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 -

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Source: flatworldsolutions