What can you expect during the initial setup phase of your outsourcing journey?

01 PLAN
In this phase, a thorough and detailed plan will be created for a flawless transition and knowledge acquisition to happen. This plan will include the names of all the participants and will also include a deadline for every activity. At this stage, the project team will also chart out a detailed technology evaluation plan and a business continuity plan. All the plans made in this phase will be signed-off by the stakeholders. You will be appointed an Account Manager who will spearhead the entire Contact Centre Project from the planning phases through to the day to day overseeing of your project. The Account Manager will report everything about the project to the business stakeholders, via a project plan. The Account Manager will be joined by a training facilitator, a Technology Manager and an Operations Manager.

02 ACQUIRE
This phase of the project starts with a kick-off meeting with all the key stakeholders, to make sure that adequate resources are allocated to commence the knowledge acquisition. The Account Manager will acquire the assistance of networking, documentation and system experts to identify process details, benchmarks and call flows. These details will be documented and evaluated by the client. Reports and Service Level Agreements (SLAs) will also be captured and documented at this stage. The project team will map people skills to each process to make sure that the right competencies are identified before the recruitment begins. Before this stage ends, the team will ensure that all the required documentations are approved and signed-off by the client.

03 TRANSFER
This phase begins with the various Team Leaders, responsible for the project execution, executing the various plans that were developed and signed-off in the previous stages of the project. Next, the technology infrastructure will be deployed. Experts will then perform availability testing on the infrastructure. Various back-ups will also be taken. The hiring plan will commence with the delivery team getting introduced to the project with induction and communication training. The agents and Team Leaders of the project will be given project-specific training from the Training Facilitator/s. All the members of the team will be required to clear a process knowledge evaluation before they begin answering live calls. The infrastructure and systems used for the project will be tested against varied measurement parameters. A test run of the infrastructure will be carried out to authenticate the technology and stability of the process from offshore business facilities. After obtaining the approval of the stakeholders and the client, the project team will go forward with the “Kick Off phase”.

04 KICK OFF
Once all project parameters have been monitored and met, the project will commence with “On the minute” hands-on monitoring by the Technical Team, the Facilitator/s and the Account Manager to ensure a smooth rollout of the service. During the rollout period, a detailed daily report will be sent to the stakeholders and we suggest daily touch base meetings with the relevant stakeholders to optimize the service.

05 MONITOR AND REPORT
Monitoring your team of agents is an ongoing part of our services. Once we have received your KPI's and other metrics, we ensure your team meet these goals consistently. ARC also provides a custom report to each client on a weekly or monthly basis.

What is the minimum number of agents/staff I can place with ARC?

Part of our vision and mission is to support small start-up companies and help them grow in a sustainable way. In line with this ARC will take on new accounts that require anywhere from 2 agents or more.

What is the difference between a shared services and dedicated services?

ARC aims to offer you flexibility, in line with this, you may only need an agent a few hours a day or a few days a week, or for a specific period of time. We offer shared services for this, where an agent is assigned to your account for a fixed period or part time. These desks are situated on an open floor with shared team leaders and other support staff. Dedicated services could be compared to Offshoring. A dedicate team is a literal extension of the clients company and in reality the client is able to state that they have a South African office. ARC manages all aspects of teams infrastructure including recruitment, HR, Payroll, IT and more. Dedicated Service Desks have their own infrastructure, exclusive usage of the equipment allocated to their account and dedicated support services.