Summarised in two words….PASSION AND
MAGIC!
I have been privileged in my career to have
worked for two Outsource Service Providers and one major international company. My key learning has been that outsourcing
partners are generally passionate about the stuff that internal marketing and
sales teams see as merely supportive functions.
It is important to note that my comments are not based on my exposure as
an employee only, but more so from dealing and discussing outsourcing services
across the insurance industry with major local and international corporate
companies.
At CDA, our passion for finding the best
solution to any challenging project drives us to perform the way we do and when
all the analysis and reports show the improvement in response ratios and
persistency, magic happens…. Abracadabra……. our clients turn into happy smiling
people!!!
We are seriously passionate about
fulfilling that policy quickly, we are passionate about finding the magic in
each call centre campaign to ensure its profitable for us and our clients, we
are passionate about finding the right person to target your products to, we
are passionate about ensuring that the customers you sell to are people who can
afford and will pay the premiums. In a tightly regulated industry these simple
functions are paramount in proving that our clients are servicing their policyholders
in the most compliant manner possible. As
a Registered Financial Service Provider, our internal processes and procedures have
been specifically designed to meet our clients’ compliance requirements.
Effective remunerations structures are key
to ensure that outsourcing is beneficial for both parties. At CDA we have adopted a risk-model approach,
where payment is linked to and dependent on delivery. With in-house call
centres and administration divisions, the cost is incurred regardless of
delivery of sales and service. In fact, in most cases where we have compared
costs on a call centre seat basis, the cost of an internal call centre seat is
25% to 100% more than ours. This is
simply due to our relentless focus on expenses as our pricing is under constant
scrutiny from our clients. We need to
remain competitive in pricing, but also importantly, we need to constantly
innovate and bring new ideas or improved services to our clients. The focus on innovation or re-engineering is
not always the highest priority in internal administration divisions or call
centres, innovation is often left to the “creative” marketers or product
developers.
As in everything there are exceptions to
the rule and many of our clients or potential clients have had really negative
experiences with outsource service providers.
Unfortunately you will always find companies who are inexperienced,
ignorant or just simply dishonest and wanting to make a fast buck, often to the
detriment of your client, the policyholder.
If at any point, you are
considering outsourcing any service (especially intermediary or regulated
services) make sure that you extensively evaluate your partner based on
knowledge, experience and triple check industry references. Ensure that they
not only understand your business objectives and needs, but that they have embedded
it into their processes, compliance and regulatory standards.
So if you are in the market for an
outsource partner look for these things:
1.
Do they understand your
business?
2.
Are they willing to take risk?
3.
Do they have a proven track
record with institutions of similar size and deliverables as yours?
4.
Do they understand the
regulation and compliance requirements around the services that they perform?
Last, but not
least, listen carefully, PASSION can be felt in their very first sales
presentation and the MAGIC can be seen in the extent to which they will go to
fulfil your needs. If you can’t feel the passion and can’t see the magic, maybe
they are not the right outsource partner for you.
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