Before Outsourcing: Define Company Culture

Why is it important? Having a clearly defined and communicated company culture is essential for loyalty, vision, and driving results. When outsourcing your customer service, it is critical to be able to communicate expectations and have a theme of culture and values to tie those expectations to. Defining your company's culture in a strong and sustainable way will make the outsourcing experience consistent for your customers.

How? Most individuals within a company have some idea of what their company's culture is. You might be surprised though if you were to ask others to interpret the culture of the company. At the core, a company's culture is a set of shared values and practices. We've already established this is critical to the success of outsourcing, but where do you start?

There has already been work done for you in most cases. First, take a look at:

• Mission / Vision Statements
• Company Values
• Existing communication processes
• Logos and other related collateral
• Strong representatives of company culture

Here are some example characteristics of company cultures that others have used successfully:

• Mission clarity
• Employee commitment
• Fully empowered employees
• High integrity workplace
• Strong trust relationships
• Highly effective leadership
• Effective systems and processes
• Performance-based compensation and reward programs
• Customer-focused
• Effective 360-degree communications
• Commitment to learning and skill development
• Emphasis on recruiting and retaining outstanding employees
• High degree of adaptability
• High accountability standards
• Demonstrated support for innovation

Also consider these factors and their importance:

• Industry recognition (e.g., customer service awards)
• Communication style (dignified professional communication vs. relaxed friendly communication)
• Management engagement with employees
• Executive engagement with employees

Going Overboard: In the end, you are outsourcing because you trust the experts who will handle your business. Yes it is critical to establish your company's culture and gain commitment from your vendor to ingrain, promote, and foster the same culture, but there are limits. The vendor's culture will likely have points complimentary to your organization's culture. Use these complimentary points to your advantage. Also, realize the vendor will have processes in place that will enhance the experience of your customers. Allow within your culture, the opportunity to experiment and innovate and also accept variance from vendor to vendor when it comes to processes. However, demand the same results regardless of the vendor.

Make it stick. Defining and communicating your company's culture once will never be enough. Set up a clear and recurring method of communicating the culture of your organization. Utilize those who exemplify the company's culture and those who help to define and shape the culture to communicate this message. Test, that's right TEST, your vendors on the culture through audits, questionnaires, and discussions to ensure your customer service partners understand the culture inside and out.

What if? What if we've already outsourced, and our culture hasn't taken with the vendor? Use the above tips to define and communicate your company's culture. Do it now, do it again in a month, three months, and continually going forward. If you're behind with this, you're going to need to hit it big and keep plugging away to get it into the fabric of your vendor's business.