Whether organisations are already outsourcing some or part of their operations or are looking to outsource, there are a series of challenges in searching for the right outsourcing supplier and managing the ongoing partnership.
Below are the findings of the roundtables we conducted at the Contact Centre Outsourcing Summit, in partnership with CCMA, in 2024.
Three of the main challenges in the pre-award stages are culture, flexibility and cost.
From our discussions, we understand that buyers are consistently facing challenges related to culture. When searching for the right supplier, buyers have concerns around finding a supplier who aligns with their own brand, purpose and values. They are looking to form a successful partnership with an organisation, which is built on more than them purely being viewed as a service provider, and instead becomes and behaves as an extension of their brand. Some of the other barriers include a supplier’s language capabilities or knowledge of the products, services and sector. Equally, the management team of a supplier is seen as exceptionally crucial for building the partnership, with buyers looking for expertise and knowledge. Without the ability to connect on a cultural level, this often hinders the establishment of trust and understanding in the partnership.
Buyers also highlighted concerns around a supplier’s ability to demonstrate flexibility and agility. There is often a concern that buyers are putting their trust in the technical capabilities of a supplier to handle complex queries and show that they are able to respond effectively to fluctuations in demand and changing requirements. Buyers are looking for suppliers who are innovative and demonstrate value-add beyond the basic contractual and commercial terms. They seek suppliers who drive change, excellent service levels and effective service delivery. For many organisations, their outsourcing supplier is handling the majority of, and in some cases, all of their customer interactions. Therefore, demonstrating proactivity in sharing best practice, understanding their customers‘ needs and encouraging thought leadership, is crucial for the partnership.
Unsurprisingly, one of the key challenges in the pre-award stage is around cost. Buyers want to know that what they are signing up to commercially is actually what is going to be delivered throughout the course of the partnership. Many organisations across the sector are facing challenges when it comes to budgets and forecasting, and therefore the buyer needs to know where they are spending their money and that it is delivering value. What‘s important, is that it‘s not just about a supplier trying to offer the lowest price to obtain the contract from the buyer; but instead, is about demonstrating the value the supplier can add and where they can provide efficiencies. Another key part of this, is the choices involved in a supplier‘s geographic location. While there are clearly cost savings choosing one location over another, both on and offshore, it‘s crucial for the buyer to ensure that the geography they choose to outsource to has a strong understanding of their brand, sector and can provide a quality service. Therefore, buyers are looking beyond the basic cost metrics, and are really searching for the added value a supplier can provide.
What‘s clear from our discussions, is that buyers are looking to take the time in the sourcing process to understand that the supplier is going to be able to deliver on their promises. Three of the most important elements of this are cultural alignment, demonstration of flexibility, and value-adding in terms of cost, alongside scalability, best practice sharing and innovation.
Three of the main challenges in the post-award stages are quality, attrition and delivering change.
During our discussions, attendees highlighted that quality is a core challenge when working with suppliers. The main concerns revolve around ensuring that a supplier can provide excellent customer service and experience – whether that is through the technology they deploy or driving change and improvement. Buyers place significant value on strong communication at both an operational and performance level, holding their suppliers to account for expertise in delivering successful outcomes for their customers. It is recognised that there are sometimes barriers from both sides of the partnership of not sharing information effectively, which can negatively impact a supplier’s ability to innovate. Therefore, it is vital to ensure that quality has been discussed and performance is being measured from the outset.
The second challenge in the post-award stage is culture and in particular, the impact of attrition. Across all levels of the organisation, buyers are looking for suppliers to ensure that they are recruiting the right people with the right skillset, as ultimately this impacts service continuity and the ability to understand customer needs. A key part of this is around building a stable environment. Buyers are concerned about the impact attrition and churn can have on the end customer’s experience. Moreover, it is not only perceived as a high driver of costs, but also as a barrier to being able build trust between the buyer and supplier. This concern around people management is not solely seen as impacting the choice of frontline agents, but also the top levels of management. The formation of strong partnerships between the management and leadership team between the buyer and supplier is seen as a crucial. Buyers wish to ensure that there is open and honest communication, with a willingness to demonstrate accountability if there are challenges or errors. There is often a misalignment in the expectations that were set out in the formation of the partnership, and this can have considerably damaging impacts. Therefore, buyers want to take the time to build and establish a strong relationship based on transparency and trust and know that they can rely on their supplier to tackle staffing challenges proactively.
The final core challenge that buyers are experiencing is around delivering change. In today’s market, buyers are looking to diversify and streamline customer interactions, and therefore are reliant on suppliers to champion best practice in this area. With such high levels of competition across the customer experience market and the need to respond to customers effectively and quickly, access to new technologies and digital transformation is imperative. Buyers want suppliers to drive innovation and be champions of change in this evolution. However, they are coming up against challenges in accessing efficiencies and speed to competence when working with suppliers. In the cases where technology is being presented as a supplier’s USP and was part of the rationale for choosing the supplier, this can cause friction.
There are clearly other challenges that impact the success of a partnership and these are highly dependent on the size and scale of the supplier, the requirements and needs of the buyer, and at what point in the partnership in terms of timescale these challenges have arisen. What is clear, is that buyers are seeking out suppliers who tackle challenges head- on, to demonstrate proactivity in their approach and show agility in responding to changing needs. Ensuring effective communication and evidence-based decision making will support with the establishment of a successful, lasting partnership.
For the last two years, we have supported the CCMA with the Contact Centre Outsourcing Summit and the UK Contact Centre Outsourcing Report. Both the event and report aim to support contact centre leaders to understand more about the latest trends and topics and provide useful insights and guidance for those navigating an often challenging sector. To download the 2024 report, follow this link.
If you’d like to find out more about how we support organisations to get the best outcomes and address challenges when working with or managing suppliers, we would love to hear from you.
Designed by Rawww
Your data is safe with us. To find out more about how we will use and store your email data go to our Privacy Policy page
