Outsourcing Process: How Far Is Your Team from You?

by Alexander Yukhimishen

How far is your outsourcing company from you? Well, it’s not that far. It’s actually at your doorstep. In our day and age, “far” is not far any longer. We would like to argue that your team is not that distant provided you have stable and reliable communication with it.

In today’s blog, we will share what we’ve learned about the outsourcing process based on our experience. The first and foremost principle here is effective communication between the customer and the outsourcing team. Poor communication creates distance, whereas good communication breeds trust. It bridges cultural and geographical gaps.

Effective Communication Breeds Trust

We began our journey a long time ago as a small group of technology enthusiasts. Now we are an outsourcing company of 150 people. What lessons have we learned along the way?

We learned one important truth: it’s all about the customer and their satisfaction. We believe not only in delivering products but in trust-building and character formation. After all, a ship is known by the wake it leaves on the water.

It has become the key characteristic of our front office outsourcing. We wanted to leave a “wake” of positive experiences and happy memories for our clients’ experiences via office outsourcing. A positive wake is generated only by people with true integrity.

Dr. Henry Cloud, (a renowned business coach) in his monumental book Integrity, defines this concept of integrated/whole character as:

Therefore, we chose to pursue integrity of character. We decided to stick to the equation:

Customer satisfaction is our top priority. This led us to the following question: What is our role in this supply chain of services? Do we merely deliver a service or actually human resources that are dependable? The latter became our definitive answer.

What Does an Effective Outsourcing Company Do?

Our working definition of outsourcing is crystallized into this definition:

It has become a springboard for all our business practices. We are focused to provide topnotch information technology-enabled services. Our top priority has always been to become a service provider who would always be accessible to our clients.

To accomplish this, we had to focus on core qualities. The bottom line for our outsourcing strategy is:

Ideally, great outsourcing companies offer cost-effective services. They don’t need to provide their workers with social benefits. Generally, such companies have fewer overhead expenses.

We decided to bridge the geographical distance. Our motto: we improve the efficiency of our team members to increase our business partners’ satisfaction. That led us to value communication in this process.

Why Communication Makes Teams “Closer”?

Failing to communicate means to fail in outsourcing. Indeed, if we drill deeper, customers place a certain level of importance on their resources (which include investing time, money and efforts) in search of cost-saving projects.

We learned that people would choose outsourced work more readily if they are provided with detailed information. Eventually, we focused on this priority to our clients.

Ways for Effective Communication

Learning to communicate effectively takes time and effort. In our experience, we realized that we have to intentionally ask our customers early in the process how they best communicate.

Firstly, communication is best done via project management tools. For instance, some of sales managers prefer to talk through Skype or use instant messaging.

There is a whole array of electronic venues for communication: Google Chat, Google Hangouts, Facebook Messenger, Whatsup and many others. However, it’s essential to understand the best medium of communication for your client.

Secondly, the language barrier needs to be overcome. We are based in Ukraine in Eastern Europe, whereas the majority of our client base are English-speaking. As a result, we hired an English teacher for our team. Our team members can now polish up their English skills for free!

Thirdly, we came to appreciate the value of weekly meetings. Even if it’s only a 15-minute meetup, it can still be helpful. During such mini-sessions, we can catch up with our clients. This problem-troubleshooting helps us be proactive and not only reactive. That saves us a lot of misunderstandings and helps to ensure a productive line of two-way communication.

Final Thoughts

We learn to say first words around two or three years of age, but we never outgrow the need for improving our verbal skills. We strive to communicate ideas more effectively while being thoughtful, attentive listeners.

Successful outsourcing is based upon working together. It always helps to talk through issues when things are not going in the right direction. Similarly, it is important to touch base if things are going right. It’s applicable both to working with customers as well as to our internal team’s cooperation.

Perhaps you are in search of an international development company. Drop us a line. We are here to help.

Feel free to check out our previous blogs on outsourcing:

Content created by our partner, Onix-systems.