10 Common Challenges of BPO Industry

Outsourcing involves contracting out your business processes to some third-party either at a domestic or offshore level. The global BPO industry was estimated to be about 83 billion dollars in 2013 and ever since then it has always been on the rise. The BPO industry is one of the fastest growing sectors. Various factors such as cost advantage, risk mitigation, utilization improvement, and high competency have all come together and played their own part in the massive growth of the BPO industry.

The massive growth of the industry and high level of competition in this domain comes with its own set of challenges in the BPO management of these companies. Dealing with highly-demanding customers, tight budgets, crazy work hours and schedules, customer satisfaction are just some of the challenges faced by this industry. In this article we have listed some of the common challenges in BPO sector.

10 Common Challenges of BPO Industry

The growing numbers paint a nice picture for the BPO industry but it is not so always. The top management has to face lot of challenges when working in the BPO industry and constantly think of solutions to these challenges. Some of the common challenges faced by the BPO industry are listed here -

1. Changing Political Scenarios

   Political situations in regions of America and Europe can affect the BPO industry drastically. Citizen protests, wars, falling economies, etc. can force the governments to pass certain bills which prevent outsourcing to other countries. This can have a major effect on the BPO companies.

2. Exceeding Customer Expectations

   Providing customers with complete satisfaction has always been a difficult task for all BPO companies. Various social media channels and increasing competition in the market has resulted in increasing customer expectations to the roof and proves to be quite a challenge for the BPO industry.

3. Shoestring Budgets

   One of the major challenges faced by the BPO industry is the budget. Most of the times outsourcing companies are expected to produce the best results with minimal cost. They are forced to get the maximum out from a limited number of resources.

4. Health Concerns

   Most of the outsourcing companies are situated in regions which come under different time zones, hence the resources may be working at all times of the day. This can result in major health concerns among the employees and reduce their efficiency drastically.

5. Customer Attrition

   At some point of the project, the client may just terminate the deal and hand over the project to your competitor for different reasons. The cost of such sudden deal termination can be huge and can affect most BPO companies to a large extent.

6. Scarcity of Talent

   One of the major challenges in BPO recruitment is to find the right talented workforce to work in the industry. According to a recent survey it was noticed that only a fraction of graduates are actually suitable and ready to work in the BPO industry.

7. Employee Attrition

   It is quite notable that the employee attrition rate in the BPO industry in quite high. The companies are not able to convincingly retain their employees for long and thereby suffer huge losses every time they have to train new employees. The cost of hiring a new employee and training that person for the job is again time consuming and expensive.

8. Communication Channels

   The number of communication channels has increased drastically over the past decade. People have moved on to social media channels to send messages apart from the usual calls and mails. This proves to be quite challenging for the BPO companies to decide which channel to concentrate on when interacting with their clients.

9. Frequent Disruptions

   Call traffic management, poor internet connection, unclear phone lines, power shutdowns etc. may result in disrupting the various processes. BPO companies usually work in 24/7 schedule and are expected to be available at all times. Such disruptions can cost the companies a lot and can be very challenging to the industry.

10. Brand Equity

    Brand building is an important task performed by the HR professional. This is one of the common challenges for HR managers. They are expected to provide adequate training and a good working environment, so when they leave the company they are the brand ambassadors of the company. If the employees are unhappy, it can easily lead to negative word-of-mouth, thereby leading to diminished brand equity.

Choose Flatworld Solutions for Any Kind of BPO Requirement

Flatworld Solutions has been providing a host of BPO services for over 17 years now to clients around the world. Our highly qualified business executives will help you through the entire process of outsourcing. We provide a range of services including call center, finance and accounting, data entry, software development, creative design, photo editing, healthcare BPO services, engineering, research and analysis, mortgage support services, etc. Our vast experience of having worked with clients from various backgrounds helps us understand their business models and provide the services accordingly.

If you have any kind BPO service requirement, feel free to get in touch with us and we will get back to you within 24 hours.