PUT IT IN GOOD HANDS: WHAT’S NEW IN THE OUTSOURCING PRACTICE

Forbes Ukraine magazine editors contacted Adelina Call Center company with a request: “We are working on a story about the challenges and risks faced by Ukrainian business during the crisis of 2014-2016. Your company is among the most successful businesses in Ukraine, and we are interested in how you hold your positions in hard times”.

Thank you, nice to hear it, we’re doing our best.

Here’s a long read from Adelina Call Center CEO Oleg Chornobrivtsev

Reserve for wage increase and maintaining the profitability as a whole

Events which took place in our country and around the world for the last two years have definitely impacted our business as well as everyone of us.

Here, by the term “crisis” we mean transformation, changes of a global nature which touch virtually all aspects of human life; we consider crisis from the standpoint of opportunities, in the first place.

Given that the above-mentioned events mainly carry a deeply negative connotation, to maintain the service quality at a high level becomes the major achievement for the market player. Considering that our services are 100% the work of people, the most difficult and important all this time was to encourage optimism of the staff and to keep the entire system operational. After all, only happy people can work with maximum efficiency and provide the first-class service.

As a result, our revenues in 2014 increased by 29,5% in dollar terms as compared to 2013, with 28,2% growth in net profit. In 2015, we managed to earn 28,1% more if converted into hryvnia. At the same time, the level of net profit grew by only 4,3%.

Primarily, this is due to that we ensured 29% increase in wages without the change in price for clients on the background of the devaluation of both hryvnia and ruble – the two currencies in which our revenues amount to 91%.

It should be mentioned that both in 2014 and in 2015, our company continued to create new jobs, launch new projects, and increase the volume of cooperation with existing partners.

All the aforementioned is natural and logical: the phenomenon which many people call “crisis”, for outsourcing is an excellent ground for development. After all, for many companies, it becomes an urgent task to save resources by reducing fixed costs, especially those related to staff salaries, by transferring noncore business processes to outsourcing. We actively used this in 2009 and for the last two years.

In our company, job compensation amounts to approximately 70% in costs structure, and 25% is spent on rent and telecommunications, where no significant price changes were observed; thanks to this we managed to maintain the sufficient level of profitability while raising wages.

To optimize the investment in the means of production, we took advantage of the fact that companies (banks, insurers) closed their businesses at times – we bought up their almost new property: in the first place – computer equipment, server and switch hardware. Furthermore, we started to buy the contact center components on ebay, which allowed us to neutralize the devaluation of the hryvnia.

Cost optimization undoubtedly became an important success factor, but, nevertheless, our main achievement of the last two years is the expansion of the customer base, entry into new markets, making strategic deals with new partners. As a result, our brand reached the absolute leadership at the Ukrainian outsourcing market with a threefold excess of market share compared to the closest competitor (according to the study of the Ukrainian Contact Center Association).

Also, based on previously accumulated experience and knowledge, the realities of the past two years enabled us to expand the geography of our presence significantly. In 2015, Contact Center in the Russian Federation was restarted, and the company was established to operate in the market of Kazakhstan and Central Asia, which we position as an outpost for further advance to China and other countries of East Asia.

An important extended partnership agreement with one of the leading Turkish companies Tempo was concluded; it is aimed at partial merger in the future and mutual maintenance of joint projects. In March 2016, the company in Poland was registered, which implies more active work on the ever-growing and stable Polish market along with the opening of a call-center in Krakow – adelinacallcenter.pl; the company is considered an outpost for a jump-off to other European markets.

In addition to the significant expansion in the main business area, we launched new outsourcing projects: offshore programming and sales of our own IT solutions; we implemented full-cycle outstaffing; a pilot project in outsourcing of financial and legal services is being prepared for launch.

We became participants of the professional community in the field of contact centers, service and sales, united by Valentin Kasyn in Masterss project. This participation contributed to the development of our new direction of consulting and training.

The pace of our development often led to the problem which we may call the key one for the past 2 or even 5-7 years. This is the lack of qualified staff (and very often – of any staff). Here, a prime factor is the bad demographics of the 90s, when the birth rate in Ukraine had been plummeting until the mid-2000s. Since most of our employees are students (this year we are recruiting people born in 1997-1998), the lack of staff became the most challenging factor. Negative demographics was increased by the outflow of people to serve in the ATO, move to other countries for studying (a significant number – to Poland) and the dominance of disinclination among young people to work and build a career.

Even having the desire and the opportunity to grow, most companies from year to year face a shortage of qualified staff.

In the recruiting process, we monitor various statistical indicators. Dozens of thousands of CVs have come through our company for the past ten years. For instance, in 2004, of the 100 selected CVs only 12-13 people became operators; in 2012, this figure dropped to 5-6 people, and in 2015, it was only 2 out of a hundred! After analyzing this problem, we arrived at a solution. We started to work actively with the older generation: now we have operators aged from 17 to 63 years. Also, we decided to develop through small clusters of 50-60 job positions in regional centers, which brings us enhanced coverage and cut the prime cost of services. Also, this process led us to the condition, when half of those 98 people that do not fit us can be trained and transferred to other companies within outstaffing projects (for example, to large hypermarkets).

In addition to solving the problem extensively, i.e. by additional staff recruitment, we went to great lengths to retain existing employees and for some projects reduced staff turnover from 22% to 7% per month. Through daily hard work, we created the most comfortable conditions for people, gave an opportunity to work effectively on the positions of telephone service professionals and telemarketers, and provided to everyone clear and transparent program of career development within the company. As a result, if the growth of staff in the company in spring 2015 amounted to 60-110 people per month, in February 2016 we reached the level of 262 new employees, of which around 200 were admitted and passed the first probation period, and with the help of the “Refer-a-friend” program this indicator rose from 22% to 34% of the total number of the “newcomers”.

In fact, recruiting itself is only a prerequisite for success. People still need to be trained, adapted to the project and the team, and after that, they will be pursuing the maximum level of professionalism for 5-7 months. To ensure all this at the minimal cost, we launched the internal project Adelina University aimed at staff education and training. And to maintain the qualification of trainers, managers and team-leaders at the appropriate level, we need to learn and develop them as well. Therefore, instead of material gifts every employee received a corporate certificate for study, which can be used during the year. It has already had effect: throughout 2015, less than 125 thousand hryvnias was spent on external education, and for the first 2,5 months of the current year, people have used their gift certificates to the value of over 150 thousand hryvnias. The external programs are thoroughly selected. A person is given the opportunity to spend a certificate either for professional or for personal growth. Over the past six months, 3 employees completed their training and obtained the qualification “Certified Business Coach” adding to our team of trainers.

Since Adelina Call Center is a service company, we decided to conduct the re-engineering of business processes in accordance with the recommendations of the standards of Quality Management System (QMS) ISO9001: 2015 and its modification EN15838 for contact centers. And for this, three specialists were trained and received QMS Auditor certificates.

Our successes are a bright confirmation of the postulate: the crisis in its negative sense exists only in the heads of people. Any crisis is regarded by us as a new opportunity for purification from rubbish and implementation of new activity areas. Globalization of the world, ease of movement, open borders lead to simplification of doing business on an international scale. The main thing is definitely the desire and a cohesive business team. Actually, this is our key unique competitive advantage that allows us to be, according to our clients, the most flexible and dynamic company seeking to solve problems of any complexity, yield results and exceed expectations.

View this article in Forbes Ukraine.