Holiday Season: How Flexible is Your Outsourcing Partner?

When facing holidays, it is important to get the service levels high. As most internal main office employees would not be willing to work over Christmas or New Year without adequate compensation, many companies are facing a challenge. The solution could lie in outsourcing into companies where Christmas is not a national holiday and the costs are much lower over the season than getting temporary staff in and train them internally before the holiday season. However, not all outsourcing companies are created the same and there is a difference between the service level offers during Christmas holidays. Before facing an emergency, some details need to be clarified with the outsourcing firm. Read the tips below.

Moving Operation Offshore Completely

When companies are facing the holiday season, operations managers and owners are busy at making arrangements. However, planning ahead and ensuring an undisrupted service is easy when contacting offshore outsourcing services. Staff would appreciate if they did not have to work over the holiday season, not to mention that there is no guarantee that they would go to work when scheduled due to family emergencies. Therefore, the best possible solution is to move the operations over to the outsourcing company before the holiday season starts and providing business partners with the best level of service for urgent projects. Self-employed service providers would also need a break over the holidays; it is easy to hand over projects for well-trained offshore workers.

Temporary Increase of Outsourcing Levels

If you are already using outsourcing agencies, in order to get more work done without more effort over the holiday and get a competitive advantage in the market, increasing the level of service and employee hours is a good option. Urgent projects from large customers might arrive, and you do not have to compromise between spending time with your family and getting a long term partnership with a desired customer.

Cost Prediction of Outsourcing

When selecting an outsourcing company for the holiday season, it is crucial to clarify the cost involved. Some agencies would charge extra, especially if their staff is located in a Christian country. However, this is usually not the case when ordering services from India, where Christmas is not commonly celebrated. However, projecting the cost of outsourcing before ordering the service is still important to adjust the prices quoted for customers. Agency fees, support and training needs to be taken into consideration when creating a holiday season offer.

Confirmation of Service Offer

As no digital data management company or service provider would like to deal with customer queries and complaints over the holiday season, written confirmation of the service hours, staff numbers and contacts needs to be obtained before ordering. Getting the project manager’s personal phone number and email address and having full monitoring access to the operation would provide managers with a peace of mind and security. Plans have to be worked out together with the agency, setting task priorities and ensuring that communication channels are working before handing over the operation.

– BackOffice Pro