Business process outsourcing, or BPO, is increasingly popular as a business strategy for gaining results in areas beyond your company’s core strengths. Best of all, BPO can deliver those results at a savings of both time and cost.
Every successful company establishes levels of excellence in chosen areas of operation and falls short in others. Partnership with a BPO company can help you cover gaps in these disciplines or departments of weakness.
Typical service areas that your company may outsource include tech support, customer service, accounting and billing, data entry, claims processing and payment, and human resources. A growing service that BPO can also help your company with is in-depth market research and insurance product development.
Understanding the Connection Between Market Research and BPO
At the heart of many successful BPO companies is a strong call center operation with fluent English-speaking agents. These individuals have been well trained in your product or service offering and other pertinent details of your business. They need this information because they become the voice of your company. The call center operators must be engaging and able to respond accurately to your customers who call with questions or who wish to place orders, make billing inquiries, voice complaints, or get tech support.
The best of these BPO call center operations don’t just answer inbound calls from your customers. BPO lead generation can optimize your business. These services can place outbound calls to members of the audiences you serve to generate sales leads or transform an inbound call with upselling and cross-selling methods into a new purchase.
Business process outsourcing partners can also take and tabulate surveys and conduct market research that might result in a change to the product lines that small or medium sized companies will offer customers.
Why is this research so important? Because the data revealed helps you retain a robust insurance product line that will enhance your brand image and help you maintain your position as a leader in your market or gain ground on your competition.
The Role of Customer Feedback in Product Development
Is there a crucial gap in the mix of insurance products you offer your base? Is customer demand going unmet? Are your best customers going elsewhere when it comes time for renewal?
If you decide there’s a critical need to expand your inventory, what will be the main selling point of the new insurance line you’re thinking of adding? Will cost be a major factor? What’s in the package of benefits that will make this new line a winning option? How will you position those benefits as selling points in your product literature and sales presentations?
You must answer those questions and more before you launch your new insurance product — or decide not to do so. Shouldn’t you have the full participation and insight of your most valuable audience — your customers — before these important and potentially costly decisions are made?
Without the involvement and feedback of these prospective buyers, you might be spinning your wheels and wasting money. You might also miss an opportunity to make a strategic move before your competition gets the idea first.
That’s why it’s so important to engage your BPO partner in conducting in-depth market research that will keep your company and its product line relevant.
Ensuring Agility and Responsiveness Through BPO
Remember the reason your company is considering partnering with a BPO company in the first place: It offers the ability to conduct market research, an area that is not a core strength of your company. You need a competent partner in this pursuit, and that partnership should run smoothly and efficiently.
The BPO operation that seeks your business should consist of team members who speak your language fluently. That includes both the BPO call center operators who will represent your company while communicating with your target audiences, as well as the team members with whom you and your staff will be in frequent contact. Furthermore, those day-to-day contacts should be available during your company’s hours of operation.
That last point may sound obvious. You’re used to being able to pick up the phone or dash off a text or email to a vendor and receive a response in a reasonable period of time. However, most BPO operations are located offshore.
But how far offshore? That’s an important consideration when you consider undertaking a collaborative work relationship. If your BPO partner is based on the other side of the world, you’ll find yourself conducting business with them in the middle of the night. You might even find yourself waiting until the next day to receive the response you need right now.
“Nearshoring” is a term to keep in mind because it might be critical to the strategic success of your BPO partnership. A nearshore BPO company is one that is located in another country, but one in close enough proximity to your own company that you can work together during your normal business hours. In fact, you might actually share time zones with your nearshore partner.
Because of this convenient proximity, important information can be exchanged in real-time, and you can make decisions quickly with the full input of your BPO partners.
Reinforcing a Customer-Centric Culture
Regardless of your line of business, you must speak the same language as your customers — both figuratively and literally. This customer-centric BPO approach to doing business wins you new relationships and assures the long-term loyalty of your current customers. It keeps your customers’ preferences fully in mind and builds brand loyalty.
Conducting market research gives you an opportunity to solicit the opinions and feedback of your current and prospective customers. With this information, you can build services and products that are rooted in your their needs, reinforcing a customer-centric culture that will promote further success for your business.
Since they are the voice of your company, your BPO partner must take that same approach in their communication with your customers. Remember, if BPO operators are at the other end of the toll-free 24-hour service line you offer, your customers think of them as being members of your own company. So even though they’re located in another country, the BPO call center operator must have the same customer-centric approach as your own staff. After all, your BPO should maintain (and even enhance) your brand image. It’s important to work with a skilled partner with experience in market research so that you can be assured of their customer-centric approach.
This is true whether they’re taking inbound calls to serve the needs of your customers or making outbound calls to conduct surveys and gain additional market insight.
The Ideal Insurance BPO Partner
Confie is the largest and most respected personal lines insurance distributor in the United States.
What that means to your company is that a partnership with Confie BPO starts at a level of experience and expertise in insurance BPO services that simply can’t be matched by other companies. To put it another way, we really do speak your language. That’s even before we’ve taken the time and effort to get to know your company, its culture, and product offering so well that you’ll welcome our contact with your customer base.
Our BPO operation, including our call center, is located just below the U.S. border, in Tijuana, Mexico. This makes us close enough that we can be the responsive partner that you need.
Contact us online or call us at (714) 252-2500 to learn more about how we can collaborate with your company in areas beyond your core strengths, including market research. We look forward to a productive and long-term relationship.
