knight from Teleris, who we really talked about all the up and coming contact center providers from technology.

25:54So I can kind of guide you with that as well. More than happy to help in any way I I can. I'm gonna have a kind of an announcement on Tuesday. If you saw on LinkedIn, we're gonna do a little bit an NFT project for the podcast which I'm really excited about that I think can add a ton of value to all of you so you know you can look check kind of check me out on LinkedIn and kind of look at that post but I'm gonna do probably I don't know just like a five to seven minute announcement on the on the podcast as well just to kind of a little like an announcement podcast right that I'll explain it in a little bit more detail but I'm excited for it when it should be a way for us to interact a little bit more and you know hand out some gear to you guys like some hoodies and some things like that too. So just to kind of thank you all for all the awesome podcast following that you guys are doing. Last thing I want to say is if you can please post a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to this I would really appreciate it.

26:47Thank you guys very much and I'll talk to you all next week.