Let us share a story with you; a person started a small online coffee business. Hiring in-house customer service department was out of question because neither the owner had ever dealt with call center and nor he had enough money to support it. Therefore, he outsourced the whole operation. The result was complete disaster as the main selling point of business was fresh beans that were shipped 95 percent roasted while customers complete the process in their microwaves. The outsourcing contractor was not up to the task as customers find the process confusing and need proper guide, which was not provided by the contractor.

Now the owner is more than happy with the firm as it have dedicated nine representatives who guide the customers and are very friendly. Offshore outsourcing company provided this service on half price as compared to the previous contractor. The owner of company had mixed feelings but he had no choice because hiring in-house employees would cost him too much and will hinder his company’s growth and he would also not remain competitive in market.

When to Outsource?

According to a survey of U.S companies, more than 40 percent of companies with less than 200 employees have accepted that they have been using offshore outsourcing options. According to a BPO analyst, performing tasks with in-house employees enable the owners to learn things. The more people outsource, the more they become detached from their business. Therefore, before planning to outsource business operations, owners should do little homework on all the possibilities and how much they would able to save with outsourcing companies. They should not even think about outsourcing if they are not able to cut their costs by at least 20 percent. In fact businesses should be able to cut costs about 40 percent otherwise they would be spending too much of energy in managing the process.

What to check before hiring Outsourcing Firm

Outsourcing is not something you can rush into without prior homework. The tiniest details have to be spelled out. If you are outsourcing the customer services, you will need to make sure that representatives sounds formal and speak fluent English as native speakers. Then you have to make sure to elaborate all the features and services of the company as without training, reps would not be able to perform task adequately. Besides, you must have someone as an intermediary to have daily contact and discussions about queries and other issues. There are some other issues, which should be checked before hiring an outsourcing firm.

1. Undedicated Teams

Another main issue that needs to be assured is that the offshore staff you hire should work solely for you. Many of the companies have often faced the same problem that the outsourcing companies do not solely dedicate the teams to certain projects; rather they assigned multiple tasks of different clients to one team. This can ultimately results to disasters as the end products are not as expected.

2. Linguistic Barrier

Linguistic barrier is also a big problem in offshore business process outsourcing. Most of the outsourcing companies are not fluent in English language as English is not their native language. These types of problems are faced for call handling or similar tasks. The companies based in countries with English as a second language leads to low quality call handling. Therefore, businessmen should keep keen eye on this factor.

3. Company knowledge

In-house employees always have greater knowledge about the company as compared to the outsourcing company. In house employees understands the actual situation of the company while equally understanding what the owner needs. On the other hand, the outsourcing company or its employees are totally negligent about the actual needs of the owner. So while outsourcing they need to be trained and regularly updated about the company policies and other issues.