Does the following scenario sound familiar?
You’ve grown your business with all your heart, energy, and resources. You’ve handpicked your team, and intentionally established a company culture you’re proud of. But now you’re growing rapidly, and can’t handle the demand with the current staff you have. You’re wondering if you should consider outsourcing.
If you can relate to this scenario, you might also relate to the feeling of fear that bubbles up when you start thinking about handing over the reins of your customer service or other key departments to an external company. Can a third-party company maintain the customer focus you’ve worked so hard to create? What is culture, when spread across multiple locations (your organization’s and your outsourcing partner’s)?
If you’ve wrestled with these questions and concerns, you’re certainly not alone. Engaging with a qualified business process outsourcing (BPO) partner can be your best option to scale efficiently and bring on specialized expertise you need, but it’s understandably scary to relinquish control and trust an external company with your brand. Here’s how we approach our partnerships with new customers, so you can see how we preserve your culture and keep your business growing.
An Extension of your Team
The first thing to remember when we work together is to nix the idea that we’re two distinct entities. Instead, think about us as an actual extension of your team. We make sure that the transition to bringing us onboard is seamless, and that any of the personnel we supply you with are a great fit in terms of culture and knowledge. So when you go to partner with us, think of it as acquiring new team members.
Train the Trainer
When you start with us, we’ll invite you to participate in our “Train the Trainer” program. This means that we ask you to train the individuals who will be training your new team members. So, if we’ll be providing you customer service personnel, we’ll ask you to spend time teaching and certifying our trainers on your processes, industry, standards, culture, and more.
That way, when our trainers train new team members and bring them up to speed on your brand, they’ll be instructing them with firsthand knowledge and helping them integrate seamlessly with your existing team and company structure. Our customers regularly rave about this process and comment about how ready and well-equipped the team members are that we supply them with.
Cultural Immersion
Beyond the ‘train the trainer’ program, we also take additional steps to ensure that our workforce is aligned with your brand’s culture. This is key, in our opinion, to a successful partnership. In order to make this happen, we suggest either sending our team members to your physical location to undergo a cultural immersion process or hosting your team members at our site. Regardless of either approach, the outcome is, they will learn more about your culture by talking with employees and experiencing it firsthand, and then they’ll impart what they’ve learned to the agents who will become part of your team. This is a great way to make sure that your new team members understand and embrace your values and mission, so their role in your organization is aligned with every facet of your brand.
It can be a leap of faith to let go of the reins and begin an outsourcing engagement. But there’s a lot you stand to gain from the partnership. We’ll work really hard to mesh seamlessly with your existing team, and won’t be satisfied until the team members we provide you with are true ambassadors of your brand.
To learn more, please contact us.
