Ultimate Guide for Outsourcing Your Contact Center!

00:00Hi, guys, Tom Laird here's here. You've heard me breakdown contact center RFP 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 rolving industry with creative minds and ambitious people like This guy, not only is his passion call center operations We'll come back here for another episode of Advice from a call center, the call center, contact center podcast. We try to give some actionable items to take back in your. Contact center, prove the overall quality, improve the customer experience and hopefully improve your agent experience as well. My name is Tom Laird. I'm the CEO here at Expivia Interaction Marketing. everybody doing to make Christmas almost Merry Christmas. It's the 21st as I record this of December. And we put a ton of time into creating a piece of content that I want to do a full podcast on because I think it will out there that are looking to outsource in 2023 or 2024 who have never outsourced, who don't understand kind of, I guess that the ins and outss of it it. So we have an ultimate guide. I have this guide. It's totally free. It's 28 pages. I'm not going to talk through all of that, But I want to talk to you guys about outsourcing. And even if you're not looking outsource, I think that this will be really interesting because we're going to talk about some reasons outsource. Some reasons you should not outsource. What are some of the high points of what you need to know? What are What contact centers might throw in there that they shouldn't and we're going to talk about pricing as well.

02:31I mean, I've had it done a couple podcasts on pricing kind of around the world, but we're going to talk about that, too. So if you have any questions, let me know. So here's the deck for those of you. who are watching this. I'm doing this on LinkedIn Live as well. And if you're just listening to the podcast, it'll be and the podcast that'll be fine too, because I'm going to kind of talk through all the stuff. But I just want I just want to jump in this as well, because I don't, again, I try to the things 15 to 20 minutes, this could go maybe a little bit longer, but definitely not going to be a huge burden on your time. So there's kind of, I guess, like the five mission statements of this, or the things that we really want to kind of talk through, and this is kind of the north star of what you need to do when you're looking to outsource.

03:13So to summarize this with an outsourcing partner, The pricing won't be that much different. different. You want. Look for the right partner, obviously. You want to look for the same type of values. You want to look for the same type of demographic. You want somebody that has some experience. I think we get caught up a lot into experience of the contact center. It may be in your niche, but I think if you are in financial services, that call center should have some type of financial s services background as well. You need to understand the KPIs before before we do this, right. Before you outsource, understand the basic KPIs, service level, handle time. Talk. time, abandon percentage, occupancy, the quality aspect of what. You're looking for it. You don't have to be a call center guru. You know, we have plenty of podcasts that we've done just on that. So if there's any questions, make sure that you kind of understand, basic so that you can have a conversation, I always say prioritized. and C. a For something to be routing, then you're probably with too big of a contact center for you.

04:45And you need to maybe go back down to somebody like me, who's, who's a kind of a niche BPO. that's important. But 7 days. On-boarding is really important, too. [pricing remark omitted] You're going to save a ton of time because you're not going to have to deal with really anything. So you can cut down a bunch, a bunch of staff. I mean, I hate saying that, but from a, we have very large programs that have maybe only one, one or two people on, on the other end that are kind of working from that end. So where they used to have a team of 50, right? So they've outsourced all the agents, all those, all that hardcore stuff to us, and now you know, one or two people that are kind of organizing on their end. The more rural that you go, right? I think Erie, Pennsylvania, where we are, is kind of in the middle.

06:34We're not kind of out in the sticks, right? But you know, we're not a That's pretty obvious. I think you can improve the customer experience when you A lot of organizations, this isn't their niche, right? They make a widget and now they have to service it, and they're not sure what to do. We, meaning, the industry, I R'm not talking about Expivia, but BPOs that are really good have all the tools that you need so you don so you don't have to buy them, they have workforce management, they have advanced routing, IVR capability, self-service model, AI technology, looking at workforce improvements when it comes to after call work, in wrap time, all these, you know, workforce management, speech alytics, you name it, you can a really improved customer experience, and not just talking for, for me but, and not just talking for me with so and so many of my to the organization to bring in some agents to bring in. There could be issues.

08:11But remember, one of the cool things about outsourcing is we pay, meaning the the BPO and pays for attrition training. So, if you have a four and six-week training, that can be a real And I think that that's Again, you can focus on your core areas, that's kind of and so I you know that the important customer service functions to a professional who's doing it all the time. The fifth one is scaling right is very difficult for internal companies to scale up scale down very quickly especially when it's. It's not their deal right we're doing retail right now with With the couple clients that are at their peak and then the middle of the summer, they might do a trauma to six agents, right? So you can go from 60 to 60. over a couple of month period and we were built for that to scale up and down very quickly.

09:37The big reasons that BPOs have a huge there's a big need for them. Again, we're adjusting to seasonality, right? So Christmas time, if you are a landscaping company, right, a giant landscaping company, your springs are probably much bigger than in many of your falls and maybe your winter is not. So other kind of the flip side of it. 24 seven support, right? Most BPOs are 24 seven. So you can you have flexibility with your hours, you don't have to be nine to five, right? You can, you know, whatever, you can be 24 seven, you can be 12 to 12. You can be any of those things to capture West Coast, East Coast, whatever you need. Most of us, are very, Thank, you know when you buy software, you're always worried about upgrades, right? You don't have to worry about any upgrades. The BPO takes care of all that, a that we pay for all that.

10:32So from a technology standpoint, if there's something you want, you ask. And nine times out of ten, I guarantee that you're going to be able to get that technology. So you're not just stuck with what you purchased. Right. The BPO the has this wide range suite of tools that we can bring to you now getting into the AI stuff, right? stuff, right? We're so deep into the AI that it's going to be very difficult for your contact center to scale and to move to these technological upgrades that we can. Better data analytics, right? Unless your internal call center is really deep into speech analytics and looking at data and sentiment scores and all of that, the BPO can give you insights that you never thought that that you could have. I. Let Let's talk. about some of the best and worst contact center qualities and skills, right?

11:22An effective call center has high quality, right? So when you're going to be able to blind monitor, you're going to feel comfortable with those with the calls that you're listening to. When they send you recorded calls, you're going to feel comfortable when you're doing a calibration, you're going to be comfortable. They should be sending you scores or recap every single day of the project in your program. We should be experienced. And again, if you have a niche project, I think you need to be maybe a little bit flexible, but if your company, most BPOs, that's the cool thing. We've seen, we've seen it all retail, financial services, tech support, you name it, you know, we've done that, that work and that's the great thing about a BPO is the, just the, how we've been so flexible with different clients and be able to kind of mold into the needs of everyone.

12:12And then you have to have a very scalable client or call center that you're working with. You need a real partnership. This cannot be just a software vendor that you're working with again, they're dealing with your customers. You have to treat them as a partner. There has to be some give and, you a be able to have those difficult conversations if things if things do don't go right. But you can't just, you know, kind of be that hardcore. It doesn't work when there's not a just a nice great partnership between two and that's where we found, you know, our longest clients going on eight, nine, 10 years, as long as we've been, you know, in business, we still have those clients because we have been able to get through the the good times and, or get through the bad times and have some a lot of fun during the good times, but be able to help help one another. Cost-effective pricing, so making sure that you're not getting ripped off. When you have set up fees, that they are reasonable, that you are looking at, if you need to be billed by the hour, if you need to be billed by the agent. Most BPOs right now will be doing this by the agent hour, and we'll talk about price and all that moving forward. Make sure that they have have advanced technology, so that everything that you will need for now in your roadmap, and I would take tele BPO to give you the roadmap for the next, you know, three to four years, or if you have a three year contract, what's the roadmap for our technology advances. where we're going to do over the next three years. And, and then again, again, the proof should be in the pudding with your N are getting a really good experience.

13:51Here's some red flags to look out for from call center outsources, right? High setup fees. They love high setup fees, right? And SeaCast loves them. It's kind of annoying. So make sure that they're reasonable. expense that has tried to be recouped has thrown into set up fees and sometimes that's right sometimes it's not so I have seen set of fees sometimes for eighty seven thousand dollars when we're bidding on a project that we better understand and that's where the understanding and maybe using a broker or a call center consultant as as well when you're trying to do that to make sure that you're not getting on those prices client support you shouldn't be paying for client support right a lot of people have moved to that model where you're paying for client services I don't do that I don't think a lot of them do that but but you will see some contact centers try to do that.

14:44And on your per minute costs, right. [pricing remark omitted] So you have to be careful. [pricing remark omitted] So you have to be really, really careful with that. There should be no up charges for Omni Channel, right? I've started to see this. So we deal with voice, but if you want chat and email, there's an extra charge for that. I don't think that that's right. careful of that. To pay for licensing on your reporting. Now, if you would like so for us for dashboards, you know, we give three free licenses for dashboards to your team and if you want 10, yeah, you're going to probably pay for those seven licenses.

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16:11out for. You know. The other thing here too is is attrition training, right? So call centers have some of them move to where you will pay for attrition. I don't think that I think that's one of the main perks of hiring a BPO is getting the proper agents so that there doesn't have to be a lot of a attrition. And if there is, that. That's the call center's fault, right? That's my fault, right? So I should have to foot the cost to train those agents to get them up to the number that you want, but some BPOs are not doing that. Again, that's a little bit of a red flag. Things that you should, there you shouldn't be questions about really what you want,. Omni-channel support, email, chat, voice, SMS, getting into the IVR, self-service from chat bots, and natural language processing, all all a, all those things, Any of those, they should be able to utilize as well.

17:08A. Fully integrated CRM platform platform. They should be able to integrate with anything you have, right. off the shelf stuff, Zoho, Zendesk, Salesforce, great. You built your own, proprietary CRM. They should be able to through APIs,

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17:41And again, I have here, you know, look at the, the agent pool, make sure that you're, you know, the agents are the, the type of agents that you're, a, you're looking for from a demographic standpoint. Advanced routing, right? Talk that through, right? How. How are they skilling their agents? Is it skills-based routing? It better be skills-based routing. Are there any unique things they can do from a, a workforce intelligence standpoint to bring agents in and out of skills to make sure that you're almost quote unquote guaranteeing service levels. rcasting and workforce management is an absolute must, especially if you have a project

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18:38of things that you need to be talking through. These are the minimum standards that every BPO that you're looking at, no matter how big your program is, should have. All right, so how much should this cost? And I'm just going to do this quickly because, again, I have full podcast episodes on this, but USA- base customer support, we are looking anywhere now. [pricing remark omitted] That's gone up significantly. And, and I would say your starting point is around that 27, 28 dollar an hour range and you're in that 27, 28 to 33 dollar an hour range for regular customer support. Anything that if you need license agents, if you need some specialized agent, it can be in that high 30s. 40s so that. That's where you will be for USA support.

19:32Now, remember, you're not just hiring a call center now for just a button, a seat. And people yell at themselves. Sorry. So for an agent in a seat, right? You are getting everything included, right? Workforce management, full Omni channel, all of your telephony. There, there's no billing for minutes. The full aging costs, supervisor costs. We don't bill for supervisors. Most do not bill for supervisors. Unless there's a lower number, right? If you only have 10 agents, maybe we'll bill for a supervisor. Other than that, we kind of Ritize it over the cost of the agents. right, any of the other tools, right, that you're looking at. They are your partner, and not just for your call center, but your total customer experience should be housed and they should have the capability to handle all that. [pricing remark omitted]

20:25Near shore thinking of like the Caribbean, Belize, Mexico, those kind of places and And then offshore varies wildly. [pricing remark omitted] We can look at Western Europe, which is very, to be honest, very very expensive because of just their labor costs and how they're out there. They have more of a social society of paying their agents. The Middle East, you can get some really good deals. South Africa has turned into a really good market as well. So, again, there's a lot of different variables. It depends on what your customers are looking for, what will they

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21:27I think that's a huge, everybody just hears those names and think that even their 100 seater should go there. Put your 100 seater into a 1500 seed center, again, they're not going to care. A 100 seater for you know a six 700 seed call center like me, you are now a strategic a client you're going to get everything cream of the crop and I think you'll have a way, way better experience. So size is really important. Track record of management, right make sure that that they understand what you're doing,. What is their client's For maybe some older customer base, maybe you would like some of those to have that same voice or that same kind of empathy, right? Than having a 19 year old kid take those calls. Maybe it doesn't. but it. We talked about proper technology. You should make sure that you're scouting out everything that they do have with that.

22:36Talking what do you want to be on shore offshore hybrid, right. A lot of people will do you take their voice and take that into the States but then the take their chat volume their email volume anything that's back office move that offshore for pretty significant cost savings that if you did that States. I think that that makes a lot of sense. The company. Culture needs to match you need to comfortable with them because they're going to be with you for a long time. Training, understand how they do training. Is training remote? Is training, do they want you on site? Do they have trainers that will be specific to your program? How do they do ongoing training? Those are questions to ask. Again, scalability and flexibility are really, really important. Do you

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23:36you should be PCI compliant, right? There the should be HIPAA compliance I would ask for all that, make sure that they're they're comfortable with giving that and I think that will tell you a lot about you know how they feel. How do they do. Their work from home. Are they giving computers? Is it bring your own device? How are they locking down? Do you need VPNs? Do you need VDI's? How is that working from a a security it in the Cloud and you have to make sure that you have that all figured out, and that you feel comfortable with that as well. Then a couple last things here again. again, don't treat, don't treat us, don't treat your's like Don't treat your BPO like a vendor. Treat us like we're another employee of your organization, a very valuable employee of a. Have really good conversations. Don't just ghost I think that's really important.

24:30I think you need to be an active.C. part of training, especially initially, not ongoing, but that first time. We want to make sure that we nail everything that you want. they. So having you in your organization train our associates are. trainers, our supervisors, our supervisors that first time as we're documenting everything, I think I think that's really important. The other thing is one point of contact, again we talked about that, we don't want tickets but having one point of contact. I a r- I think it's QA, whatever your issue or question is, there should be one person that You send an and email for us, it's 15 minutes, our client services has to get back to you. So I think all of those things kind of play into the type of organization that you're looking for. I think, again, weekly calibration sessions are really important.

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25:32escalation process, how does, and how quickly does it happen., weekly status or quarterly reviews are really important. So that's a ton of information. I know, I went through that really fast. I have this full, I'd love to be able to send it to you if you'd like it. I will put the links to this kind of in the show notes. So and then when I throw this on LinkedIn, as well, I'll have the link to it as well. So again, I hope that that's a ton of information. If you ever want to have just a phone call with me, even if you don't use Expivia, I don I don't care if you're talking about or if you have a vendor. I will answer anything. My goal here is to add value, to sell you. But again, it gets to the point where I would love to be a part of any process that you have for an RFP or if there's anything Thank you so much for your time today, and I hope to see you again next week.

26:54Christmas.