Top 5 Critical Things To Look for When Choosing An Outsourcing Partner

One must make an informed decision when choosing and/or appointing an outsourcing partner for IT/ BPO services. It am be time-taking but pays in the long-term - when you clearly define what you want, it assures best results and that your expectations are met. You might ask the following questions:

# Does the chosen outsource partner have past experience in providing the service that you want to outsource?
# How your selected outsourcing service provider will ensure quality?
# Is best technology, software and infrastructure being used and does your partner has experienced, trained and qualified professionals that can efficiently handle your projects?

No matter what your specific concern is, here are some #tips for choosing the best outsource partner for your business.

 Check for good credentials, financial stability & business goals

Well…financial security of your outsource partner is a critical factor. And so is the detailed information about the outsourcing service provider's directors and managers, their experience and their qualification. Once you are geared with these details, you will be able to analyze if a particular outsourcing service provider can match up to your expectations.

Check the concerned (outsourcing) company’s track record

Is your outsource partner experienced enough to support you in dealing with the different kinds of customers? Have they done it before? If yes, what is the number of projects that they have completed and no. of clients they have served? Also, find out their years of experience in delivering the required services at the scale of your business needs.

Ask for work samples, references

Try and develop an understanding of your outsource partner's technical capabilities, expertise and quality of work. Asking for work samples and verifying these samples is a good idea if you have doubts. You may even ask your outsourcing partner for a prototype.

Similarly, prior to finalizing on an outsource partner ask for references. From references you can find out more about their work quality, timeliness and customer support services. Contact their customers to find out more and get more information about issues such as, responsibility and turnaround time. That gives you firsthand information about whether the outsourcing relationship between you and the selected outsourcing partner would work.

Communication & accessibility is key to the success of an outsourcing relationship along with cultural compatibility

Your business outsourcing partner should be accessible on a 24x7, all round the year on instant messenger, phone and email amongst others to be able to constantly communicate with you. Good communication can assure you about the outsourcing relationship and help your partner to understand the business objectives you have in mind. Alongside, you and your outsource partner should be culturally compatible. Make sure that your business partner understands your organization and your employees.

Choose an outsourcing partner that has best-in-class infrastructure and technology, provides post development support

Visit your outsourcing partner's workplace and find out if your outsourcing partner uses best-of-breed infrastructure and high-end technology including - their processes, methodologies and team work amongst others. It helps you analyze if they have the capability to handle your project. Equally important rather more important is to be offered support services after the completion of a project. It helps you resolve issues that you might be having after your project has been implemented.

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Customer Experience: How it is Related to Business Value?

Customer experience is a major driver of future revenue. This “thing” or this “term” is so important these days that in the 2005 book, Return on Customer, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers presented the customer experience as the single most important factor for business success. For this and some other vital reasons, it is critical that customer experience is improved to improve the business value of an enterprise.

So let us first take a glance at the determining factors shaping the customer experience in today’s digital age.

There are many factors and of course some of them are in the control of businesses, including- face-to-face contacts, the brand advertising and packaging. While still there are numerous factors that escape the “control” of a business, for instance, word-of-mouth. And then your customers are individual entities who differ in various ways, creating the famous customer experience gap. So to build a great customer experience, following gaps need to be filled:

•   In what we believe customers want and what they really want.
•   B/w brand promises and brand experiences.
•   Our perception of the quality of the customer experiences we facilitate and how customers perceive it.
•   B/w the ways we seek business value and the ways we offer and benefit from customer value.
•   B/w divisions, the front-end of our businesses and the back-office.
Furthermore, for a superior customer experience and showing its impact, it also needs to be quantified.

Customer Experience Management
Now if a business has to deliver a good customer experience, practicing Customer Experience Management or CEM is important.

It is aimed at meeting customer expectations and ideally exceeding them, whereby the design of customer interactions at all the touch points are taken into account. Using end-to-end customer experience, the mutual value of customer interactions is optimized in an incessant loop of interaction, reaction, pro-action and optimizing satisfaction to go beyond the expectations.

How to quantify the Customer Experience?
Yes, now it is even possible to quantify the customer experience.
For transaction-based revenue model, findings indicate that after controlling other factors that drive repeat purchases, it is customers past experience that makes the biggest difference. A customer who had a great past experience tend to spend 140% more compared to the one who had the poorest experience.

These findings do not often change with revenue models. So while a transaction-based business is interested in how often customers return, a subscription-based business is interested in how long he remains committed. So even if it is a subscription-based business, results remain equally impressive.

For subscription-based business, future membership length could easily be based on the quality of customer experience. The findings indicate that a member with a poor past experience has close to 43% chance of being a member a year later while a member who had a good past experience would want to continue the membership for at least another year and chances of him doing that is as good as 74%.

Other Benefits
Reduce Customer Care Costs
If a customer is unhappy, he either returns the product or is more likely to require support. To find and resolve the source of dissatisfaction, a business spends time and employ resources. It proves that delivering great experiences actually reduces the cost to serve customers from what it was previously.

Some companies, for example, Sprint has announced publically that as part of their focus on improving the customer experience, they’ve managed to reduce their customer care costs by as much as 33%.

Increase Revenues from Multiple Sources
There is evidence that when a company’s Customer Experience Index (CxPi) score goes a notch higher, it drives revenues from multiple sources, including but not limited to the following:

1.    New sales – these are driven by word of mouth.
2.    Incremental purchases – these are made from existing customers
3.    Revenue saved by lower churn.

Conclusion
It is certainly the right business decision to invest in the experience of your customers. However, doing it the right way is equally important.

It requires that you take the right steps towards doing the customer journey mapping. It starts with understanding the customers and gathering the right data. Next comes taking inputs & feedback into account to validate the data. Also, key customer questions across various stages or “moments” in the life cycle should be taken into account. As these are dynamic representations, focusing on customer experience optimization is also essential.

Only then a good customer journey map comes into being. It is a framework that enables you to precisely view the customer life cycle, observing the various stages and touch points of customer’s characteristics, goals, emotional triggers etc.

Most importantly, it will help you to demonstrate to everyone in your organization just how big is the impact of delivering a great experience.

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