It’s a scenario that’s becoming increasingly common: Your CIO mandates that some or all of your technical support functions be outsourced, and you’re asked to lead the team that will find and implement the relationship with the outsourcing vendor. You know that outsourcing partnerships can be fraught with problems, so how do you create a relationship that upholds the quality of your customers’ experience? Maintaining quality starts with building quality and the proper controls into your relationship with your vendor partner from the start.

There are six aspects to building a partnership with your vendor, which together make for a successful relationship. They are:

1. Vendor selection
   
2. Internal vendor management structure
   
3. Reporting
   
4. Quality programs
   
5. Training and knowledgebase
   
6. Contractual issues

Vendor selection
The vendor selection process is where you should start to build your partner relationship. To increase your odds for success, look for a vendor who matches your business in these ways:

• A compatible business approach
  
• A similar culture
  
• A focus on customers
  
• A dedication to technology as a competitive edge
  
• One that provides a compelling cost benefit

Advice on selecting the right vendor could be an article in itself, but briefly: Do your homework! Study the materials, especially the standard contract the prospective vendor sends you. Visit their sites. Ask for and call at least five references about their experiences with the vendor. The goal is to choose a vendor with whom you feel compatible.

Internal vendor management structure
Outsourcing relationships often fail when a company considers the outsourced function as “out of sight, out of mind.” The antidote to this is to create a formal structure within your company to manage the vendor relationship. Consider your vendor as another business unit that has an internal management structure but external representatives. Consider implementing these two positions:

• An Executive Sponsor who oversees the contract and provides vision for the partnership.
  
• A Vendor Manager who oversees and coordinates the day-to-day operations.

Reporting
Reporting is the key to maintaining control of the relationship with your outsourcer. You should have real-time, online access to both the automatic call distributor (ACD) and the interaction tracking software at your outsourcer. Your vendor manager should monitor both during the course of each day. Daily, weekly and monthly reports from both systems are standard fare. Be both trusting and skeptical with your vendor – trust that they’re doing a good job, but skeptically monitor everything. Ask for detailed ACD reports on busy days, and study it for any irregularities.

Quality programs
Effective quality programs have three parts: vendor self-monitoring, company monitoring, and customer surveys. Don’t expect a vendor to listen to its agents’ calls and evaluate them fairly. In addition to monitoring and evaluating calls yourself, you need to regularly schedule “Calibration Sessions” in which both parties evaluate the same call and come to consensus on its rating. I’ve heard of sessions in which the vendor has rated a call an 8 on a 10 point scale, where the company rated it a 2. When it comes to quality, the opinion of the customer is all that really counts, so consider budgeting for an impartial, third-party survey of your customers.

Training and knowledgebase
Don’t expect your vendor to create and deliver effective training materials without your help. If you want to control what’s being said to your customers, you need to gather all the information and work with your vendor in creating a comprehensive training program. Many companies create standard training materials, and encourage the vendor to enhance it as needed. If you have a corporate training department, you might want to have a “Train the Trainer” class, in which your trainers train their trainers. Their trainers then train all the vendor’s representatives. Make sure your trainers audit the first class the vendor’s trainers present to add the voice of the customer and ensure the vendor’s trainers have mastered the information.

Apply these thoughts and processes to the development of a shared knowledgebase -- You need to create it with your resident expertise, and encourage your partner’s reps to update it. You’ll probably want to retain the editing process in-house.

Contractual issues
Your contract with your vendor should clearly define your expectations. Some companies have been successful using penalties and bonuses to effectively motivate their vendor. Penalties and bonuses can be tied to attaining or missing service level targets, with consideration given to the volume projections you’ve agreed upon. For example, if actual volumes are 10% over projections, but your partner sustained service levels during the spike, a quarterly bonus might be appropriate. Penalties work in reverse, for situations in which the vendor fails to meet service level targets even at projected volumes. Quality bonuses and employee retention bonuses are great ways to tell your vendor that customer service really matters. You might tie a quality bonus to the results of a customer satisfaction survey, or even something more subjective.

About the author

Kristin Robertson, President of KR Consulting, Inc., is a consultant to the Help Desk and Technical Support profession. She helps companies increase the efficiency of their support center, save money, and increase their customer loyalty. As both a consultant and trainer, she has worked with companies such as 7-Eleven, Southwest Airlines, Hewlett Packard, Prodigy Communications and CompUSA. Kristin can be reached at 817-577-7030, or krisrob@krconsulting.com.