Leveraging Business Process Outsourcing to Scale U.S. Operations

With enormous layoffs, deteriorating consumer confidence, and an enduringly problematic news cycle, it doesn't require an official declaration of recession to see the economy is in danger. Most businesses, from the family-owned corner store a few blocks from your office to the international behemoth that owns half of the brands you carry at home, are looking for ways to cut expenses and brace themselves for the bumpy road ahead. Outsourcing is not a new phenomena; it dates back to the industrial revolution, though it was not legally acknowledged as a business strategy until 1989. That is not to say that everyone embraced outsourcing right away. For many years, the usage of BPO has been criticized for resulting in bad customer service experiences with ill-prepared agents who do not speak the native language fluently. This view has evolved in recent years, with growing globalization and significant technological advancements making BPO more accessible and simple to implement than ever before.

And that was before the epidemic, which just hastened the trend.

When the global health crisis brought the world's economic engine to a halt in early 2020, businesses discovered the hard way that they were ill-equipped to operate in the new paradigm that was quickly emerging as a result of urgent necessity. With remote work, online-first company models, and escalating consumer expectations, in-house teams realized they couldn't exist without outside assistance. BPO providers gained immensely from this change. Globally, the sector was worth approximately $92.5 billion in 2019. The industry's worth is expected to increase to $405.6 billion by 2027. Even as we recover to some kind of normalcy following the pandemic's numerous disruptions, BPO providers appear to have carved out a more permanent place for themselves in the greater business environment going ahead. Why do support teams utilize BPO? The pandemic's changes were difficult for everyone, but support staff especially struggled. Not only were contact volumes higher (14% rise in 2020), but the effort required by support agents to address customer complaints more than doubled. Customers now expect support teams to be available everywhere and to respond quickly. This means that businesses will have more channels to forecast, manage, and monitor.

BPO providers can also help support teams by performing additional tasks including training, documentation, and quality assurance.

While it may be tempting to consider cost-cutting measures for customer support operations, the reality is that customer happiness is one of the most successful methods to gain and retain consumer support when times are tight. That is because a customer's perception of a firm can be made or broken by the kind of service they receive. In fact, Salesforce study shows that 91% of customers are likely to become repeat customers after a positive support experience. In contrast, 70% stated they would look elsewhere if it took hours to obtain help from a support person. Businesses cannot afford to make their customers feel this way, physically or figuratively. Many people underestimate the negative impact of poor customer service. According to one 2018 research, the cost of poor customer service is $75 billion per year, a 20% increase over the previous two years. This means that customer support staff bear a higher portion of the responsibility for whether customers choose to interact with a company. Which leads us back to the BPO. Many support operations rely on BPO providers to aid with contact center activities. Some firms may choose to outsource all of their contact center work, whereas others may route simple customer questions to a BPO provider so that their in-house personnel can focus on managing escalated cases as soon as possible. Contact center work can be separated between outsourced and in-house teams based on channel.

However, BPO can benefit support teams in more ways than just contact center functions.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to how businesses employ BPO to scale or gain leverage over their support operations. However, the motivations for a support team's actions are typically classified into two categories: expansion and optimization. Using BPO to increase support operations. BPO providers are skilled at locating and placing talent rapidly. As a result, a support team may use BPO to acquire access to talent pools with specialized skill sets that are not available in-house, or to launch a new service channel faster than in-house recruiting teams and internal systems can handle. BPO providers offer companies access to native speakers of a country's language or the ability to staff at any time using agents in different time zones, often at a lower cost, when expanding support operations or requiring 24/7 availability. Using BPO to improve support operation Many organizations that outsource customer service say it allows them to focus on core operations. If a corporation is inefficient in managing some elements of the business — or if there aren't enough resources to do so in-house — it makes sense to outsource those processes to a well-oiled machine rather than finding, hiring, and training new employees. According to 70% of executives polled in Deloitte's Global Outsourcing Survey 2020, cost reductions are the key driver of their outsourcing plans.