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Mar 18, 2020 Thomas Cannon

What is Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)?

ACI Blog 3 March

Owning a business is a dream for many. It’s therefore not surprising in the slightest that most business owners are passionate about having full control over their company, how they delegate their time and the goals they want to achieve.

That control often continues as the company grows, with the owners, executives and managers aiming to keep every operation of the company in-house. Unfortunately, these efforts can lead to a lack of expertise, stretched resources and inefficiencies, which all impact the organization’s growth and profitability.

Most organizations must learn one important lesson before they succeed - you can’t do it all.

That’s why business process outsourcing (BPO) has exploded in popularity in recent years. According to a survey from Clutch, it’s estimated that more than half of small businesses (53 percent) outsourced some form of business process in 2019.

What exactly is business process outsourcing?

Business process outsourcing is the practice of contracting out particular operations and responsibilities for a particular business process to a highly-experienced and skilled third-party provider.

By outsourcing certain responsibilities to a qualified firm, such as your organization’s customer service strategy, your company will be able to access the expertise required to delight your customers - without having to spend an extortionate amount on in-house employees.

BPO services include everything from customer service and call center support, payroll and human resources (HR) to accounting, recruitment and IT services.

How will your company benefit from BPO?

There are a wide number of reasons why your business should consider outsourcing your customer service department to a BPO. A study from Deloitte found the following to be top reasons why companies use a business process outsourcing solutions provider:

  • Reduce or control costs (59 percent)
  • Focus on core functions (57 percent)
  • Solve capacity issues (47 percent)
  • Improve service (31 percent)
  • Gain access to expert talent and knowledge (28 percent)
  • Manages business environments (17 percent)
  • Accelerate organizational transformation (17 percent)

Below, Advantage Communications has listed three of the top benefits that your organization will realize from partnering with a highly-skilled and expert BPO solutions provider to take control of your customer service strategy using a contact center:

1. You get expertise from industry professionals

Hiring highly-skilled departments for each one of your business processes is simply not feasible. Let’s take customer service, for example. Customer service strategies that develop a world-class customer experience are complex. To do so, your organization would need access to a wide variety of strategic resources, expertise and next-generation technology required to offer modern customer service experience.

Using a BPO in this scenario, will give your organization access to call center technologies (such as artificial intelligence), highly-trained customer service representatives and a scalable workforce that would be almost impossible to invest in internally.

2. You will save both time and money

Outsourcing your customer service to a BPO solutions provider will save your organization a significant amount of wasted time, while also dramatically reducing costs. The investment in a BPO is far cheaper than the cost of purchasing these technologies and full-time staff in-house.

Through these reduced costs, as well as the reduced times that come with already having a pre-designed solution to fit your company’s unique needs, your organization will ensure it has lower overheads and an improved bottom line.

3. You can focus on your company’s core competencies

When you put too much time into managing your business processes, your company will start to lose focus of its core competencies. Diverting your attention away from the key operations of your business can affect profitability and future growth.

Thankfully, through a partnership with a BPO solutions provider, you’ll be able to hand over those secondary tasks to a company that is highly-experienced in making sure they are efficient, cost-effective and successful. By passing over your customer service strategy to an expert, your business will be able to focus on the important core competencies that make you stand out over your competitors.

Do you want to learn more about the benefits of a BPO solutions provider, as well as how Advantage Communications can transform your customer service strategy to ensure you offer a world-class customer experience? Contact our team of customer service specialists today. We would love to answer any questions you may have.

Published by Thomas Cannon March 18, 2020