What to Demand from Your 2025 Outsourcing Partner- Setting Up Your RFP

00:00Hi guys. Hi, guys. Tom Laird here. You've heard me break down contact center technology on the podcast Welcome back everybody to. I'm Tom Laird, I'm the CEO of Expivia Interaction Marketing, which is a contact center outsourcer here in the good old U.S. of A and also OttoQA, right? If you guys, if you follow me at all, know is our AI powered quality assurance tool that has been just, I don't wanna see blowing up, but steadily growing and taking on new customer. So that's been been a really exciting journey. And I'll have more on that kind of next week on some of the really cool things that I think you're about to see in QA in general. But I wanna talk about outsourcing today. And we have been getting in a lot of different RFPs that we've ave seen from other potential customers, thoughts on some of the things that I I think are important and If you're just listening to the podcast, I'm going to talk about it, but if you're on YouTube or if you're here live on LinkedIn, we can kind of, you can kind of check it out and see as I have it kind of up on the screen of, of what I think you need to I need to start to think about beyond.

02:04If you've been in the kind of the, the vendor relationship to an outsourcing world for the last 20 years, I would say. In the last 18 months, this, this whole RFP process, what you should be expecting from a BPO partner has totally changed, right? So I think even us at Expivia, that we're making sure that we are offering all customers, making sure that we are, again, you've heard me say this, but, but trying to flip the whole outsourcing thing on its head, right, right, to be a technology to help organizations organizations with AI, with the roadmap, getting all their infrastructure in order, but also still servicing and raving amazing agents when that need is there. So So there and there's been a huge dynamic shift from, and, again, you know, hours and butts in a seat kind of model to it's not really being a technology partner first.

02:57You're really trying to help organizations with that piece of the pie while still, you know, offering the the amazing customer support from a human aspect as well. So let's kind of talk about this. And again, you know, we don't, we don't need to spend a lot of a lot of time on that kind of the company overview stuff. right? That stuff has never changed. That's kind of your old school RFP stuff. Even looking at certifications, looking at compliance standards, you need a SOC 2 compliance. You need HIPAA. You need PCI, right? Looking at all of those type of different kind of metrics. And again, I'm going to go off on a tangent here on SOC 2 compliance. I think it's, while it's important, it seems like just this crazy money, money grab. I've gone through so many of those things now that again, I'm a just gonna swallow that and keep it inside for another day. All right, when we start, I like to get and I think that the AI piece especially if your if your organization is thinking about it, if you put it at the end, it s almost seems like you're not really thinking about it. It's kind of like a secondary thing, And you might not not get maybe the best the best answers or you might not, I don't see say not truthful answers but.

04:19doesn't seem like it's a priority for you so it's not going to be a priority on the RFP for the organization. I think that's, that's probably the best way to put it. Right. So again, I like in the second section right to talk about the overview of what are you. What is your approach to AI driven tools such as agent assist auto QA real time analytics, AI routing, right? Looking at sentiment analysis, right? What are you doing with that? How is that part of not just a tool that you have but the strategy that you have? And I think that's what you need to get. get at in these.

[Gap 04:53–05:22: no reliable transcription]

05:22something that you need, right. Kinda dig deep into kind of a high level advanced AI, Advanced technology stuff for that, right? And then again, I put even on here traditional RFP questions, right? R

[Gap 05:39–05:52: no reliable transcription]

05:52core values, right? Are you looking for more of a sales and kind of just get the job done type organization? Are you looking for a social services with a really empathetic voice? Like what are you looking for? And again, how do you use your tools? And again, a lot of this is very tool driven. Because again, we're moving into an age of technology. And we're We're gonna talk about agents, and we're gonna talk about training, right? But again, how do you handle scalability, right? How do you handle those spikes? What are your WFM strategies? How do you recruit, right? All of that stuff is kind of the normal RFP. That was kind of the old school technology, old school being like 18 months ago. So you'd have like all these agent questions, and then you'd start to ask things like, hey, what's your WFM? How do you route and take into account if we're in queue?

06:44Do you have virtual callbacks, like all the basic, basic stuff, right, that you would kind of ask. And again, even, again, even, I have on here because every RFP I see is still asked for disaster recovery and business continuity planning. And I almost always say we're kind of in that. Like COVID never stopped, right, I guess, right? So a COVID, if COVID never stops, we're, still work from home, we're still kind of in that everything is cloud and it is not as prevalent as it should be in these RFPs. The reason is the only tool that you can get that can really affect multiple aspects from. From a data standpoint of your business, it can affect again, obviously service service, it can affect your sales, it can affect your marketing marketing, your actual core mission. It's going to tell you things about customers, it's going to tell you things about your agents.

08:09So to really dig deep, you want an organization. That has real-time post-call analytics, getting into the quality assurance, right? How are you uncovering customer insights? Can you tell me that things like 38% of the customers who, who called yesterday, use the phrase too expensive, like all the stuff that we can do at Expivia, right? Like, I think that those key trends are just so important b in today's contact center, right? Again, stuff that before was like game changer. This is like, that's a 2016, 17 game changer. Now it's a, it should be a core a tool in every BPO that, that you're a going after. Now I struggled with this, right? In this, this kind of this number five, this operational differentiation, right? Again a lot of this stuff I'm seeing in all. The RFPs and again, I'm not here to change that. So this you're still gonna be using agents and you still need to drill down And kind of how are they going to differentiate with you?

[Gap 09:50–10:08: no reliable transcription]

10:08what is that whole process in the contact center, can they help you with that? Can a streamline it? Can they make it a better process? that's a tool that I think is again underrated and I own own section, and then again getting into, We went high level on what they, the a BPO can do, but now this is kind of talking about what can the BPO do for the customer who is starting on their AI journey, right? So, how do you help the client or me b who's sendinging you this RFP, right B I? How do you help me get on a roadmap when I don't really know what to do, right? When I don't know where to start but I, I know that I'm being pressured to use an outsourcer that is AI powered because I want to use all this cool AI stuff and and you want toI partner then that can make sure that they can help with that, right?

10:59We're seeing this all the time at Expivia, right?

[Gap 11:01–11:27: no reliable transcription]

11:27This is one that this is one that I added, because I don't see this at all. Everyone's just assuming that if you have the tools that we can just use your stuff. Well, that's not. That's not always true. And I think it's important in F P that you. Scope that out and make sure that that BPO understands even a where you are and that they have the patience, the know-how or the want want to help you get get on that a roadmap of AI. I probably selfishly, because we're doing OttoQA,, I did put a quality assurance in auto QA section, right? How. How do they do QA? Is all their QA manual? and they only do three calls per agent per week? Can they scale this with AI? Like how does that work? I think everyone should have auto QA. I'm not saying Auto our tool, but they should have some tool whether it's in, whether it's in their C cast, whether it is a third party, like an observe, like a, a level, You know, one of those guys, Balto, if you're not gonna use us, right, you have to at least have That's something in place if aspects I think

[Gap 12:49–13:17: no reliable transcription]

13:17WFM FM tool or how do they hand. How do they handle surges. How do they maintain service. Do they use some type of work.. Workforce intelligence to move agents around without. Having. Having a human being do that right. What. What is their their approach to scheduling.. Do agents get. Could. To pick their own schedule. How do they trade. You need to know all that and it needs to kind of match. With what you want from the KPIs that you're looking for. I. I think that's that's really important. Hiring and training is always in a until AI. Follow me on LinkedIn, you know I'm arguing this all the time. But hiring and training is still a rastly, important thing. How are we rastly, onboarding agents? How are they training? Is everything virtual?. Do they come into the office? What tools are you using?

14:03How are we continuing the education of agents? How do we coach? All of those things are just so vitally, important. And that doesn't change. I'm sure everybody has their philosophy with that, And I would just keep with what you have, but you know, I think that's really important. One of the things that is evolving is ratios. You know, with AI, I think ratios go up a little bit if you have an AI powered contact center because the AI is looking at a a lot of things. So again, start to think that through a little bit when don't maybe hammer a BPO if they're they are at an 18 to 1 ratio versus a 15 to 1 ratio if they're using more AI type tools,. Especially with real time supervision, real time coaching, real time sentiment analysis, being able to look at things in more of a mission control type environment than kind of sitting and watching and staring at a dashboard.

15:03But I would make sure that you want to know that. What is the training ratio, supervisor, educator to agent?. What is the go live? What is the kind of the standard once they're up and running? QA again, we should talk about that, right? What's the your QA A manager ratio and if they're still talking about that, then again, they're probably falling behind because they're not using AI. But yeah, all of that I think is really important. We're still going to understand our KPIs and our metrics and I would just tell you, you that this is evolving, right? Yes, service level, average handle time, ASA, what else am I missing? Oh, I'm just trying to think of all the thought in my head. I'm going blank. Oh, my God. All those type of kind- you know, again, old school metrics, you know, they still, they looking at agent customer sentiment, looking at your quality scores, looking at first-call resolution a paperback.

16:13We can talk about NPS and CSAT, but I think there needs to be still some type of customer feedback, whether you are using AI for it, whether you are actually using surveys. I just did a big thing a lot, I I think surveys stink. But still, I think that the, you know, the old- old-school metrics and KPIs are really important, really important, and that kind of a role is with your SLAs a's. I would also also talk about SL the SLAs as it relates to the client support. Again, like at Expivia, we have a 15 minute if a customer sends an email, but first of all, if you call, we will answer, that customer service person will answer, you'll have I have everyone's cell phone. But if send an email, there's a 15 minute SLA that we have to respond and if we I have to respond to you.

17:01I'm checking on that. How does that work in in the I would ask that make sure that you kind of have that reporting. You shouldn't pay extra for them, right? They should be free for you., right? Monitoring blind monitoring should be free for you, right? You should be able to just pull up a dashboard. Now again, I can't help you out, but you know, if your team meets five, see all of the things That needs to happen, you should be able to double-click on agents and do monitoring. All the reporting, while I'm sure, it's totally fine to want things to be sent to you, it It is just vitally important that you have access to all of your data even if you're getting reports daily You want to be able to see a good not just real-time but looking at that integrated report looking looking at that a store report what is the call volume over time you should have to ask the bpo customer for our number a fifteen is getting to be different right cost structure structure how are they working things right if we're talking about virtual.

18:28it should be more, a usage type a usage model but maybe not. Maybe there's so many different evolving ways from a usage model to a still the hourly model to a a per minute basis to a per second basis. All of these things are really evolving. I would just be careful

[Gap 18:43–18:58: no reliable transcription]

18:58at Expivia, but I would really

[Gap 18:59–19:28: no reliable transcription]

19:28different. Now. Pricing models that are out there. We talked about. And 10 analysis self. This is evolving, right? This is now, you know, talking about, not just. you know, setting a are. And I think that will tell you a a crazy and it holds everything up because lawyers got to get involved.. Case studies on maybe how you move virtual agents away from live agents and the cost savings. Ask for analytics.

[Gap 21:40–22:40: no reliable transcription]

22:40we'd like to just at least show you kind of, the things that we can do. We're not the biggest contact center. I think we're one of the best. We're one of the most technologically forward companies. We're the only BPO that's on the nice CXone executive customer council with these giant names and I still don't know, maybe why. Why I'm on it. But I would love to talk to you. And again, if you're looking to go, we're a