Service Leader's Corner: Elevating Customer Excellence

What is BPO: Business Process Outsourcing?

BPO stands for Business Process Outsourcing and is the contracting of services to third-party companies that can provide them more inexpensively or better than your company. Businesses outsource their work for many reasons but are most commonly looking to decrease costs, expand capabilities or lessen risks. Some common outsourcing services include Customer Service/Call Center/Helpdesk, Client Management, Human Resources, and even Accounting. Third-party providers offer these solutions using cost-efficient approaches. This article will focus on Call Center providers, although many of the points can apply to other types of outsourced services as well.

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From the right tools to adequate staffing, customer service can turn out to be an expensive venture for businesses of all shapes and sizes. Most of the expenses incurred come from in-house teams, usually those working in a call-center. If customers get off of the phone with your in-house team and still don't have a resolution to their issue, that can also be seen as both time and money wasted. This is especially true if the customer decides to forego your business thanks to that particular experience.

According to Hannah Steiman of Peak Support, there are a few ways in which in-house customer service can become costly:

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With continued growth in computer and hand-held device use in the lives of many brings increasing technical questions and problems that arise. And so, the field of supporting these systems grows along with it, which brings business opportunities for entrepreneurs, and employment opportunities for support personnel.

But there are different types of support needs accompanied by varying required responsibilities and skills. The following are the differences between, and skills required for, three common areas of support: Help Desk, Technical Support, and Desktop/Deskside Support.

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On Monday, August 19th, Giva customer, The MetroHealth System, launched a new internal Human Resources (HR) service using Giva's HIPAA compliant SaaS Customer Self-Service Portal. The MetroHealth System has for the past five years already been utilizing Giva's Service Management Suite™ in the cloud for their IT Service Desk and a number of other departments such as Facilities and Environmental Services. They are now pleased to be expanding their services by offering Giva's Customer Self-Service Portal to their employees in an effort to offer streamlined HR services.

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When it comes to cloud computing, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) act as both the structure and warranty of the terms of the relationship between the consumer and provider. SLAs that are tailored toward services in the cloud often include information that differs from other agreements in similar industries.

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What specifically needs to be included in a service level agreement? Which aspects are described in an SLA? In this post, we explain the 6 common elements of a service contract.

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It is no secret that in the digital age, convenience and instant gratification are king. Convenience and speed are evident everywhere from cloud servers to text message jargon. Everything is designed and cultivated to be as quick as possible. But perhaps some things are meant to happen just a little bit slower.

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Configuration Management, or Software Configuration Management, is the tracking and controlling of software changes in a system. Its purpose is to ensure consistency in performance, functionality, and design. In many ways, configuration management is analogous to the architectural framework of a house that sets the tone for the actual materials, such as lumber and windows. In this case, software configuration would be the framework that is intertwined with tools such as cloud computing and other forms of configuration management database, or CMDB for short.

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