Cooperation is vital when navigating a new relationship with a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) partner. Whether your partnership involves both parties being relatively independent—leaving each other the room to focus on strengths—or your association is more hands-on and involved, you and your BPO partner must come together to bring your transition and implementation plans to fruition.
Before integrating the BPO partner’s team, tools, and methods into your existing CX strategy, establish a structure of governance. This lets you define clear lines of authority so that any concerns arise and have a straightforward procedure, path, and point person for resolution.
A well-defined governance structure also sets the stage for accountability, transparency, and effective oversight. This helps you optimize your transition process – remember to check in often on the status of things so you can adjust as you go.
Next, ensure everything’s set out the way you want by doing a test drive or a pilot project. While trying all the aspects of your partnership at once may seem appealing, you’ll find more valuable results by analyzing specific CX functions or processes. By carefully monitoring the pilot’s progress and comparing performance to pre-established metrics and KPIs, you can efficiently and thoroughly evaluate what parts of the plan work well and what areas could use improvement.
Refining the plan based on data from the pilot project makes the real deal much smoother since you’re now determining things according to concrete, relevant results. It makes it easier for other key people affected by the decision to integrate BPO, too, as you can outline exactly what’s planned and why things are being done the way they are. Suppose the plan is grounded in reality and adaptable in case of change. In that case, you can be ready with the support, resources, and rationale necessary to keep stakeholders and employees up-to-date and comfortable.
One form of support that you can prepare in advance, alongside your other preparations for the big transition, is a robust knowledge management system. While it’s essential to keep everyone aware of what’s happening, a clear and well-built knowledge management system ensures that you and your BPO partner can keep things running smoothly from start to finish.
A sound knowledge management system doesn’t just centralize ongoing information and updates and contains resources for understanding your company’s core, like best practices, values, and critical procedures. The knowledge management system is the pool from which everyone involved in the transition process will pull. So, ensure the right tools and methodology are available, comprehensive, and easily understood.
Finally, don’t stop at the initial transition stage to ensure your partnership with your BPO provider is as efficient, painless, and optimized as possible. Check-in regularly to review performance, compare it to relevant KPIs and metrics, and directly assess these results with your BPO partner. Once you’ve discussed progress, concerns, and opportunities for improvement with them, you can adjust your CX strategy accordingly.
With a good BPO partner, you shouldn’t feel like you’re constantly recovering from disaster, but instead working together to keep your company steadily on track, quickly navigating anything that could threaten to knock you off-course.
