Outsourcing, run by people who’ve signed the contracts.
We’ve picked the partners, negotiated the SLAs and lived with the results, on the client side. If outsourcing isn’t right for you yet, we’ll say so on the first call.
What we’ve actually done
We’ve done this in the same order you will: write the requirement, sit through the pitches, pick the partner, argue the redlines, then own the result on Monday morning when the queue is real. Most BPO consultants hand you the shortlist and leave before that part. We’re not a broker with a rolodex. We’re a buyer who already made the expensive mistakes on someone else’s payroll.
CSAT, held through transitions
Measured on the partner floor after the move, not before it.
Annual budget owned
Our own contact-center P&L, with the vendor invoices in it.
Countries operated in
In-house teams and partner floors alike, on five continents.
Contacts a year moved
Transitioned to partners without the customer noticing.
Where outsourcing goes wrong
Nearly every outsourcing problem we’ve been called into looks like one of these. If yours does too, it’s fixable, and earlier than you think.
SLA gaming.
Eighty percent of contacts answered in twenty seconds, met on the monthly average, while the hard queues rot underneath it. Partners optimise for what the contract counts, so short easy contacts get picked up first and the complaint that needs fourteen minutes sits until the interval is safe. We write service levels per queue, with the tail measured, so the average can’t hide a backlog.
Knowledge transfer that stops at the training deck.
Forty slides go across, the trainer certifies the cohort, and everyone calls it transferred. But the deck holds the policy, not the judgement — when to bend the refund rule, which account manager to warn, what the escalation actually is. We plan for the second transfer, the one that happens in the first eight weeks through shadowing, calibration and a written escalation path, and we budget for it up front.
The month-six attrition cliff.
Your ramp cohort was good. Six months in, half of them have moved to a better-paying account on the same floor, and the replacements are training on a deck that was last updated at go-live. Nobody told you because attrition sits on the partner’s side of the reporting line. We make tenure and backfill quality visible in the monthly pack and price continuity into the rate rather than pretending it’s free.
Tooling and data access the contract never mentioned.
Licences, telephony, QA tooling, the BI seat someone needs to pull raw contact data — these show up as change requests after signature, at a price nobody competed for. Worse is the data itself: transcripts and recordings the partner holds and won’t hand back in a usable format. We put the tooling line and the data-portability clause in the RFP, where it’s still a bidding lever.
Governance that ends at go-live.
The launch has a project manager, a cadence and a plan. Week nine has a weekly call that quietly becomes monthly, then a deck. Programs drift here more than anywhere: nobody owns the relationship on your side, so nothing gets renegotiated until renewal. We name the internal owner before launch and hand over a governance rhythm that survives the first quarterly business review without us in the room.
Where, and who with.
The cheapest rate is rarely the cheapest program. What onshore, nearshore and offshore cost you in overlap, attrition and brand risk only matters against your contacts: how complex they are, how much they can go wrong, and how fast you need to scale.
We’ve run all three, so we don’t send you a ranking. We take your requirements and hand back a recommendation: the geography, three to five partners scored against it, and the reference calls and pricing teardown that back it up. We sit on your side of the table for all of it, including the part where we tell you the cheapest bid is the one that will churn agents.
What we can help you outsource
Inbound customer service
Calls, chats and email handled inside your own systems, with an escalation path that’s written down before cutover.
Outbound calling and campaigns
Follow-up, surveys, appointment setting and win-back, with talk tracks and compliance rules agreed before the first dial.
Technical support
A tiered help desk where agents certify on your product before they take a ticket, and Tier 3 talks to your engineers.
Sales and lead generation
SDR teams that hand your closers qualified, briefed meetings instead of a list, reported on weekly pipeline value.
Back-office support
Data processing, document work, reconciliation and claims, run alongside your team first to prove accuracy.
Omnichannel support
Voice, chat, email, social and SMS outsourced as one omnichannel operation with shared context, not six inboxes and six vendors.
We vet every vendor before you sign.
Every vendor looks great in the pitch. So they all answer the same RFP, get scored on the same scorecard and quote on the same pricing basis. You keep the paperwork, whether we stay on or not.
One RFP for everyone
Your requirements, written so every vendor bids in the same format: service levels per queue, one pricing basis, exit terms up front.
A scorecard you sign off first
We agree the criteria and weights with you before any bid opens. Then every vendor gets scored against them, with the reasons written down.
Prices you can actually compare
Every quote rebuilt into one fully loaded hourly rate, with wages, overhead, tooling and the vendor's margin split out.
A contract on your terms
Our markup on the vendor's own paper: service credits that apply, volume that flexes both ways, and an exit you can use.
How a partner search actually runs
Discovery call
Fifteen minutes on your volume, channels and what’s wrong. No pitch, and you can stop here.
Fit assessment
Languages, compliance, tooling and budget, written up as an RFP and a scorecard you own.
Shortlist
Three to five partners scored side by side, plus reference calls you sit in on yourself.
Negotiation
Cost build with vendor margin exposed, SLAs with penalties that bite, and exit rights.
Launch and ramp
Training oversight and a governance plan through the first QBR, until the numbers hold.
Price an outsourcing deal before you talk to a vendor
Two free tools built from the same rate data as our playbook: model your own contact volume, or compare fully loaded cost across 18 countries. No signup, and the rates are published with their sources.
Free advice while you think it over
All articlesBPO pricing models, compared
Hourly, per FTE or per ticket. How each one hides margin, and how to put three quotes on one axis.
What is BPO, explained
The whole model in one read: what gets outsourced, what it costs, what goes wrong.
How to choose a BPO vendor
The criteria, the questions to ask on reference calls, and the red flags that should end a conversation.
Tell us what’s going on.
Fifteen minutes, no deck. Bring your volume, your channels and the thing that’s actually bothering you. You’ll leave with a straight answer on whether outsourcing fixes it, and if it doesn’t, what does. Most of these calls don’t end in us working together, and that’s fine.
Book a free 15-min call Rather write? hello@rethinkcx.com