Engaging on Instagram

Over the last year or so Instagram has become the fastest growing Social Media Channel. At over 300 million accounts it is now larger than Twitter. Its potential as a channel to improve customer as well as employee engagement is being realised by a number of leading brands .

How a product looks and its image can be the deciding factor in leading to a purchase. Brand is very closely connected to image. Instagram is all about image.

Instagram allows people to capture and share their visual experiences and images. From the outset Instagram was designed for mobility, where users take photos with their smart phones, edit them and share with their networks on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and Foresquare.

Recent research from Iconosquare highlights how the majority of Instagram users, use it to shop. Where as Facebook’s users are mainly interested in connecting with family and friends, Instagram users are more likely to share a picture of a product with their friends, like or comment on it, which reveals personal buying preferences and intentions.

This makes it a very desirable channel for marketers to invest their time and energy into. It’s currently the fastest growing social channel and it’s not as saturated with marketing and advertising content as the other channels. But that’s unlikely to remain so for long. In fact 2015 is seen as the year for Instagram to become the marketer’s social media channel of choice.

70% of the 16,000 users surveyed in the Iconosquare study said that they have looked for a brand on Instagram. While brands use contests and giveaway campaigns to attract followers on social media, 62% of Instagram will follow the brand simply because they connect with it.

Most of them are young. 44% of Instagram users are 18-29.

Images that you share on Instagram are a good way to communicate the vision and values of your brand. You can create a branded gallery of images that tell the story about the brand and the relationship it has with its community of supporters.

As the platform continues to grow rapidly additional functions and services are being added. In 2014 Instagram Direct was released where images can be sent to a particular connection and there’s an inbox to receive incoming messages.

It can provide the ability to deliver visual information to assist customers in using or fixing a problem or answering an enquiry. Helpdesk or support issues raised may be more readily resolved by the customer sending an image via their smartphone.

http://www.socialmedianews.com.au/instagram-reaches-90-million-monthly-active-users/

riginally Published in the Sauce eNewsletter – theOutsourcing-Guide.com

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.

The multi-channel challenge

By Martin Conboy

The ability to offer customers the ability to communicate with a brand via a variety of channels has been the Holy Grail for the contact centre and BPO industries for quite some time. Now days customers are multi channel shoppers and business as a whole are struggling to meet the multi-channel expectations of their customers.

But how do you do this while maintaining consistency in the level and quality of service being provided. Adding new channels without a coherent and integrated channel strategy can lead to a chaotic and uncontrolled experience for customers. The exact opposite of what you want.

The goal of multi-channel customer service is to give customers a seamless experience irrespective of the channel they use to contact the organisation. Most companies recognise the importance of it, but acknowledge that they don’t have the systems or processes in place to do it effectively . Thus technology investment is critical to enabling exceptional customer experience. The ability to offer a multi channel experience is now a brand differentiator.

The challenge within

Most organisations cite internal structure as the main challenge. Silos within an enterprise means that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. One may well find that serious departmental brick walls, or silos, exist in the organisation that can hinder its progress in terms of process effectiveness and efficiency – or worse, profitability.

The help desk handling support questions via live chat is not integrated with customer complaints or billing enquiry phone lines. Each departmental silo has its own view of the customer, that’s very different to how the rest of the organisation views them. Attitudes can differ significantly between different sets of departments and industries around a wide range of categories – including timeliness, information quality, trustworthiness, professionalism and impact of service.

As such the customer may feel they are dealing with a different organisation depending on the channel and the type of interaction they require. Adding another channel can more than likely fragment that view even further and frustrate the customer rather than improving their experience.

The complexity of trying to integrate these various channels is enormous, where organisations lose site of the forest because of all the trees. Just maybe it is better to have 2 or 3 channels that are highly effective than a dozen or so that aren’t working so well.

The data challenge

Customers themselves are fickle creatures. They don’t all want the same thing and what they want changes over time. Organisations have access to vast stores of customer data stored in transactional databases, surveys and feedback forms, on emails, social media platforms etc., that can be used to better understand customer behaviour and expectations. But unifying these data sources to provide actionable insight can be tantamount to searching for a needle in a haystack.

Continuous Partial Attention (CPA), is the process of paying simultaneous attention to a number of sources of incoming information, i.e. customer feedback, warehouse withdrawals, and website hits, but at a superficial level.

Linda Stone coined the term in 1998. Author, Steven Berlin Johnson, describes this as a kind of multitasking: “It usually involves skimming the surface of the incoming data; picking out the relevant details and moving on to the next stream. You’re paying attention, but only partially. CPA lets you cast a wider net but it also runs the risk of keeping you from really studying the fish”.

Operating under such a value network might lead a company to “listen too much” to its main customers. As a result, it will not recognise potentially disruptive innovations that serve only marginal customers. Secondly, large companies will not be interested in small markets; they hardly offer significant growth opportunities. Again this will lead companies to completely ignore the disruptive innovation or to wait until the market is “large enough to be attractive”. That is exactly when new entrants attack incumbent’s turf, and by that time it is usually too late.

Don’t try to be all things to all people all at once

Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither is multi-channel customer service. Take the time to evaluate the performance of each channel and how it can be improved and integrated with your other channels based on customer feedback and preferences.

Improve gradually over time rather than attempting too much all at once. Customers are more likely to be impressed by constant gradual improvement than a massive project to re-engineer everything, which might fall by the wayside for being too difficult.

https://econsultancy.com/reports/multichannel-customer-experience-report

Originally Published in the Sauce eNewsletter – theOutsourcing-Guide.com

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.

Strong Employee Engagement = Exceptional Customer Experience

Creating exceptional experiences for customers requires having engaged employees who are enthusiastic about their workplace and their role within the organisation. According to a recent Gallup study however, employees are disengaged at work – worldwide only a tiny 13% of workers are engaged.

Considering how much time we all have to spend at work, it must be soul destroying to go to a place everyday that eats away at the very fabric of your being. Of course if you are paying off a ridiculous mortgage like people do in Sydney then you may not have a lot of choice. The rat race is a very stressful endless, self-defeating, or pointless pursuit. It invokes the image of the fruitless efforts of a lab rat spending its existence running around and around on a spinning wheel or maze. And remember at the end of the rat race you are still a rat.

In a parallel to the modern urban environment, many rats in a single maze expend a lot of energy running around, but ultimately achieve nothing either collectively or individually. The rat race is often used in reference to modern work places, particularly repetitive, monotonous and dull work. This terminology contains inferences that many people see work as a seemingly sad endless pursuit with little reward or purpose other than a place to go everyday so that they can pay their bills.

The increased image of work as a “rat race” in modern times has led many people to question their own attitudes to work and seek a better alternative; a more pleasant-sounding ‘work –life balance’. Many people believe that long work hours, unpaid overtime, stressful jobs, commuting, less time for family life and/or friends life, has led to a general malaise in our communities, an unhappier workforce who do not have time to enjoy the benefits of increased economic prosperity and a supposed higher standard of living. The output of this way of living is manifested in divorce rates in first world countries of over 50%.

The Gallup report also says that the vast majority of people, some 63%, are “not engaged,” meaning they are unhappy but not drastically so. In short, they’re checked out. They sleepwalk through their days, putting little energy into their work.

A full 24% are what Gallup calls “actively disengaged,” meaning that one quarter pretty much really hate their jobs. Ouch! That cannot be a good thing for employee or employer. They act out and undermine what their coworkers accomplish.

Add the last two categories and you get 87% of workers worldwide who, as Gallup puts it, “are emotionally disconnected from their workplaces and less likely to be productive.” In other words, work is more often a source of frustration than one of fulfillment for nearly 90% of the world’s workers. That means that most workplaces are less productive and less safe than they could be and employers are less likely to create new jobs.

The major challenges with employee engagement starts with defining the term. Employee engagement is a workplace methodology designed to ensure that employees are committed to their organisation’s goals and values, inspired to contribute to organisational success, and are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of well being.

Author of Employee Engagement 2.0 and Employee Engagement for Everyone, Kevin Kruse, states, “Employee engagement is the emotional commitment the employee has to the organization and its goals. This emotional commitment means engaged employees actually care about their work and their company.”

The definition of employee engagement and how one measures it depends on which part of the organisation and how the organisation is structured. Charlene Li, from Altimeter highlights how HR will have a program to increase employee feedback, communications wants everyone to read the latest company newsletter and the Social Media team wants everyone to participate on the enterprise social network.

Research recently published by Altimeter revealed the following challenges when it comes to employee engagement[i]:

• Most organisations don’t have a well thought out employee engagement strategy
• Authentic employee engagement only happens when there is trust in the relationship — only 43% of survey respondents believe they have an organisational culture of trust and empowerment that supports employee engagement.
• Part of the problem is that there is no owner of employee engagement. In 41% of organisations, HR leads employee engagement efforts, while 17% and 11% have Employee/Corporate Communications and Marketing leading efforts, respectively.
• There remains significant untapped opportunity to use digital tools to enhance employee engagement. Only 36% and 25% of respondents have organizations where many employees use their internal collaboration platform and enterprise social network, respectively.

Mapping the Employee Journey

Creating exceptional customer experiences and engagement requires understanding and mapping the customer’s journey. Likewise employee engagement is dependent on creating exceptional experiences based on understanding and mapping the employee’s journey. The nature of the experiences an employee has will impact the level of engagement they have with your organisation’s goals.

It’s about understanding their role and the experiences they have of the organisation from their perspective. It’s going beyond the typical hire, train, and retain approach to HR and exploring how relationships can be deepened to drive business results and organisational change.

Employee engagement is not about establishing a specific state, but building relationships that can be developed.

There are differences between attitude, behavior and outcomes in terms of engagement. An employee might feel pride and loyalty (attitude); be a great advocate of their company to clients, or go the extra mile to finish a piece of work (behavior). Outcomes may include lower accident rates, higher productivity, fewer conflicts, more innovation, lower numbers leaving and reduced sickness rates and in the BPO world better NPS scores.  In reality all three – attitudes, behaviors and outcomes – are part of the engagement story. There is a virtuous circle when the pre-conditions of engagement are met when these three aspects of engagement trigger and reinforce one another.

Engaged organisations have strong and genuine values, with clear evidence of trust and fairness based on mutual respect, where two-way promises and commitments – between employers and staff – are understood, and are fulfilled.

Just like the customer journey. Company silos, overly strict and inflexible rules and poorly integrated systems and processes can impact the employee journey. The frustrations an employee can feel in trying to do their job can easily be passed on to the customer. In an outsourcing environment it’s the kiss of death.

Steve Rogers of Rusher Rogers HR Solutions, a leading HR practice in Melbourne Australia, offers this bit of sage advice, “If you have got your employee engagement model in place you still want new hires who are most likely to embrace your model, fit in with your culture and achieve the outcomes you need. You need to identify the behaviors that your star performers, who are most engaged, exhibit and the look for evidence of the same behaviors in the candidates that are applying for your roles. But remember look for “evidence” of behaviors. Not their opinion.”

In the BPO and outsourcing world where customer engagement has been outsourced to a third party , having disengaged employees / agents is bound to bring down measurements like NPS scores. Happy engaged employees really do equal happy customers.

Discuss.

[i] http://www.altimetergroup.com/2014/12/strengthening-employee-relationships-in-the-digital-era/

Originally Published in the Sauce eNewsletter – theOutsourcing-Guide.com

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.

Success in outsourcing starts with the RFP

The road to engaging an outsourcing partner starts with the RFP (Request-For-Proposal). Many organisations have a structured and rigid approach to the RFP process, which from the very outset can limit the opportunities of developing a relationship based on innovation. It straight jackets providers by limiting what they can offer potential clients.

RFP is a detailed process where the services and requirements of a client organisation are documented and a range of potential vendors are then invited to bid for the contract.

It’s up to the potential vendors to demonstrate their capacity to provide the requested services, specifying time frames and costs. The client selects the winning bid based on  criteria that usually involves some combination of price, timeline, reputation and the proposed solution.

The process creates a standardised structure and approach for creating and analysing proposals. The problem that emerges as highlighted by outsourcing consultant Information Services Group, the traditional prescriptive RFP approach puts providers in a box, limiting what they can offer a potential client[i].

Clients can spend too much time focusing on service levels and price neglecting the broader scope and potential of the project. It’s a risk adverse protectionist approach which limits the possibility of forming a long-term relationship that adds value to both organisations.

Providers compete to deliver the best solution within a narrow framework. The RFP process is designed to allow for apples to apples comparison. However, it constrains innovation since the client has dictated the terms and scope of the solution.

Brian Pullen, director for Playground observes, “An over structured RFP document is often too specific about project details. This specificity discourages providerss from being creative and proposing better solutions to the core problem, as companies are often already sold on the solution in their RFP”[ii].

It may not even be in the provider’s best interest to highlight errors in the requested solution. The structured communication policy and strict rules in the submission process can make proposing new ideas a deal breaker.

ISG recommends, rather than dictating specific terms to be adhered to, clients should allow providers the flexibility to propose unique solutions. The relationship can then begin around fresh thinking and innovation.

[i] http://www.isg-one.com/knowledgecenter/whitepapers/private/papers/White_paper_-_RFS_Innovation.pdf.[ii] http://playgroundinc.com/blog/whats-wrong-with-the-rfp-and-how-to-fix-it/

Originally Published in the Sauce eNewsletter – theOutsourcing-Guide.com

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.

Multi-sourcing: When One is Not enough

The trend in outsourcing and BPO deals towards smaller deals continues. In managing smaller deals multi-sourcing offers significant benefits but there also challenges. The greater number of additional  vendors involved increases the level of complexity and management resources required to ensure the different parties work effectively together.

Businesses are no longer willing to sign up large outsourcing deals that span multiple years due to concerns over vendor lock in and the lack of transparency, among others, and best-of-breed solutions emerge as the better option. However, while a multi-sourcing model may offer benefits such as higher flexibility and less dependency on a single vendor, it can be extremely complex to manage and may require additional management resources that some companies may not have.

Additionally, outsourcing lets organisations convert a fixed cost into a flexible expense, and transfer risk and management to another party

Multi-sourcing allows organisations to employ the best vendor in terms of price and capacity for a particular activity. Multi-sourcing promotes competition among various providers.  Best-of-breed sourcing recognizes that providers have different strengths and weaknesses and carves out work best suited for each of several providers.

It can cut costs related to repetitive service contracts and improve quality. Vendors must bid more frequently because contracts are shorter, suppliers face more competition because smaller-sized deals mean that more vendors qualify to bid, and suppliers need to attract more customers in order to meet growth targets.

Scott Feuless, principal consultant with outsourcing consultancy Information Services Group, recently said, “The number of service providers each company uses will grow dramatically, driven by growing popularity of cloud in general and Software-as-a-Service [SaaS] in particular”.

These multiple companies need to be managed and monitored. The job is made more difficult if they are off shore and hard to travel to.  Governance requirements can greatly magnify in multi-vendor BPO and outsourcing environments.

In multi-provider environments the resources needed to manage outsourcing can cost between 4-15% of total contract value.

Organisations pursuing a multi-sourcing arrangement should craft strong internal governance strategies with regard to vendor relationships and share the details with all of their service providers to promote better cooperation and more seamless delivery of services across organisational lines.

There is more risk in depending on one or two providers as much depends on their capabilities and their financial strength, for example. With multi-sourcing the risks move into other areas, including cracks between service, security issues,  hidden costs with continued monitoring and renewal of contracts, and possible replacement of providers.

Multi-sourcing can limit the scope of innovation you can expect from an outsourcing relationship in regards to a particular business function or IT service. IF there’s a range of vendors who are focused on their small bit of the equation there’s unlikely to be enough incentive for any of them to view what they do from a broader perspective.

Partnering with a single provider who can assist in reshaping an entire business process from end-to-end, will offer greater scope for innovation. Rather than a series of smaller contracts focused on transactions.

Moving from a single provider to a multi-sourcing environment or vice versa requires some considerable adjustment to how you manage your outsourcing relationships. You must change your contract negotiation strategies, procurement practices, and the governance models for you outsourcing contracts.

I recently consulted with a client who had a single vendor for the lion’s share of the work that they outsourced. As additional projects were being outsourced they asked the vendor to become a ‘master’ vendor and manage (for a fee) the other smaller vendors. The problem was that they constructed a complicated and very legalistic contract that was never going to achieve what was intended. They basically set and forget and were relying on a legal document that ended up making the parties adversarial. In the end when it came around to renewal time the whole process broke down with the vendor having to be dragged kicking and screaming to the table to honour a deal that it was getting smashed on. Malicious compliance was the end result and it did not end well.

Multi sourcing provides companies with lower cost options to get their outsourcing service delivered. However multi-sourcing relationships’ must be maintained and closely monitored to deliver the best possible outcome.

Originally Published in the Sauce eNewsletter – theOutsourcing-Guide.com

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.

Creating an Amazing Mobile Experience

The evolution of smarter smartphones and greater access to data sources offers innovative organisations the opportunity to create amazing mobile experiences for their customers. 2015 is the year of mobility where organisations are starting to invest heavily in mobile and responsive websites as well as mobile applications. They are throwing money at the technology, but does that mean they are creating amazing experiences for their customers?

The 2015 State of Marketing Report from Salesforce, based on a survey of 5000 marketers globally including Australia, discovered that two-thirds of respondents have integrated mobile into their marketing strategy. That’s up from 48 percent in 2014 and 65 per cent plan to spend more on mobile push notifications.

Just having mobility as part of your marketing and customer service strategy is not enough. You need to get into the minds and shoes of your customers to understand their mindset and the sort of mobile experiences they are looking for from your brand.

Understanding the role of mobility in the customer journey and mindset

Mobile customers have less time than other customers. They may be walking down the street, on the bus on their way to work, shopping or waiting in a queue, or travelling on holidays. They are more demanding than normal online customers at a desktop. They have less time and are restricted by screen size and the lack of a keyboard or mouse.

When building your mobility channel and platforms there should be two things that you are aiming to achieve[i]:

1. Allowing customers to find what they want and complete a transactions in the easiest, fastest and most convenient way possible
2. Provide an experience compelling enough that they’ll come back again and again.

So rather than thinking of what marketing messages you can push out to them. Think of how you can improve the experience of dealing with your brand. How can you simplify the experience? How can you add value? Or even how can you make it more entertaining and fun?

Don’t try everything at once

Don’t fall into the trap of doing what everyone else (ie your competitors) are doing. And try to avoid making major investments that require significant resources and long implementation time frames. As Chris Luxford, Senior Partner from Experience Innovators, advises, “Instead of a few big and long investments that are predominantly still focused on “better service at a lower cost”. Innovate via a customer outcome mindset and lots and lots of smaller frequent changes across the entire customer lifecycle”.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have a long term strategy and plan. It’s the very opposite in fact. It’s about achieving short term goals and gains as part of realising your long term vision to engage your customers with amazing experiences.

[i] http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/tips-engaging-mobile-experience-1505010.pdf.

Originally Published in the Sauce eNewsletter – theOutsourcing-Guide.com

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.

Are you talking to me?

Despite being the channel customers love to hate IVR (Interactive Voice Response) is still growing and is predicted to be worth $2.78 billion by 2017, according to a 2012 report from Global Industry Analysts (GIA)[i]. The growth is being driven by outbound IVR to deliver important notifications and proactive customer service functions.

IVR has had a mixed history, on one hand reducing call wait times and improving overall efficiencies and service levels, on the other, driving customers to switch to competitors.

We’re all familiar with the experience of having to navigate through a complex and confusing IVR menu to finally be put through to the wrong department or service or for the call to drop out. The experience leaves you frustrated. Badly designed IVR systems may have contributed to bad customer experiences more than any other channel.

Key areas in IVR development in recent years, that are altering the previous negative perceptions of this self-service technology, have been in Outbound IVR and Visual IVR.

Outbound IVR

Outbound IVR allows organisations to proactively and automatically engage customers through a variety of channels such as automated voice calls, SMS messages, email or social media posts with personalised communications. Providing immediate, faster and real-time information and services to customers Calls can range from personalised, event-triggered notifications and two-way interactions to broadcast messages to hundreds or even thousands of customers.

It can be used in a variety of situations including:

• Sending emergency notifications,
• Personalised offers and promotions
• Travel-related notifications
• Problem reporting
• Change notifications (account status, billing, rates)
• Shipping notifications

Visual IVR

Steve Morrell, founder and principal analyst of ContactBabel, an analyst firm for the contact centre industry, highlights how smartphones and tablets can give companies the option of offering visual representations of their IVR menus[ii]. This can enhance the customer experience as most people find it easier to read and select options in text and visual format than to listen to it being spoken.

Visual IVR presents customers with a menu driven interface to the IVR system which is available from a website or mobile app.  Visual IVR can be used to send video or push other content. This content can be educational or for marketing purposes or to assist the customer’s self-service requirement in some way.

Visual IVR allows companies to connect their traditional contact centre channels to new mobile platforms, enhancing their ability to serve customers. Visual IVR can be implemented with existing DMTF technology and IVR systems, requiring few modifications.

Originally Published in the Sauce eNewsletter – theOutsourcing-Guide.com

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.

Let’s Work Together

By Martin Conboy

“Together we’ll stand
Divided we’ll fall
Come on now, people
Let’s get on the ball

And work together
Come on, come on
Let’s work together
Now, now people
Because together we will stand
Every boy, every girl and man

People, when things go wrong
As they sometimes will
And the road you travel
It stays all uphill “
Canned Heat

Canned Heat is an American blues band that formed in California in 1965.

Back then in the hippy era it was all about finding ways for people to collaborate with each other. It’s fundamental ethos — including harmony with nature, communal living, artistic experimentation particularly in music, spread around the world during the counter culture of the 1960s. A move away from the command and control environment of previous generations. The hippie movement has found historical precedents as far back as the Mazdakist movement in Persia that advocated communal living and the sharing of resources. In other words the movement grew because of a shared state of mind.

The world has moved on from those heady days however a lot of very valuable lessons were learnt. Fast forward to today and a key ingredient in building successful, innovative and strategic BPO relationships is collaboration. In other words, the ability for organisations to go beyond the typical vendor/client arrangement to work together for shared goals and objectives. If we want to change the status quo from the master/ slave relationships that largely exist in BPO relationships today we are going to need nothing short of a revolution in the way that we think and in the ways that BPO contracts are constructed.  Contracts cannot be so written that they give a disproportional level of power to one side or the other, as the dominant side may act arbitrarily in the absence of any constraints to the detriment of the other side.  We need to think of a contract more as a ‘living’ contract, in so much as it can be changed as required to make it work for all parties.

However for it to work it needs more structure that what was on offer during the hippy era. In part, this requires a governance model based on joint management structures and committees, but more importantly it requires the client and vendor to possess attitudes and behaviours that promote partnership and collaboration.

These days clients expect their provider to drive transformation and improve legacy processes, but, as Adam Cummins, Principal for Pace Harmon points out, letting go of old processes, approaches and perspectives and allowing the BPO provider to make changes to deliver improvements, efficiencies and savings can be a challenge[i].

The biggest challenge is that the client does not have the attitudes, behaviours or talent and skill sets necessary for collaboration. In all fairness these may also be lacking on the vendor side of things. Research[ii]from the London School of Economics and sponsored by Accenture, highlights that implementing joint operating, management, and executive committees, without having the right partnering attitudes and behaviours in place may inhibit rather than promote the success of a BPO relationship.

Governance structures are important, but the client must fully appreciate the provider as a strategic partner rather than as a vendor[iii]. A true partnership needs to display behaviours such as resolving conflicts fairly and protecting both parties’ commercial interests. Contract constructed around an adversarial approach usually only produce winners and losers, business environments change -likewise BPO relationships need the flexibility to meet shifting market demands and commercial realities. Thus contracts that allow for a team made up of executives from both sides to investigate the facts of a contract failure as opposed to an adversarial approach when one side wins may be worth considering.  After all a loser means that one side will have little or no interest in maintaining the contract.

Internal silos a barrier to collaboration

The inability for organisations to collaborate with a partner can stem from internal silos and reluctance to share information within the organisation. Client executives and leaders need to promote collaboration with their internal teams. Collaboration requires, first and foremost, a change in attitude and behaviour of people throughout the client organisation.

Client teams need to work with teams from the provider just as much as they need to work with other internal teams.

Trust and respect each other

Trust is the belief or confidence that one party has in the reliability, integrity and honesty of another party. It is the expectation that the faith one places in someone else will be honoured. The client and provider need to establish trust between their respective teams before they can effectively collaborate.

Teams that are suspicious or cynical of each other will not share information or collaborate effectively, and may even work to undermine each other.

Relationships develop and change over time. The ones that endure and stand the test of time are based on trust and  allow for a true collaborative approach rather than one that gets bogged down in the governance structures imposed by a contract.

Originally Published in the Sauce eNewsletter – theOutsourcing-Guide.com

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.

Engaging the mobile customer

With the rise of mobile and social technologies, customers are now more powerful than ever. They’re always-connected status and ability to find information in seconds puts them in control of their own experience, and this trend has forced marketers to rethink how they engage and connect with their customers.

The 2015 State of Marketing report from Salesforce, involving the survey of 5000 marketers across the globe highlights the top five areas for increased marketing spend in 2015[i]:

• Social media advertising (70% of marketers)
• Social media marketing (70% of marketers)
• Social media engagement (67% of marketers)
• Location-based mobile tracking (67% of marketers)
• Mobile applications (66% of marketers)

Globally, 38% of marketers plan to shift spend from traditional mass advertising to advertising on digital channels, where 84% of marketers will maintain or increase overall marketing spend in 2015. Social Media is the primary area of focus followed closely by mobility. But considering that 60% of social media time is spent on mobile devices rather desktops[ii], engaging the mobile customer becomes a number one priority.

As such marketing to consumers via mobility offers a level of intimacy and immediacy that can greatly enhance their experiences of your brand.

Mobility offers marketers a range of options and channels to choose from including SMS, mobile apps/website, location based tracking, in game ads, live chat, etc. To decide what mix of channels should be part of your strategy, you need to analyse how your customers use mobility. Are they transacting or using it to gather information? Do they play games or use their device for entertainment? Are they mostly on Android or iOS; smartphones or tablets?

[i] https://www.salesforce.com/form/marketingcloud/2015-state-of-marketing.jsp?nc=70130000000i5Ug&d=70130000000i5XL&ls=Blog&lssm=Corporate&lss=SFDCBlog.StateofMarketing2015&camp=701A0000000y214IAA&content=701A0000000y214IAA.

[ii] http://www.businessinsider.com.au/social-media-engagement-statistics-2013-12.

[iii] http://www.yankeegroup.com/about_us/press_releases/2014-02-06.html.

[iv] http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2013/08/19/what-is-mobile-marketing.

[v] http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2015/01/29/11-things-cmos-need-to-know-about-mobile-marketing-strategy-and-app-development/2/

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.

Innovate or Die!

By Martin Conboy (theOutsourcing-guide.com)

“If change is happening on the outside faster than on the inside, then the end is in sight” Jack Welch, CEO, G. E. In fact, the world is changing so rapidly that organisations are struggling to keep up.

I always remember my first boss telling me that if you are not going forwards then you are going backwards! For businesses and economies to thrive and adapt to change they must innovate. These days, clients expect their BPO and outsourcing providers to be innovative in adding strategic value to the outsourcing contract. But how does one become innovative? Primarily, it requires a willingness to take risks. There is no guarantee that trying something different is a pathway to success, sometimes it means it just might not work.

In its early years, 3M aka Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, was on the verge of failure. After years of mining losses management came to a crossroads. Close down or do something different. As Albert Einstein said, “If you want different results, do not do the same things.” 3M executives did what most successful executives do when faced with failure. They used it as an opportunity to find a new way forward. Today, the company generates billions in revenue and employs over 80,000 people.

What is the ingredient that brought 3M back from the brink of failure? While there are several candidates, the one that stands out is innovation.

Many organisations place innovation on their list of corporate values. However, much fewer actually have a culture in place that actively encourages it. Some organisations and industries are particularly risk adverse, preferring to rely on practices and traditions that have produced results in the past than invest in new ideas that might not succeed.

According to a recent McKinsey survey, innovation has become one of the top business objectives in organisations that want to grow, out perform their competitors and, indeed, even survive by creating a higher value proposition. More than 70 precent of senior executives said ‘innovation will be at least one of the top three drivers of growth for their companies in the next three to five years.”

Furthermore, leading strategic thinkers are moving beyond product innovations to innovations in business processes, distribution, value chains, business models and even the functions of management.

Another major barrier to innovation are managers and executives who are resistant to new ideas and suggestions from others, particularly from staff and employees. Internal jealousies stemming from turf wars, departmental or staff rivalries can make change very difficult to achieve.

McKinsey again, 65 precent of the study group expressed concern about the ability to stimulate innovation. Saying ‘mountain; and climbing it can be very different things.

Innovation is not about technology

There’s a tendency to think of innovation in terms of technical innovation. Though technology is important, it is only a part of the picture. According to best-selling business author, Scott Berkun, “Innovation is significant positive change”[i]. That change can apply to technology or to products and processes, or it can apply to people.

In terms of an individual business or enterprise, this could mean implementing new ideas, creating dynamic products or improving existing services. Innovation can be a catalyst for growth and success, helping companies and industries to adapt and grow.

Being innovative does not mean inventing. It means creating a culture of innovation and promoting innovative thinking and creative problem solving.

The drive for innovation

Businesses that are innovative create more efficient work processes and have better productivity and performance. Research from the Institute for Corporate Productivity in the US highlights how high-performing organisations are up to three times more likely to implement people practices that drive innovation[ii].

It’s not just individual businesses or industries that need to innovate to survive – it’s entire economies. The 2015 Intergeneration Report produced by the Australian government has highlighted the need for the Australian economy to create new industries and for existing industries to adapt to a changing Asia-centric world.

As a nation Australia needs to be a lot more innovative.

Being innovative

When outsourcing their business processes clients now expect innovation and for providers to add real strategic value. In fact the term innovation is bandied about so often that saying you are innovative is hardly a point of difference. The world has moved on from BPO 1.0 –lift and shift and clients want a value add that goes way beyond price.

Even very risk-adverse organisations will claim to be innovative. But being risk-adverse can be the main stumbling block to innovation. Relying too extensively on tradition and what has worked in the past will inhibit the ability to enact positive change for the future. “That’s the way we have always done it’ or ‘It’s policy” are attitudes that could be the kiss of death.

Developing BPO and outsourcing relationships that are focused mainly on avoiding risk with for the vendor or the client or both, will inhibit innovation and creative problem solving.

Be prepared to take risks

You’ll never be ahead of the pack if you don’t do something different from everybody else. This is not to say you should become reckless and invest in every idea that’s developed. You do need to develop a process for evaluating the risk and benefits of any particular initiative and decide if the potential benefits outweigh the potential risks.

A good example is Apple the most valuable company in the world. Apple has a program called ‘Blue Sky’ that lets a few select team members take a few weeks at a time to work on a favourite project. This frees up brainpower for innovation.

Collaboration and knowledge sharing

Innovation is not delivered by a single visionary within the company. Regardless of how innovative or visionary a CEO or director of the business maybe as an individual, that does not mean the organisation as a whole will be innovative.

Vital to driving innovation is greater collaboration and knowledge sharing, within the organisation and with external stakeholders such as partners and customers. Collaboration encourages discussion, new ideas being put forward, appraisal and revision of those ideas and greater awareness of the problems being faced by the organisation.

Each employee and stakeholder will have a unique perspective on a problem and are capable of developing a possible solution or suggestion to resolve it.

Driven and inspired from the top

It’s the responsibility of senior management and executives to ensure a culture of innovation is promoted, encouraged and supported throughout the entire organisation.

[i] http://scottberkun.com/2013/the-best-definition-of-innovation/

[ii] http://www.i4cp.com/productivity-blog/2013/04/02/i4cp-research-human-capital-practices-drive-organizational-innovation

theOutsourcing-guide.com is the ultimate reference guide for the BPO and outsourcing industries and it will become the most comprehensive resource for organisations looking to engage BPO and outsourcing providers. As well as providing a range of eBooks, articles and whitepapers explaining the various aspects of BPO, theOutsourcing-guide.com provides an online directory of providers segmented by category and location.

theOutsourcing-guide.com is a vehicle for vendors and service providers to showcase their organisations and the outsourcing services they provide. Visit theOutsourcing-guide.com for more information.