Service Delivery Managers – 3 Top Tips to outsource your telephone calls stress free
For Service Delivery Managers providing your service or product to customer’s expectations is a skill that needs constant tweeking. Add to that a constant pressure to reduce your operational costs and you may start investigating what can be outsourced. The high cost of answering calls in house, especially outside of normal business hours, means that outsourcing them to a trusted partner for financial reasons is a bit of a ‘no brainer’ and is something you should consider.
But a question many Service Delivery Managers ponder is “how painful is this going to be?”
Let’s try to calm your nerves:
“I’ll lose control of service levels” – No you won’t. Make sure your outsource partner provides these as standard and you will keep control:
- Accurate and timely Reporting and Management Information.
- Credible recruitment, training, coaching and quality procedures.
- Scheduled reviews of call scripts / call handling guides.
- Procedures that measure service quality and deliver continuous improvement.
“They’ll never be able to do it as good as we can” – Talk with your outsourcer about what standards you expect from the start and what to work towards. Remember most outsourcers spend all their time managing other people’s procedures and technology so they will have a good idea of what you are trying to achieve. As long as you can provide all the information that a call handler will need to manage the caller’s expectations, and agreed procedures so they can then act upon that information, you will be surprised how well they can represent your business. You might even end up duplicating your outsourcer’s processes within your own business.
“The handover will be a nightmare!” – With all the project management experience in the world there could be something you may have overlooked. A good outsourcer will look for teething problems in the early days and sort them out quickly. Talk with your outsourcer to share best practises and discuss any concerns you may have. Again, remember that they will have managed many migrations from customers systems and procedures to their own and should have lots of hands on experience to share with you. In short, they can probably help you more than you think.
By Steve West
Marketing & Business Development Manager
in my view clients know you are ringing an answering service because they are all hopeless. They dont understand the culture of a company, are like robots and quite frankly are not worth a penny. Prove me wrong but my experience is they are a disaster and could help ruin your business.