123outsource.net keeps stats on BPO companies. After all, we need information that can help us decide who should be high in the search results and who should be removed completely from the list. At first we saw who answered their phone. Then, we tried to see how easy it was to talk to a manager. After that, we assessed the quality of the conversation with the manager.
Phone Stats
I found that these stats were helpful, however, it is unpredictable whether you will call on a holiday as I don’t know when Indian holidays are. It seems every other day is a holiday. No wonder nothing gets done. It is also unpredictable if the manager will be in. Usually the BPO workers don’t communicate well, so if you can’t speak to a manager, the conversation will be horrible. Another thing I noticed is that some companies had horrible phone lines, so that they can’t even hear you properly unless you repeat everything several times. So, phone stats were helpful, but I found even better analytics which were easy to get.
Email Stats
A month ago, I emailed most of the people on our outsourcing directory asking them for basic rates. Some ignored my email altogether and got kicked off the directory. While others, answered the email, but didn’t give me rates. A few asked for more information instead of answering my question which really was a headache. But, a few answered my questions within minutes and I was very happy about that. Those that mean business rise to the top of the search results and will get more business as a result!
Click Stats
However, click stats were very much more interesting. Since BPO companies are placed at different levels on our search results, their click stats will really vary. I wanted to even the score and create an AB testing environment. So, I moved a few listings from the middle of the list to near the top of the list and compared their clicks to others near the top of the list. The result was that those who were originally near the middle of the list performed horribly on the top of the list. I learned that the public didn’t like these listings enough to click on them which meant that the companies were horrible.
One of the reason I like click stats is that I don’t have to do any work to test companies out. I just put them in a placement, take notes, and get a result that is very accurate. Click stats can really vary too. A good company will perform six times as well on click stats than a bad company. We had companies getting six clicks a day while others got less than one click — talk about unpopular.
The problem is that it is time consuming to get click stats on every single company on my site. So, I’ll just stick to the popular categories like call center, bpo, and data entry. Wish me luck. But, the bottom line is that click stats are the most cut and dry method of analyzing the quality of a company. Call stats are unreliable since you don’t know who will answer. Email stats are good, but only distinguish the speed of the result. Click stats tell me if the public likes an outsourcing company enough to click on them which is much better than me deciding how I feel about a BPO company.