1. Customer Contact Transformation
An Accenture Perspective
Managing Contact Center Outsourcers
It takes more than a contract to ensure that contact center
outsourcers deliver the performance gains companies expect
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Organizations with large customer
bases supporting high volumes of
customer interaction often outsourced
their customer contact operations,
expecting labor savings and access
to specialist expertise. Instead, they
often find that these cost and quality
benefits never fully materialize.
Worse, they may outsource using
contracting models (such as per-hour,
per-minute or per-call contracts) that
do not align their business objectives
with their vendor’s objectives. In fact,
outsourcing vendors are encouraged
by these contracted arrangements
to increase the client’s use of their
services at the expense of quality and
innovation, which standard contracts
and service-level agreements (SLAs)
do not cover. In some cases, even
explicit penalties are not enough
to keep vendors from working to
maximize profitability in this manner.
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Executives are often disappointed
by their vendor performance because
they assumed that outsourcing
customer contact would allow them
to focus less attention on managing
customer care operations. They trust-
ed that the outsourcing contract
alone would drive performance, and
perhaps believed the vendor would
not only manage call handling, con-
tact center staff management and
related “commodity” services, but
also areas such as training, call
routing, quality monitoring and
innovation. In most outsourced
relationships, when these customer
contact elements are not handled sep-
arately from the direct management
of the contact center, innovation and
process improvement grind to a halt.
Worse, companies may find that not
separating these elements makes it
hard to switch vendors, even when
For companies seeking to control operating
costs and improve performance, outsourcing
customer contact is often desirable and in
many cases necessary. However, managing
relationships with outsourcing vendors can
be challenging.
Accenture believes maximizing vendor performance takes investing in
a management infrastructure that maintains quality and independence
while enabling innovation and driving down costs.
3. the contract expires. Building
or acquiring this separate layer
of operational management may
seem like unnecessary costs in an
outsourced environment, but in
our experience it is the foundation
for reaping the real benefits of
outsourcing contact centers.
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Separating the operational manage-
ment of contact centers from the
direct delivery of commoditized
contact services allows vendors
to concentrate on their areas of
expertise while allowing the client
to retain control of key infrastructure
components, such as
• Forecasting
• Call management
• Training
• Quality
• Vendor performance management
• Reporting and governance
• Vendor contracting and invoicing
• Transformation and innovation
This “command center” model for
operations management can be
supported in-house or it may even
be sourced through a business
process outsourcer—regardless of
how it is implemented, the important
thing is to maintain and manage it
separately from the labor contracts.
When your organization retains
“command” of contact center opera-
tions, it also retains its buying power
in managing vendors. For example:
you now have the option of working
with multiple vendors, or running
in-house and outsourced operations
simultaneously and switching vol-
umes between them on the basis of
performance. Using a portfolio of
multiple vendors allows the creation
of a performance-driven free market-
place, in which vendor incentives are
precisely aligned to the performance
metrics which will deliver the best
results to your business.
Engagement models with contact
center vendors should be structured
to reintroduce innovation into the
outsourcing relationship. By using
marketplace techniques to standard-
ize and commoditize agent-handled
calls—as in a commodity exchange—
management can focus on other
areas such as customer satisfaction
and rewarding contact centers for
innovation. This structure motivates
vendors and contact centers to out-
perform one other in a “free market”
for agent-handled calls, with contact
center volume automatically delivered
to the most capable and cost-effec-
tive centers and agents. Again, this
sort of structure can be created in-
house or sourced from a third party.
CCoonncclluussiioonn
Achieving the cost and quality
benefits of contact center outsourcing
requires a creative, balanced contract
structure and an operations infra-
structure equal to or greater than
that required for internal operations.
Using this approach, companies not
only retain and even increase control
over service quality, but also take
advantage of natural competition in
the vendor marketplace to drive down
costs, improve efficiency and re-inject
passion and success into contact
center performance.
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Rick Merson is a senior manager in
Accenture’s Customer Relationship
Management service line where he
works with clients on contact center
and outsourcing strategy. Helena
Ring is a senior manager in
Accenture's Customer Contact
Services group, responsible for
vendor strategy and supply chain
management.
