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.

Managers must Manage their Bosses well

A key role of a managing director is managing his or her board. A well-managed board can be a great source of support, expertise and different perspective. A badly managed board can consume large amounts of management time, delay the making of strategic decisions and even lead to the removal of management altogether.

It is in the best interests of the whole leadership team to ensure that the board feels it is being heard, and that management is operating in a way compatible with the principles, intentions and strategic direction of the board. The relationship between a board and its leadership team is unique. When the board of company structure changes, so too should the approach the leadership team takes to its board management.

This is easier said than done. If a management team has invested heavily in devising its strategy, structuring the organisation and implementing new systems, it can get very attached to what it has created. Suppose the company is then merged or bought out, or the board changes for some other reason and the new board wants things done differently. How easy is it for the leadership team to back itself into a corner? Why change something that was working just for the sake of politics? Doesn’t it make more sense to invest time and energy in running the company than in answering a whole raft of questions from the board?

I remember working with two divisions of the same global company. The manager of one division thought the changed reporting requirements of head office were pointless and so ignored them (against, I might say, my advice). Not unexpectedly he was replaced. The head of the other division realised that unless he had the support of his leaders they would make his life and job untenable. He gave them what they wanted which allowed him the freedom to keep his independence.

Skills in upward management are essential for any leader. The job of a leader is to provide his or her superiors with information in the way they desire it so they can feel confident enough to grant a licence to operate. A licence to operate allows people to get on and do what they need to do to be successful.

By learning the political ropes and reporting in a way that builds trust, leaders create an environment in which their people can concentrate on the job at hand. This just doesn’t happen. The relationship between leaders up and down every organisation can be a winning tool for success or a constant block and annoyance. The difference is the willingness of each leader to manage his/her bosses’ need to know.

Margot is the creator of 12 Steps For Business; a strategic leadership and corporate transformation toolkit which enables leaders and organisations to envisage and achieve unprecedented levels of growth and success.

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.

Dawn of the cloud Robots

RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and the cloud are on a collision course. This collision will have a significant impact on the BPO and outsourcing industries. Originally aimed at automating the actions and processes associated with managing existing software applications and manipulating data, RPA offers significant benefits and opportunities as existing applications are transferred to the cloud.

In a recent article, Jeff Augustin, Managing Director of outsourcing consultancy Alsbridge, was quoted as saying, “Smart robots will increasingly operate in the cloud, and we’ll see a ‘labor-as-a-service’ approach emerge as clients and providers find that intelligent tools and virtual agents can be easily and flexibly hosted on cloud platforms,” Augustin says[i]. “This will build even more momentum and interest in autonomics.”

RPA software can automatically process transactions, manipulate data, trigger responses, and communicate with other systems as necessary. It eliminates the need for people to perform high-volume IT support, workflow, remote infrastructure, and back-office processes, such as those found in finance, accounting, supply chain management, customer service, and human resources.It has the ability to eliminate many of the data entry and back office tasks and activities currently being managed by BPO and outsourcing contracts.When you bring the cloud and BPaaS (Business Process as a Service) into the picture, the level of automation matched with the level of flexibility in managing capacity offers enterprises significant cost savings through improved efficiency.

The original value proposition BPO offered in terms of labour arbitrage, according to Russell Ives Accenture Australia’s Operations Lead,  is fast eroding as the aggressive application of automation reduces headcount across BPO programs.Ives states, “There are two significant implications here, firstly clients are expecting to see more than just labour arbitrage from their BPO provider, as they are looking for a partner who can work with them to apply automation improvements to both retained and outsourced functions – this is no longer optional”.

“Secondly it will change the economics of BPO programs.  Providers will need to recognise and manage for a much smaller tail in the latter years of programs when the impacts of automation have significantly reduced outsourced headcount. Additionally providers will need to identify news sources of value and work with their to clients to establish commercial structures that have the right economic balance between lower value automated processes and knowledge related processes performed by higher skilled agents”.

Be prepared. The robots are coming to the cloud.

[i] http://www.cio.com/article/2864429/outsourcing/10-outsourcing-trends-to-watch-in-2015.html

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.

Take Me To Your Leader!

“Take me to your leader” is a science fiction cartoon catch phase, said by an extra-terrestrial alien who has just landed on earth in a flying saucer to the first human it happens to meet. It suggests that every organisation has to have someone in charge.

Leadership has been described as “a process of social influence in which a person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task”  (Chemers M. (1997)

Many organisations struggle with leadership development at all levels. Recently, Deloitte unveiled its Global Human Capital Trends 2015 report, highlighting leadership as a top ten concern for most companies. The success of any outsourcing relationship is dependent on the quality of leadership from both the vendor as well as the client. Unfortunately, too many organisations adopt a one-size fits all approach to leadership development.

What is leadership?

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

Leaders help themselves and others to do the right things. They set direction, build an inspiring vision, and create something new. Leadership is about mapping out where you need to go to “win” as a team or an organization; and it is dynamic, exciting, and inspiring.

Yet, while leaders set the direction, they must also use management skills to guide their people to the right destination, in a smooth and efficient way.

Anyone in any position of authority likes to think they are a good leader. We can all think of examples of good and bad leaders, no matter what the incumbents thought themselves. Each executive, manager, team leader, and supervisor in your organisation most probably has his or her own definition of what leadership is.

Everybody has his or her own ideas about what it takes to be a good leader. For some it’s about having a strong vision and the capability to share it and have others support it[i]. For others it’s about empowering people to achieve their best. While some view leadership as the ability to encourage others to be leaders.

Leadership is all these things.

Fundamentally leaders are people who know how to achieve goals and obtain the necessary support from others to make things happen. Good leaders are necessary for organisations to grow and succeed. Good leaders are inclusive and bring people along with them.

Companies and BPO providers invest small fortunes in leadership development programs. Around $US 170 billion is spent globally on corporate training each year with 35% of this being spent on leadership development[ii].

Why many leadership programs fail

Many leadership programs assume that one size fits all and that the same group of skills or style of leadership is appropriate regardless of strategy, commercial situation and organisational culture[iii]. A BPO service provider may need to develop different styles of leaders depending on the contracts and nature of the clients they need to work with. It may need different leadership styles depending on the industries they target and general economic conditions.

Is the organisation in a fast growing and dynamic space requiring leaders brimming with ideas and technical know-how, who are prepared to take risks. Or is the organisation facing sluggish market demand and needs people who can control costs and streamline processes.

A good starting point for developing leadership within your organisation may be to come up with your own definition or range of definitions for the term. Define what characteristics are necessary for someone to be a good leader in your environment and at what level within your organisation.

Characteristics may include things like honesty, active listening, the ability to delegate, confidence, good communication, be organised and so on. What characteristics you choose and the importance you give to each will depend on the culture and objectives of your organisation.

Are good leaders made or born?

There are various debates about whether leaders are born or made or some combination of both. One thing that is fairly certain is that a brilliant leader in one situation does not necessarily perform well in another[iv].

As an employer you must decide which characteristics or skills you can help people develop to become good leaders, specifically within your organisation and what characteristics do they need to bring with them when they are employed.

As the BPO industry continues to evolve, diversify and adapting to an ever-changing world and business environment, leadership is becoming increasingly complex and demanding. Meeting that gap is a significant challenge requiring more than a one-size fits all approach.

And lastly: “My Religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.”    The Dalai Lama

Kindness is a leadership characteristic that will deliver financial and humanitarian returns beyond imagination. It helps us create work environments that are based on trust and that allow people to express and experience meaning and purpose at work.

Kindness is the willingness to open one’s heart to another and to do so as instinct, not as calculation. Kindness is a show of respect for someone, whether you agree with his or her point of view or not. Kindness leads to listening, to curiosity and to the creation of environments at work, home and in the community, where there is an unspoken covenant of honour and of worthiness. It helps us internalize and cultivate an understanding that none of us can survive or achieve personal or organizational success alone.

Focus on happiness

What about your company makes you happy? What makes you unhappy? By asking two such simple questions, a manager can discover how best to motivate his employees, persuade his customers, and support its shareholders. According to the Dalai Lama, happiness is the highest universal form of motivation. A happy company is a successful company. You are more invested in success when you care about where it comes from.

[i] http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/3647-leadership-definition.html

[ii] http://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2014/02/04/the-recovery-arrives-corporate-training-spend-skyrockets/

[iii] http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/leading_in_the_21st_century/why_leadership-development_programs_fail

[iv] http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/leading_in_the_21st_century/why_leadership-development_programs_fail

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

Is your Client Data at Risk?

By Mark Atterby

In the wake of headline-making attacks and data breaches of Sony Pictures, JP Morgan, Snapchat and others, information security is becoming one of the highest priorities in BPO engagements. Organisations are sensitive about their data and want to know that it’s protected and being handled with care.

The costs to a client can be enormous both in reputation and direct financial impact. Just this month AT&T in North America was fined $25 million by the US Federal Communications Commission, for data security breaches at a call centre the company employed in Mexico to handle Spanish language services.

Employees working for the call centre stole private information belonging to thousands of US customers, including names, full and partial social security numbers, and account-related data. They sold this information to a 3^rd party to unlock stolen mobile phones.

This is just one example. According to Gemalto’s Breach Level Index for 2014, 1,500 data breaches led to one billion data records compromised worldwide during 2014. These numbers represent a 49% increase in data breaches and a 78% increase in data records that were either stolen or lost compared to 2013.

It impacts the whole industry

Not only does a major security breach harm the client’s business – it strikes at the very heart of the industry as a whole. Security and how well a BPO provider can demonstrate their commitment to it is increasingly becoming a deal breaker.

Clients need to audit the security procedures of any prospective vendor. If the vendor will be handling information in regards to payments or credit cards then ensure their systems are PCI compliant.

One of the causes of data breaches is from internal employees or former possibly disgruntled employees. Centres with high turnover have a more significant challenge in maintaining control and security.

There are various measures contact centres are deploying to ensure BPO staff do not breach client’s confidentiality and mis-appropriately use their data. Some of these measures include[i]:

• Creating a paperless environment, preventing employees from writing down and removing information by ensuring that all work processes are done on the computer, without having to record anything on forms or notes.
• Prohibiting the use of mobile phones and cameras on the floor.
• Prohibiting paper, pens and digital recording devices from being brought onto the floor.
• Preventing internet access for employees on the floor.
• Limiting functionality and access of personal computers or terminals used by call centre agents (for example, disabling USB ports). Companies may also use data loss prevention software to block attempts to download, copy, or transmit sensitive electronic data.

A provider that can’t keep its clients’ customers’ information secure is exposing their client to considerable risk. An organisation can outsource an activity but not its responsibility to the secure handling of private information.

[i] http://www.csoonline.com/article/2122795/physical-security/call-center-security–how-to-protect-employees-and-customers.html

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

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