In today’s customer management services sector, no one should underestimate the need for a good dose of entrepreneurial spirit. In any industry, it has been said that the best ideas come from upstart organizations, ones where executives are hungry for success and willing to take risks. Unfortunately, swimming through the murky waters of today’s CX services marketplace, there has been an overabundance of playing it safe, and avoiding calculated risks at any costs.
To be fair, customer management is not the only industry where this is happening. Recently, a trend has emerged in which founders of highly successful firms in different verticals have pushed back against satisfying investors at the expense of a strong alignment between the product / service and the client. Lululemon was the most recent example, but the same has happened with other beloved brands including Ben & Jerry’s, Starbucks and Cracker Barrel.
There are some strong lessons for those playing in today’s customer service community from these founder-led efforts to bring brands back to their roots. When any firm gets too far away from its core, the risk of losing their commercial mojo is inevitable. When this happens it leads to a sap in innovation and energy, resulting in excessive processes that get in the way of delivering the best service levels. This is in addition to an invariable negative impact on employee morale. Corporate lethargy is not something that dynamic enterprises will tolerate from a third-party CX partner for very long, which is where entrepreneurial-driven outsourcers that cut to the operational chase have the edge.
A lot of this has to do with responsiveness, which is another key selling point for driving a more entrepreneurial mindset within CX services firms. Being able to respond rapidly to any combination of new market trends, technology innovations or end-user behavioural shifts can mean the difference between winning new (or more) business versus being an also-ran. Firms that embrace the founder-led mentality are invariably going to be quicker to have the right options to hand for their clients; this cannot be underestimated as a competitive advantage.
Knowing what the right solutions need to be comes from having a constant pulse check on the CX services space. Entrepreneurial outsourcers understand that this is a crucial success factor, in terms of knowing the CX pain points of their clients. It comes from not just selling solutions to enterprises but also listening attentively to what captive operations require to drive the best outcomes. Unfortunately, all too often in today’s marketplace, many corporate-driven outsourcers seem to feel that they know better than the buyer and lose out on deals by skipping the listening process entirely.
And when it comes to delivery, the entrepreneurial BPO will most often than not have the competitive advantage due to agility. Responding swiftly to challenges at the macro or company level is pure gold to enterprises eager to minimize service disruption. Outsourcers that have flatter structures and that minimize the steps needed to go from one operational CX playbook to another will always have the upper hand in the current marketplace.
Finally, there is the issue of accountability. The entrepreneurial-minded outsourcing operator understands that it is the client to whom they are ultimately responsible. To be clear, shareholders (whether private or public) do have a legitimate right to a say in the direction of their outsourcing investment. After all, it is they that in many cases have backed the BPO’s inception or its expansion initiatives. However, board-level interference cannot result in excessive cost-cutting at the expense of strategic investment, jumping on too-good-to-be-true hype cycles that are not reflective of CX buyer’s actual needs, forcing excessive processes that slow down operations or just plain dumb ideas. Embracing the passion and energy of entrepreneurship is a lesson that outsourcers, no matter their size or location, should value.
