Transform Masters 2017 is brought to you with thanks to our sponsors Property Tree, realestate.com.au and Real+
In this preview of her Transform Masters Coaching session, Beepo CEO Aimee Engelmann talks about the advantages and common misconceptions of outsourcing, how outsourcing drives customer service and profitability and more.
Aimee Engelmann will also be speaking at our event “How to lead a winning team in 2018” on the 14th November. To book tickets, click here.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
My name’s Aimee Engelmann. I’m the CEO at Beepo.
Q. What are some of the misconceptions about outsourcing?
Aimee: A lot of people think that staff offshore have poor English skills. If you find the right person who’s spoken English their whole life and has been through the education system in English, then they’re gonna speak really good English.
The second myth or misconception about outsourcing is that your local staff are going to feel threatened, and certainly what I’ve found with our clients is that when you hire staff offshore and you get it right and they’re actually helping with administration and helping the business more efficient. The local team actually love it.
Another misconception is all about quality, so people naturally think that the quality may not be good if they’re hiring people who aren’t in Australia but that’s certainly not the case. If you find the right people and you train them well, the quality is absolutely the same.
If you’ve got a really good customer service survey or some way of understanding how your customers perceive your service, then you can actually make sure with data by reaching out to them and surveying them and make sure that there isn’t any quality that’s compromised.
Q. What about security / privacy?
Aimee: Obviously, a work from office staff member is going to be in an environment and have some infrastructure wrapped around that to ensure that all that data is maintained and is secure at all times.
Q. What do you need to think about before outsourcing?
Aimee: You need to be really transparent with your local staff so you need to tell them the drivers behind it, why are you thinking of hiring someone offshore and you need to tell them about the benefits and what’s in it for them.
If you can improve the administration and the function of the turn around of your administration, your local staff will actually be more happy.
Q. What are the benefits of outsourcing?
Aimee: Your business can become super efficient so it’s about taking the administration stuff that often a lot of Australian staff don’t like doing and getting that done for you.
Aussie staff, when they’re working with someone offshore, often find that their satisfaction in their job actually increases because they’re doing more of the stuff that they love and they’re getting rid of some of the administration stuff that they don’t like. So staff tend to stick around longer because they’re enjoying themselves and they’re working to their strengths.
Q. How can outsourcing drive customer service and profitability?
Aimee: From a business point of view, there’s a huge advantage in getting that team really, really efficient. Which then of course drives customer service and drives profitability.
So if you’re dealing with simple administration stuff and follow-up stuff maybe in property management, things like arrears and repairs and maintenance, if you’re doing that quicker then customers can actually see that and feel that.
So your customer satisfaction is actually going to increase. Your referrals will increase and that’ll have a flow and effect to your profitability.
Q. What are some examples of tasks that can be outsourced?
Aimee:So when it comes to examples of the sorts of things that are getting done offshore in property management departments, things like processing tenancy applications, dealing with repairs and maintenance, helping with exit processes, also routine inspections are all common tasks that are being supported by staff offshore and typically in the Philippines.
Up to 81% of the tasks in a property management department can actually get done offshore.
Q. What can you expect the total savings from outsourcing to be?
Aimee: So from a purely financial point of view, the average agency will be saving about 70% on their total employment costs. You can get a university qualified administrator who is motivated and ready to go, starting from around $10 an hour.
It also includes all of the paper management aspects so it’s things like the HR side of things and the payroll and any of the industrial relations aspects are all taken care of so yes, there’s huge savings and that’s quite obvious but there’s also a whole lot of people management pain that is managed for you when you’re working with a good offshore provider.
