What Is Business Process Outsourcing?

Business process outsourcing (BPO) is a subset of outsourcing and involves using a third-party, contracted to perform specific, specialised processes on a company's behalf. Thus it essentially means handing over operations and responsibilities of specific business functions to a third-party service provider. What would otherwise be the work of an internal system or service is now purely handled by an outsider.

Business process outsourcing traces its history back to the 1800s. America used Scottish workers to help build wagons and ships, thus outsourcing them. Another outsourcing practice is called 'offshoring', i.e., when foreign countries perform BPO services. Popular offshoring countries include India and the Philippines, where skilled labour is much cheaper.

Today, several large companies and a majority of businesses indulge in business process outsourcing. Usually, the business outsources the "less important" work so that it can concentrate on its primary area of work. BPO services like technical support, back office services, telemarketing services, inbound customer care services and outbound call centre services are among the few services that are outsourced by companies today.

The objective of business process outsourcing is to typically reduce the workload on the company and also hope to cut costs by handing over the work to a third-party. Sometimes even the labour costs involved are different in different countries, which is why several companies outsource work to far off countries. A good example of this would be a London based company outsourcing its brochure content work to India, since the labour is cheap yet creativity and good-quality work is available in abundance.

Usually, there are two types of BPOs, front office and back office outsourcing. Back office processes that are usually outsourced are billing, logistics and human resources. Nowadays, even claims processing at insurance companies are being outsourced to separate companies. Examples of front office outsourcing include technical support, customer service, marketing, and advertising.

BPO companies work in a similar fashion as a creative boutique. While they have a set of clients, their main revenue comes from work that is outsourced to them from larger companies and advertising agencies. Thus, when there are deadlines to meet or a huge proportion of work to be done, the easiest way to achieve this is to outsource it to a third-party. One of the biggest reasons that smaller outsourcing units thrive and earn a constant stream of revenue is because of the larger organisations that have reputed, large companies as clients.

With the IT industry booming in India and people recognising the numerous strengths of India, organisations throughout the world are outsourcing their services to outshore countries like India. It is also good to know that the Government of India has also taken positive steps and several initiatives to urge India into to recognising its true potential.

BPO Outsourcing Solutions Company - BPO has become crucial for almost every business enterprise. The main objective of business process outsourcing services is to let the organisation focus more on the core business and competencies, while the other work is handled by a third-party provider. Get Easy BPO Solutions

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Inbound and Outbound Call Centers

Call center business is one of the most highly valued businesses in this generation. Telemarketing business brings huge amount of profits. It has easy accessibility, wide scope, low costs, easy to outsource, and it requires the very basic verbal communication skills.

This kind of business is not as complicated compared to other businesses that involve constant analysis process and practical and technical skills. The primary medium of this business is the use of phones, either ordinary phones, or phone calls via the internet.

Although this business seems to look simple, however running this business is not as easy as you think. Interacting with people via phones calls is more risky than personal interactions. Communicating without seeing the real expressions and gestures of the people you are talking too, as well as without having eye contact is high risk to misinterpretations that is why call center agents require enormous trainings to learn proper ways of dealing with customers through phone calls.

This kind of business booms in marketing industry even though it requires enormous trainings. Telemarketing trainings are less challenging to those countries where citizens were trained to be proper communicators since they were still young. Telemarketing outsourcing evolved for the reason that many countries have potential to become efficient call center agents.

Telemarketing companies outsourced their services to countries that have high competency in using the English Language. Outsourcing to other countries also has low cost effectiveness.

There are two main types of telemarketing services. Inbound call center is the first one, where the call centre agents for a specific problem or need receive calls. For example, an individual need someone to teach him how to repair his television set. The client can ask telemarketing companies who are focusing in appliance repairs to ask for assistance.

Outbound call center is where a business is run for the purpose of promoting products and brands. These call center companies focus more on sales. They are using the strategies of telemarketing to advertise their products and brands in order to gain lots of customers. Outbound call center is an effective style of promotion because telemarketing could reach customers globally.

Outsourcing has affected business organizations all over the world with its many benefits. It has transformed the way we worked. Find out more about outsourcing by visiting us here. This article is written by Sher Torres who benefits from outsourcing herself.

Know about outsourcing as it Call Centers [http://www.cleaveglobal.com/services.html] as well as new updates about outsourcing.

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Call Center Quality

Quality is one of the pillars of success in call center services. Clients and customers are interested in quality work only. Competition in every business domain is so acute that there is very little room for error. Shabby work is detrimental for the brand reputation and BPO units are aware of that. Once you get a taint on your call center, you will find that business firms are not willing to touch you. To steer clear of such infamy, you will have to pull up the benchmark that measure performances at your call centers. Managers and supervisors have to particularly careful about quality checks and monitoring. It's not an easy task to monitor agents when they are handling hundreds of calls every day. But you have to carry on this labor to ensure that you are churning out only quality business process outsourcing work.
Adherence to stringent measures is necessary to keep the quality intact. Every step in the call center services should be measured against some set parameters. You have to keep the parameters higher than the average at BPO units. When you set the standards at a higher premium, your Transcription Service agents will be working harder to achieve those goals. A note of caution is necessary here. If your telemarketing goals are outlandish, the agents will give up before the projects starts rolling. Setting realistic targets is important for proper and positive motivation. Managers of telemarketing services can study the required standards from other projects in the same domain. You can always gather information from the Internet. Research is the key that sets off the project on the right track.
Monitoring of calls at the inbound call center and the outbound desk helps you learn from mistakes. There will be calls that do not yield results. There will be errors of telemarketing that come through clearly when you listen to the tapes of the conversation between agents and customers. But the call center managers have to do it in the right spirit. Your aim must be pick out the mistakes, not the agents responsible for those errors. When you start headhunting, agents get intimidated. Telemarketing services will suffer greatly when the agents are not free about their work. You can conduct training sessions to listen to the tapes. Make sure you praise a good job done while discussing these calls. A pat on the back inspires the whole team.
Manpower is the primary ingredient to guarantee quality in call center services. Hire the best available talent and make sure they are properly trained. No two-telemarketing project is exactly similar. Customize your training according to the campaign. Some added investment in training sessions will keep you in good stead to tackle complicated projects. Let the BPO agents pick things up instead of cramming them down their throats. No matter how skilled a customer service agent, unless that person is a team player, there is no room in telemarketing services. It's never a single player game. Get dedicated and focused employees. That will cut down your trouble by a large chunk.
We have the strictest quality checks on our Market Research services। Our BPO managers always work towards maintaining a higher standard of performance.
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