How do BPO Services Help Overtake Competition?

One of the profound effects of COVID has been on the business world. While remote work has become prevalent, another major change has been how companies have competed internationally. Competition is rising at an exponential rate and many have found several ways to stay ahead of the curb. The industries that saw the largest growth are particularly the eCommerce, finance and the IT industries. One of the major reasons for their rapid expansion may be attributed to “business process outsourcing”. 

First, we want to briefly introduce BPO Services.

BPO is an acronym for business process outsourcing. It refers to the concept of hiring a third-party company on a contract basis and working for a set period of time. For example,  during peak hours, many businesses find it difficult to manage customer queries or lack the expertise of doing it  efficiently. In this case, companies might need additional assistance. You might need to recruit an expert virtual assistant or BPO call center service provider with exceptional customer handling experience to get your non-core activities taken care of without investing excessive resources.

However, there is an important note to this. There is a difference between call centers and BPO’s. Call centers are a subset of business process outsourcing and can come under the umbrella of BPO. Call center support can be outsourced and not just provide customer support, but can also take care of email, text, sales, invoicing, surveys and much more.

Nowadays, outsourcing is a significant factor in corporate success. It is estimated that the outsourcing sector will generate more than $600 billion by 2032 which is an impressive growth from $85 billion in 2018. This is a clear indication that more and more companies are turning to BPO’s for additional business support. For those on the fence about utilizing BPO’s, we wanted to go over some of the benefits of using third party business outsourcing and how exactly they help companies gain the upper hand in the business arena.

According to a Deloitte survey, 70% of the companies that work with outsourcing firms state ‘cost-reduction’ as the primary reason for it. These same companies saw substantial reduction in their yearly expenditure.  One of the biggest reasons for such a cost reduction is how BPO’s eliminate setup and overhead. Infrastructure, equipment, software, recruitment and training are some of the things that won’t be needed when working with a BPO who already has a facility fully operational. Outsourcing is a great way to channel the majority of your resources to your core business functions while letting third parties handle the rest.

Competing with enterprise-level business while being a startup or a SMB can be challenging. There simply aren’t enough resources to boost the quality of service in the early to mid phase of business development.

However, BPO’s can help you bypass some of these constraints. For example, customer support is something that is not feasible to set up for smaller companies. However, BPO’s can play as a representative for smaller businesses while providing customer service that matches enterprise-grade quality. Overseas outsourcing and the availability of cost-effective technology has made this possible. While core operations can’t be outsourced, there are certainly some business activities that can be brought up to a high quality through outsourcing.

One of the benefits of outsourcing is how it helps companies find new customers. Many BPO’s have centers and bases in foreign countries from where they can provide a variety of services such as multilingual support. Utilizing these BPO’s might help you connect with a market that was previously inaccessible due to language barriers.

While administrative work is essential, it is also one of the most time consuming work that yields no revenue. Managing emails, appointments, human resources and project management are all something that can be outsourced that helps smoothen the workflow of a business. While the correct term is ‘optimization’, one can look at this as an effective ‘time-saving’ strategy so that more focus can be placed on providing the best services and products.

Staying available for your customer 24/7 has become not just the norm, but an expectation for most companies. However, it is impossible to keep the doors open all day. BPO’s help companies fill their downtime gaps by responding to customers while the core staff is off-shift. With the availability of virtual assistants, you can now always have some at standby on phone, email and text regardless of the time of day.

This is especially helpful for those looking to stay active overseas. Many companies in the US struggle to tap Asian markets due to the time difference. BPO’s help bridge the gap between multiple time zones in order to allow companies to expand overseas.

It’s not uncommon to see a high turnover rate in many business branches. For example, customer support tends to have many workers who are only present for a short stint before progressing to other positions.

Many BPO’s are keenly aware of this issue and therefore focus on effective human resource management. Many of the agents and workers they provide have several others ready to take their place. Plus, business requirements can change meaning that some workers will be needed for less or more hours. BPO’s specialize in being scalable and flexible to all kinds of businesses by making sure that a worker is always ready to take on a project as it changes over time.

There are several additional benefits to using BPO services that we did not get to touch on. Business owners around the world would be wise to reap the benefits of outsourcing and using third party assistance to augment their day to day operations. For those looking to get started, IdeasUnlimited is ready to handle all manner of business activities without requiring a large investment upfront. Stay ahead of the curb by contacting IdeasUnlimited today. With over 11 years of award winning business support service experience, we are ready to help anyone looking for a trusted US-based call center partner.