The contact center is the frontline of any business, influencing relationships with customers, and your ability to grow in a competitive landscape. However, as customer expectations continue to evolve, many organizations struggle to keep up with demands using just their own resources.
That’s where contact center Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) providers come in, to provide clients with scalable, valuable services at a reasonable cost. Currently, the demand for BPO contact center’s is growing at an exponential rate, at a CAGR of 9.4%.
As a BPO leader, you have an opportunity to deliver exceptional results to your end users, but first you need to define exactly where you can add value, and how you’re going to deliver it.
BPOs: The Benefits You Can Offer
Demand for BPOs is increasing, as business leaders look for more support navigating evolving customer expectations. Companies in every industry are striving to reduce operational costs, while still prioritizing excellent customer relationships.
As a BPO, the benefits you can deliver to your customers will depend heavily on two things: the technology you can access, and your experience or expertise.
Here are just some of the ways you can deliver value to companies in 2024, with the support of the right technology partner.
Enhanced Omnichannel Service
Today’s customers want to be able to connect with your company across a range of channels, without losing access to a highly personalized and contextual service. In fact, companies with omnichannel engagement strategies retain around 89% of their customers, whereas organizations without an omnichannel strategy only retain 33%. While an omnichannel contact center platform can help an in-house team deliver this comprehensive level of support, it can be difficult for companies to find the resources they need to cater to all channels simultaneously.
As a BPO, you can step in, filling the gaps in your end-user’s customer service strategy, to ensure every channel gets the right level of support and attention. A BPO provider can provide companies with access to experts who excel at offering different types of service, from responding to phone calls, to dealing with live chat interactions.
The greater the flexibility you can offer as a BPO, from multilingual support to expertise across multiple channels, the more value you can offer to your end customers. Some vendors even offer technology you can leverage to instantly translate conversations, making it easier to deliver a high level of global support.
Faster Call Handling for Improved Satisfaction
Customers aren’t just looking for omnichannel, personalized service in today’s world, they want convenient support delivered at speed. Two thirds of customers say speed of service is just as important to them as price. With a limited team of contact center professionals available, companies can struggle to decrease their average handling times, and increase customer satisfaction.
As a BPO provider, you can give organizations the manpower and technology they need to accelerate results. Working with a leading partner means manpower and technology they need to accelerate results. Working with a leading partner means you can leverage technology to address a range of common concerns faster, streamline routing, and enhance customer experiences.
You can use intelligent IVR systems to automatically direct customers to the right agent, increasing first-call resolution rates, and reducing the need for transfers. What’s more, with access to recording tools, you can analyze previous conversations, and use the insights you’ve gathered to upgrade your workforce management and scheduling strategies, ensuring the right resources are available to handle any changes in contact volumes.
“One of the key differentiators BPOs offer over in-house teams is a depth of expertise and specialization. Therefore, BPO leaders need to align themselves with trusted technology partners who can guide them, collaborate closely, and provide the innovative solutions needed to consistently deliver superior customer experiences that drive growth for their clients’ businesses.” – Ben Booth, CEO, MaxContact.
Upgraded Outbound Calling for Boosted Revenue
In many organizations, a contact center isn’t just an environment dedicated to handling customer queries and troubleshooting problems. It can also be a vital resource for revenue growth. For companies with outbound calling strategies, it’s crucial to have an efficient workflow in place that ensures teams are connecting with prospects as quickly and consistently as possible.
The right outbound calling strategy can even boost your chances of generating valuable leads, as 82% of buyers now say they accept meetings with sales reps who proactively contact them.
Leveraging innovative predictive, progressive, and preview dialing solutions, your BPO can enhance the productivity of an outbound team and unlock new revenue. You can automate the process of reaching the right prospects quickly, and even leverage analytics to determine how to prioritize certain calls and follow-up conversations.
What’s more, with the right partner vendor, your company can access bespoke scripting tools, which provide up-to-date suggestions in real-time, to help personalize the conversations you have with end-user clients and increase the chances of conversions. BPOs can even add value by ensuring businesses stay compliant with Ofcom regulations.
Access to Innovative Technology
One of the main things that makes BPOs so valuable to businesses, is their ability to leverage the latest tools and technologies for enhanced customer service. As companies fully focused on customer experience, BPOs often invest in cutting-edge solutions that can elevate the performance of any business or team.
For instance, with the continued development of AI some organizations such as MaxContact are now empowering BPOs to implement artificial intelligence to enhance processes and improve customer service. AI analytical tools can help your team to understand a customer’s sentiment during a call and deliver more impactful experiences.
Not only do these technologies improve the productivity of agents, and customer experiences, but they can also help businesses to mitigate common risks, AI analytical tools can monitor for compliance issues and threats, ensuring companies adhere to regulatory guidelines.
“It’s crucial for BPOs to work with the right technology vendors to best meet the needs of their clients. Embracing innovative solutions like AI-powered chatbots, speech analytics, and intelligent routing systems enables BPOs to optimize customer interactions, drive operational efficiency, and deliver superior service quality.” – Matthew Yates, VP of Engineering, MaxContact.
Reduced Stress on In-House Employees
Finally, one of the most significant ways BPOs deliver value to businesses is by reducing the stress on crucial in-house team members. Today’s contact center agents are facing a myriad of new challenges, caused by rising customer expectations and changing technology.
As customers continue to address common problems with automated systems and AI, agents need to be equipped with the right skills to manage more complex concerns. As a BPO company, you can provide direct access to experts who excel in certain tasks, from troubleshooting technical issues, to dealing with transactions.
What’s more, because your organization can work with leading vendors to introduce clients to new tools for automating certain processes, like AI chatbots and IVR systems, you can help to reduce the repetitive tasks your client’s employees need to manage. This gives their agents more time to focus on delivering exceptional service elsewhere.
The Value Offered by BPOs
BPOs can offer companies a cost-effective, efficient, and scalable way to enhance their customer experience strategies in 2024 and beyond. Providing access to comprehensive expertise, state-of-the-art technology (through the right partners), and endless flexibility, the right BPO can give companies a critical edge in today’s competitive world.
The key to success is finding the right partners to work with. For instance, MaxContact works closely with BPO providers to offer the technology they need to deliver exceptional results to clients. As an example, after implementing MaxContact, Firstsource, increased agent productivity by over 50%, and reduced onboarding time for new campaigns by 67%.
