Call Center Outsourcing Featured Article

Business Process Outsourcing Provides Mitigation of Risks for Organizations

By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor

BPO or Business Process Outsourcing often refers to the outsourcing of entire business processes in an effort to either reduce costs or improve performance of that business process. For enterprises across multiple industries, an added benefit that is not always perceived initially is the potential to mitigate customer care risks.

 

How can there be risks associated with customer care? It used to be as simple as just giving the customer what they want and satisfaction was achieved. Customer standards are at levels higher than they have ever been before and have a greater impact on company growth. Because of this, organizations need to be able to dedicate more resources to customer care than ever before.

 

By engaging in BPO with a qualified supplier, enterprises can focus on meeting business goals and building customer relationships while the supplier tends to the day-to-day customer care tasks.

 

There is also the potential for reducing overall customer care costs by outsourcing the day-to-day tasks of customer care. For one thing, the supplier makes the investment in infrastructure, the maintenance and upgrade of technology, highest quality service, manage down costs and reengineer processes.

 

A supplier providing BPO services has already made an investment in a multi-client infrastructure. This infrastructure has many characteristics such as the proper technology platform and integrations, service center infrastructure and delivery capability as well as best practice business processes.

 

Think in terms of buying versus building. It is faster to buy rather than build. This reduces the time to implement the processes related to customer care, ensuring proper customer service faster and freeing resources for other organizational goals. BPO suppliers have substantial economies of scale, enabling them to negotiate with vendors to achieve bulk pricing. Additionally, the supplier often bundles these services into all-in, per-month technology fees that are distributed over the life of the contract rather than an upfront investment.

 

Organizations receive the added benefit of being able to shift the risk of investment from a fixed risk to a variable risk. The costs associated with customer care can be difficult to predict or control. By shifting that responsibility to the supplier, they bear the burden of adjusting as demand changes.

 

When management decides to investigate the option of BPO, they are addressing a more strategic question of how much time and resources should be invested in non-core business processes. While customer care is essential for maintaining an organization’s base, it is not what generates growth and revenue. It is those areas of the organization’s core business that should be the main focus, strategically and financially.

 

By allowing a company that specializes in the management of daily customer care operations, customers can receive the highest quality service and organizations can utilize resources for core-business processes. Shifting the risks associated with this business process allows organizations to focus on key strengths that drive revenues and growth and leave the others to the experts.

 

 

 

Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMC and has also written for eastbiz.com. To see more of her articles, please visit Susan J. Campbell’s columnist page.