Does your BPO customer support relationship feel more transactional than collaborative?
If so, you’re not alone. BPOs often feel far removed from internal support teams.
But they don't have to be. BPOs that collaborate with in-house support deliver better results. At Stonly, we’ve helped hundreds of clients enhance their BPO partnerships by providing the tools they need to automate resolutions, reduce handle time, and eliminate errors.
Let’s explore the strategies we’ve discovered for optimizing BPO management.
1. Establish Shared Goals and Metrics
Both sides must work toward the same objectives. Share key performance metrics openly and hold everyone accountable. Monitor progress and work together to adjust as needed.
Some goals we’ve seen support teams focus on include average handle time (AHT), customer satisfaction (CSAT), quality scores, training time, and employee satisfaction (ESAT). That said, choose the metrics that align with your strategic priorities.
In our Customer Service Leader Playbook, Yoram Baltinester, customer support strategist, said:
"For productivity, I look at average tickets resolved in a period of time—the more, the better. We also work on minimizing the number of times a ticket needs to be "touched" before it's resolved. To improve, I've looked at automation and Al to reduce the average time to resolution and the average cost per resolved ticket.
For quality, we look at the percentage of tickets that need to be reworked. Whether the agent gave the wrong answer or the customer didn't like the answer, if a ticket gets rejected, it counts as a failed attempt. We also track the percentage of ticket escalations, which I always want to reduce by enabling our tier-one people to handle more tickets properly. Generally speaking, tier two is a more expensive resource, and they're dealing with more in-depth issues, so I want to free up as much of their time by enabling tier one to solve a larger percentage of the tickets."
2. Communicate Often
Consistent communication is the cornerstone of a successful BPO partnership. Without it, teams can quickly fall out of sync, leading to misalignment and inefficiencies.
Stay in touch with the BPO management team and schedule joint planning sessions. Use virtual tools to bridge time zones and locations. Work together to gather feedback and address day-to-day challenges. Frequent, thoughtful communication keeps both teams aligned and working toward a common goal.
Launch a Monthly Newsletter
Beyond meetings, creative communication channels can keep BPO customer support agents informed and engaged. A monthly agent newsletter can serve as a comprehensive resource for procedural updates, team recognition, and a reminder of the mission behind the work.
Send In-App Communications
Centralize important updates in your ticketing platform. In-app communications help users quickly see and understand procedural changes or new issues, ensuring uninterrupted workflows.
Meet in Person
Last but not least, don’t shy away from visiting your BPO customer support site in person. This allows you to experience the agents' environment firsthand, providing insights into how agents navigate workflows, interact with peers, and utilize tools.
You can also use this time to set up conversations with agents and team leads. This hands-on approach builds a strong bond with the BPO team. It shows that leadership is committed to their success.
3. Maintain a Single Source of Truth
BPO agents rely on accurate, up-to-date knowledge to navigate complex and variable scenarios. Yet, outdated or fragmented resources often hinder their ability to resolve tickets efficiently. That leads to agents asking co-workers or, even worse, customers for information that should be readily available.
Both in-house and BPO customer support teams should be equipped with the same reliable information via a centralized knowledge base. An effective knowledge base should make it easy for agents to find the information they need quickly.
Make Knowledge Available
Place the knowledge where agents will need help. Integrating knowledge directly into ticketing platforms like Zendesk or Salesforce ensures that relevant content is within the agents' workflow. This lets agents access the right resources without wasting time.
Localize the Knowledge
Localized knowledge is essential for global or multilingual teams. To ensure consistency, take ownership of the localization process rather than leaving it to the BPO management team. Find knowledge base tools that support multiple languages. That way, it’ll be easier to maintain multiple versions of the same resources.
Keep Improving the Knowledge
When agents say their work feels easier despite the complexity, that’s a sign your knowledge management strategy is working.
Getting feedback from agents on specific steps of a process or pieces of content will help you refine knowledge and processes quickly. Make it easy for them to submit real-time feedback from any part of their workflows. Allow issues to be flagged directly on articles and embed surveys at the end of every workflow.
4. Drive Consistency
Compliance is a must for most BPOs, but it's especially critical for those in high-stakes industries like banking. Inconsistent workflows can lead to errors, escalations, and fractured customer experiences.
Require Agents to Follow SOPs
With countless scenarios to navigate across product lines, regulations, geographies, and customer preferences, standardized workflows are essential for ensuring compliance and preventing mistakes.
Tools like decision trees can provide the guardrails agents need. They work in the most complex or critical scenarios. These tools adapt in real-time to ticket variables. That way, agents always follow the correct processes, no matter their experience level. To ensure agents always follow the required procedures, make it mandatory to reach the end of the decision tree or another specific milestone before changing the ticket status.
Find and Eliminate Knowledge Gaps
Quarterly knowledge checks and reporting also play a critical role in maintaining adherence. By regularly assessing team performance, you can pinpoint gaps in training or documentation. Some AI tools also analyze your knowledge and tickets to find gaps.
Improve the Escalation Process
For more complex issues requiring escalation, make it easy for BPO customer support agents to transmit relevant data to tier 2 teams or specialized departments. Streamlining this process reduces errors during handoffs and lowers customer frustration.
5. Automate Repetitive Tasks
Repetitive processes, such as data entry, macro usage, and system access, are a major source of errors and inefficiencies for BPOs. Automating these tasks can improve accuracy and speed up resolution times.
Minimize Data Entry Tasks
A common issue with complex ticketing systems is that agents must fill out many fields, often leading to incorrect data entry. For businesses that depend on this data, mistakes can frustrate customers. This can lead to escalations and more work for support teams. Data entry is a great place to start when automating repetitive tasks for your BPO.
Select the Right Macros
Another helpful place to start automation is in the area of macro selection. BPO agents often have an overwhelming amount of macros to choose from. With automation, you can select the right macro for agents based on ticket context. For scenarios where a macro doesn’t exist, you could use AI to generate responses for agents to use as a starting point.
Give Systems Access Without Agent Logins
For security and time management, it’s best to give BPOs access to as few of your internal systems as possible. Help desk automations can help here. They let agents perform actions in other tools without directly accessing them or switching tabs. Instead, everything is performed by the ticketing platform via API commands to your other systems. Agents can process a refund, update customer information, and even complete GDPR requests—all from their ticket view. This also reduces escalations related to systems access restrictions.
You can continuously improve your BPO workflows by identifying more processes that can be automated through integrations. Automation isn't a one-time fix—it’s an ongoing process of identifying time-consuming or unnecessary tasks and finding ways to make them more efficient.
6. Collaborate on Hiring
While outsourcing can sometimes prioritize cost savings over excellence, the right hires pay dividends in both customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. That’s why partnering closely with your BPO management on recruitment is essential.
When selecting a BPO, it may make sense to choose one with operations in provincial cities where talent competition is lower.
You’ll want to pay above-market compensation to attract and retain top-tier agents.
Beyond compensation, rigorous screening processes are key to success. You can go beyond the BPO’s traditional hiring process with an additional interview designed to test critical skills.
In our Customer Service Leader Playbook, Burgoyne Hughes, senior director of customer service centers at GE Healthcare, said:
“We go through the normal hiring process with the BPO. Then, we have the BPO add a 45-minute to one-hour interview. This extra interview focuses on the two big challenges offshore contact centers have: listening skills and circumlocution, which is a term that means you're using too many words to try to explain something. If they get through that interview, they go through a two-hour test with Berlitz language schools to certify that their English skills—both their reading and their verbal skills—are strong enough to be on our team. Only about three percent of the applicants make it through that rigorous process.”
7. Decrease Ramp Time
High turnover rates in BPO customer support teams make efficient onboarding critical. New agents need to be able to contribute as soon as possible without compromising service quality.
Direct Agents to the Knowledge Base First
Agents should be taught to rely on the knowledge management system from their first day on the job. Be sure to remind them where they can find it, which could be in their ticket view, as an icon in the software they use, and/or via the direct link. This ensures that it’s nothing new when they hit the floor.
Require Agents to Follow Structured Processes
Decision trees are useful for new hires. They guide agents through customer interactions with clear, step-by-step instructions. This format is great for many scenarios, from troubleshooting to process adherence.
In a recent customer interview, Theresa Tacite, customer operations lead at Fastned, said:
“We couldn’t imagine onboarding so many new agents without Stonly. We can seamlessly integrate step-by-step guidance into Zendesk to ensure every agent is confident from day one.”
Leverage Software Onboarding Tools
Use an adoption tool to speed up training in your support software. The tool should make it easy to add tooltips, hotspots, checklists, and guided tours. When agents log in, they'll get the help they need. This includes a specific process to follow each time or help with a one-time action.
Prepare Agents for Common Scenarios
Hands-on and scenario-based exercises further solidify training, preparing agents for the complexities of real-world scenarios.
In our CX Knowledge Manager Playbook, Clare Santos, director of knowledge & quality, customer experience at Aviso Financial, said:
“It's impossible to train on everything. You’ll have those calls that you will only ever get once a year. Training on those topics or procedures doesn't make sense because they won't remember it. So we focus on the 90%. That means building training around what agents’ day-to-day looks like. What types of calls do they consistently get? What processes and procedures do they consistently need to relay to our customers? Everything else can and should be referenced in the knowledge base.”
Ready to Empower Your BPO to Resolve Cases Quickly and Consistently?
Stonly helps you automate resolutions, reduce handle time, and eliminate errors. Request a demo to see how.
Automate actions and workflows
Fill in tickets and trigger macros automatically. Let agents complete actions in other systems without ever leaving the ticket view.
Deliver the information agents need
Provide easy access to the knowledge, customer context, and processes required to resolve each ticket.
Ensure consistent quality
Guide agents to handle key issues the right way every time. Automate steps in their workflows and eliminate room for errors.
