Call Center QA Featured Article
October 04, 2011
Looking for a 3rd Party Remote Call Monitoring Provider? How's Your RFP Process?
As a contact center manager, you have a lot to juggle to ensure that your company is providing an effective environment that nurtures a motivated staff, great customer service and high performance. To achieve these goals, you often have to rely on 3rd party providers and their technology solutions. 3rd party remote call monitoring is one key element to have in place to assure the quality of performance for all of your agents.
The key question, however, is how to effectively select the right partner for your 3rd party remote call monitoring. BPA offers important guidelines in a recent white paper for developing an effective Request for Proposal (RFP) document and process. If you can build your RFP for 3rd party remote call monitoring properly, you’ll find benefits such as saved time, lower costs and the identification of the best vendor to provide services for you.
RFP’s provide a structured and organized way to gather information on multiple vendors in order to conduct 3rd party remote call monitoring and assess and compare their offerings. This can be a challenge in a typical sales situation, as different companies have unique approaches to doing business. Producing an RFP allows you to more readily compare apples to apples, forcing prospective vendors to answer specific questions and bid on your business in a similar fashion.
While an RFP is structured and organized, this approach does have its drawbacks. The human element is often removed from the equation when an RFP is used to select a 3rd party remote call monitoring partner. The people you chose to work with really are as important as the product and the pricing.
A number of RFP’s are rewarded by companies who never meet the managers or team members who will provide their 3rd party remote call monitoring service. In reality, selecting the right partner only starts with product and pricing; an ideal outsourced provider also offers superior service, flexibility and dedication.
To ensure you are using the proper process for your RFP, you must first throw away the set of cookie cutter questions you have used for other RFP’s. Next, get people involved who are both experienced and understand the business for which you are seeking a partner. It’s important that you construct the right questions and ask them in the right way to identify the best 3rd party remote call monitoring partner.
Establish a goal for your project and allow that to serve as the basic foundation of your RFP. Tell 3rd party remote call monitoring bidders exactly what you want them to do, and ask specific and clear questions. If you can determine exactly how the bidder will achieve your goal, identify how much it will cost, your obligations in the partnership and solid timelines for service delivery, you’ll be well on your way to selecting the right partner to meet your 3rd party remote call monitoring needs.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Jamie Epstein
