Did you know that about 20% of small businesses fail within the first year?
Also, by the end of the second year, 30 percent of businesses will have failed. The number will continue to rise by the end of the fifth year, and by the end of the decade, only 30 percent of businesses will remain.
Crunching the numbers, that is a 70 percent failure rate for small businesses alone! And that is a fact.
Those numbers come from the report published by Fundera in November 2020.
In their report, they also found out some of the reasons why small businesses are closing down:
Looking at these reasons, what SMEs need to do is to develop one thing — Quality Management.
Quality Management, or Total Quality Management, is everything a company does to produce and deliver reliable products and services. It often involves the timeliness and responsiveness of the company.
In a paper by Paul M. Terry and published under the Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, they look back at the birth of TQM and the logic behind it.
It all started back in World War II when Dr. William Edwards Deming helped Japanese manufacturers recover by teaching them quality-control ways of doing things.
Soon after, Deming took the attention of the world. He then encouraged Americans to learn how to “work smarter, not harder” by adopting his quality-focused way of thinking.
With that said, we can define Quality Management as the philosophy of working smartly to produce high-quality products and services.
What’s more, as a guide to reach top quality of service, QM is broken down into four main parts or level:
Component | Brief Definition |
Quality Planning |
Quality Planning defines the standard to be met and the steps to take to reach it. Other than that, it is in the Quality Planning stage where all cost and scheduling are evaluated. Weak planning can possibly increase customer dissatisfaction and business risk. |
Quality Control |
In common terms, Quality Control or QC means making sure that a product or service meets the prescribed technical standard of quality. Quality control consists of careful examination, testing and quality measurement to prove that work meets expectations. |
Quality Assurance |
There is a confusion between QA and QC’s definition. Penn State University clears this up on their website. According to them, QA refers to: “Tools and procedures used to assess adherence to specifications and quality requirements after initial deliverable completion and in a final step to check and approve the deliverables.” |
Quality Improvement |
Quality Improvement, or QI, happens at the end of service. QI uses all the data it gathered during the customer service process to eliminate or improve parts of it. Put simply, quality improvement (QI) refers to methods to improve the production process. |
Talking about Quality Management you must be wondering, what does Customer Support have to do with it?
As we have said, SMEs fail because they do not have an established Quality Management System. And it is understandable, since most of them do not have the ability and time to know everything about Quality Management.
But there is actually a solution to this concern and it comes in the form of BPOs.
BPO firms can help small businesses improve the quality of their service, without spending too much valuable supplies.
There are three well-known ways how BPO can help SMEs:
In summary, BPO can enforce, introduce and improve the Quality Management System in your business.
What’s more, Customer Care Outsourcing companies need to have a deep understanding of the 4 levels of quality management to work effectively.
Like any other businesses, Quality Management is important to BPO companies to drive consistent positive results.
Just imagine if your outsourced support agents are carelessly taking calls without practicing proper account checking? The lawsuits and complaints will definitely pile up and it might result in bad media.
Hence, BPOs should practice proper QM to make sure that no such thing will happen.
To define how important QM is to BPOs, let us refer to an article by Community Tool Box. In their website, they highlight the fourteen things that businesses needed to do in order to reach quality performance:
What’s more, good customer service must be built on putting quality at the highest standard. That means all 4 levels of quality management must factor in, in providing support.
Component | Application in a BPO Setting |
Quality Planning |
QP means to find out where the BPO organization stands. It is the part where businesses decide what to focus on and how it will be measured. This part usually starts at the beginning of your partnership with the BPO. It is the part where you evaluate the possible KPIs and SLAs that your agents should meet. QP is important because it sets the bar for quality service. |
Quality Control |
Quality control in a BPO setting is testing if the new guidelines of service will work. QC means testing the process. It is important for BPOs to test the quality of their service to take note of possible changes and improvements. |
Quality Assurance |
Call center QA is the process of listening to an agent’s call and carefully studying the quality of it with respect to customer’s needs and expectations. QAs are one of the most important things for BPO companies since it can drive customer happiness and minimize agent lapses and mistakes. Basically, having a good system of QA checking you can decrease business risks. |
Quality Improvement |
QI comes at last and it is the most important level of all, because it is where you take actions. QI can come from the BPO company or their clients. Either way, the purpose of it is to fix parts of the customer care process that are not working. QI usually comes in the form of meetings and town halls. But it can appear everywhere in the process. |
Partner with the BPO solution provider that understands what Quality Management is all about!
Magellan Solutions is a BPO company based in the Philippines that focuses on supporting small to midsize businesses.
With over 18 years of industry experience, we offer high-quality customer service support and call center services. On top of that, we are a certified ISO 27001:2013 and HIPAA-compliant company.
At Magellan Solutions, we combine technology such as ACD, CRM, and IVR with agent skills. We make sure that they have all the necessary tools, equipment, and knowledge to serve customers.
We believe that progress shouldn’t break your bank, so our services remain flexible and competitive.
Contact us now, and we will discuss with you how we can help your business succeed. Complete the contact form below and talk to us for free!
Contact us today for more information.
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