By: Christine Kowalczyk, Chief Operating Officer, Support.com

While a BPO’s success in delivering customer care depends on a multitude of factors, reliable recruitment and employee retention play key roles in driving exceptional performance. Over time, the BPO industry has worked to make its processes for staffing more efficient, using digital channels to source candidates and hiring seasonal workers for peak times. Nevertheless, the past year introduced new demands for customer care, which highlighted another key issue: the demand for specific, expert-level skill sets.

Looking towards the future, BPO success will be increasingly defined by greater scalability and flexibility in staffing, particularly employees with skills and experience matched to client needs. The need to tailor and expedite hiring processes will become more critical than ever. How can BPO leaders tackle this demand?

Meet homesourcing: a model for technology-enabled, expert-staffed, secure customer engagement that is always on, no matter what. Homesourcing ensures that we are able to source the best fit candidates for work-from-home jobs across the most in-demand industries. Here’s how it works:

Fast Ramp-Up and Flexibility

With homesourcing, geographical location is no longer a limitation in recruiting. We can recruit and hire the best talent for any job, no matter where they are located. Talent acquisition is done completely virtually so we’re able to quickly access a broad pool of candidates in any state, country, or region. We not only identify those with specific skill sets, but also custom profile our candidates in terms of personality and work environment for success in a remote work culture.

Our recruiting and staffing processes are tailored to the rapidly-evolving needs of our customers. Our flexible staffing model, with full-time, part-time, and split shifts available, enables us to scale rapidly and efficiently handle volume fluctuations – a unique advantage for clients with highly seasonal needs or unexpected spikes in call volume.

Hyper-Targeted Recruiting at Scale

We are also able to rapidly hire a large volume of candidates with specific skills, licensure, industry experience, product knowledge, and more. While our talent acquisition strategy allows us to on-board expertly matched talent in as little as one week, a typical brick-and-mortar BPO hiring process can take up to six weeks to hire the right candidate. Moreover, the fit between our candidates’ skills and experience and the needs of our customers drives a much greater speed to proficiency and, in the long, run, much higher employee engagement and retention.

Case Study: Homesourcing Talent Acquisition

Recently, a health p lan provider engaged Support.com to quickly identify, onboard, and deploy healthcare experts across eight states to effectively service members of an Affordable Health Care Act plan. The Provider sought a staffing solution that not only enabled a quick ramp of experts but also specifically targeted those with previous health care expertise and certifications.

We quickly developed a strategy to create the ideal expert profile and the optimal recruiting strategies to efficiently source those candidates. We sought applicants with previous work experience in the healthcare field, casting a wide-net across the eight states to identify those able to answer customers’ state-specific healthcare issues. The experts were fully ramped within one week – a 75% reduction in the time it typically takes traditional bricks-and-mortar BPOs. Furthermore, the team of healthcare experts has experienced zero attrition while maintaining excellent customer care scores – a testament to how well our experts were matched to the client’s needs.

Trust the Experts in Hiring Homesourced Experts

Having refined our homesourcing model for over 20 years, we know it takes careful consideration of the type of people hired, and the processes, technology platforms, and company culture that keeps them connected, productive, and secure. We believe that our homesourcing model enables our employees to do their best work from home, and we’ve seen time and time again that employee satisfaction leads to customer satisfaction.

We’re proud of our ability to hire custom-profiled experts that are knowledgeable about our clients’ specific industry, products, and services, which in turn enables us to consistently deliver exceptional customer care. Need more flexibility in your outsourcing model? Learn how we can help your organization at https://corporate.support.com/enterprise-solutions.