What if you could expand your small business almost right away?
Many businesses use business process outsourcing (BPO) to meet different needs and expand in dynamic ways. This includes some of the largest businesses in the world.
What about small businesses? It’s one thing for BPO to help out a tech giant here or a financial titan there. But does BPO actually work for the small businesses that serve as the backbone of our economy?
Keep reading to discover the answers you need and to learn whether BPO is the right choice for your own small business.
Will I Get Qualified Help from a BPO?
A good BPO provider has subject matter experts who fully understand your industry. This helps them seamlessly integrate with your existing team and interface with customers as needed.
You might hesitate to outsource parts of your business because it feels a bit like inviting strangers in. It’s easy to hold off because you are worried about whether the BPO provider’s agents actually understand your industry.
However, at Confie, we make sure to pair small businesses with the BPO subject matter experts they deserve. For example, we have agents who understand industries like healthcare, finance, and everything in between. So when you begin to outsource your own needs, we make sure to pair you with agents who intimately understand your industry.
The agents’ expertise also helps them hit the ground running once they get started. Since outsourced needs are often very time-sensitive, having subject matter experts at your disposal can really help your small business.
Will BPO Help Me Beat My Competition?
Business process outsourcing helps smaller businesses offer more services at a low cost. This can help you compete with other businesses, including larger rivals.
One of the biggest reasons that small businesses struggle so much is that they have larger competitors. When a competitor has more resources and more personnel, they can offer more products and services at more competitive rates. Since the average consumer mostly wants to save money, they end up going to larger businesses rather than smaller ones.
With the right BPO provider, though, you can expand your services in a number of exciting ways. You can do so in a way that is much more affordable than expanding your in-house team (more on this later).
The end result is that your small business will be able to keep up with your larger competitors. You may even be able to surpass them in important areas such as customer service. Therefore, BPO can help to boost your bottom line while also building up customer loyalty.
Will BPO Save My Small Business Money?
BPO can help save you money because outsourcing is cheaper than hiring additional full-time staff. Additionally, BPO can help you offer more services and generally boost your bottom line.
Most small businesses struggle with money. It’s the primary reason they lose ground to larger competitors: They simply don’t have the resources to compete. Because of this, you might think that your own small business cannot afford to hire a BPO provider.
The good news is that a BPO provider can actually save you money and will soon pay for itself. That is because outsourcing different needs is far cheaper than paying for the salaries and benefits of more full-time employees. You can get all the benefits of having a larger team while paying only a fraction of the cost.
The end result is that you can outperform and underspend the competition, helping set your business up for future success.
Will a Transition to BPO Be Easy for My Small Business?
The transition to using a good BPO provider should be seamless. That is because nearshore BPO combined with subject matter experts helps the outsourced agents fit right in.
Outsourcing occasionally has a negative reputation among both customers and businesses. That is because everyone has experienced at least one nightmare customer service phone call where language barriers made communication nearly impossible.
However, those language barriers only occur when you use offshore BPO. As the name implies, offshore BPO is located far away from your own country, meaning there will be fewer people who really understand your country’s language and customs.
Here at Confie, we only provide nearshore BPO. Nearshore means that the agents live in countries that either border your own or are otherwise very close. This means that you never have to worry about outsourcing creating language barriers, and your small business can count on these workers seamlessly transitioning into your existing team.
Will BPO Help With Productivity?
BPO is effective at making your business more productive. That is because the more help you have, the more individual workers can focus on their primary tasks.
It’s an open secret that better employee productivity is the key to growing your small business. Did you know that BPO can help provide the kind of productivity you’ve always dreamed of?
The reason is simple. As great as your in-house staff is, each of them is likely juggling multiple responsibilities. This is basically inevitable in a small business where each employee has to wear multiple hats.
When you hire a BPO provider, you don’t just get as many subject matter experts as you need. You also get workers that will completely devote themselves to whatever task you assign them. Because these workers are free of distractions and additional responsibilities, they can focus on the kind of productivity that your business needs to grow and prosper.
Will BPO Affect My Hours of Operation?
BPO can help you offer certain services for longer than you normally would. For example, you can maintain a 24/7 customer service center that operates outside of business hours.
A great way to expand your business is to extend your hours, even if it’s just for customer service. For example, you may run a business that isn’t usually open on weekends. Thanks to BPO, you can offer telephone customer service for that business outside of typical operating hours.
That means you can have dedicated BPO staff answering and responding to customer questions and concerns when you aren’t around. When you open the business up again on Monday morning, you won’t have a small mountain of messages that need immediate attention.
Additionally, this kind of 24/7 customer service helps build customer loyalty and retention. Ultimately, helping transform your best customers into brand ambassadors is one more way BPO can help small businesses compete with larger competitors.
What If I Don’t Need That Much Help?
With BPO, you can outsource more or less help as needed. That way, you are never “stuck” outsourcing more assistance than you actually need.
Another reason small businesses sometimes hesitate to use BPO is that they don’t know how much help they really need. Therefore, these businesses worry that they will end up outsourcing too little or potentially outsourcing too much.
However, one of the greatest things about BPO is that you can outsource as much or as little of it as you want. On top of that, you can hire BPO for short periods or for an extended period.
For example, it’s not uncommon for small businesses to hire a BPO provider when they are rolling out a new product or trying to make it through the holidays. In both of these cases, a small business will need BPO services for a temporary period before returning to business as usual.
Other times, though, you may need BPO for longer periods, such as when you are expanding your services or opening a new location. In these cases, you can benefit from BPO as long as you need it!
Will BPO Help Me Scale My Small Business?
BPO can help you scale your business by providing as much assistance as you need whenever you need it. This also keeps your business very versatile.
The next BPO benefit to small businesses extends from the previous one. Simply put, BPO is the “easy button” you’ve always wanted when it comes to scaling your business.
Scaling is often difficult for smaller businesses because sales may unexpectedly increase at any point. While this is generally good news, that same business may have trouble capitalizing on this success by expanding without compromising their existing quality of products and services.
With BPO, you can get as much help as you need virtually as quickly as you need it. When your business begins taking off, you can use a fraction of those profits to hire the different BPO services you need. These services can help maintain your company’s high quality reputation while you work on finding permanent hires.
Will My Business Remain Versatile?
BPO makes your business very versatile because you can always outsource more help when something unexpected happens. With BPO, you never have to worry about being shorthanded again.
The most nail-biting part of running a small business is that you never know precisely what external factors will affect your business. Even if you are doing everything “right,” you could be blindsided by things like the 2008 economic collapse or the 2020 COVID pandemic.
When your business is affected like that, you may have to make hard decisions in the form of layoffs. Once business gets back to normal, you may struggle to find and hire the most qualified workers.
With BPO, you can effectively keep your business versatile. In the face of an unexpected catastrophe, you can always scale down your BPO. Once business picks back up, you can outsource more of your needs once again. No matter what the market does, your business will be prepared thanks to BPO!
Will BPO Work for My Small Business?
BPO is very effective at helping your small business expand. The trick is to find a BPO provider that understands both your industry and your needs. A good BPO provider will customize its services to meet your unique challenges.
All of this brings us back to the original question: Does BPO work for small businesses? The short answer to that question is a resounding “yes!”
BPO has helped thousands of businesses succeed and even thrive in recent years. If you’re ready to grow and expand your own business, now is the time to see what BPO can do for you.
Remember, because you can outsource as much or as little as you want and stop outsourcing at any time, you have nothing to lose by using a BPO provider!
Get the Best BPO Today
Now you know that BPO really does work for a small business. Are you ready to discover what BPO can do for your own business?
Here at Confie BPO, our specialty is helping businesses focus on their core values while our trained agents work in the background. To learn more about it and discover what we can do to help grow your business, all you have to do is contact us today!
