Maybe because of the bulk of work in BPOs, you can’t help meeting quality problems. The services handled in BPOs are increasing from customer service, tech support, web development, transcription, even human resource, and finance. These services are intricate, and every move needs to be done with least number of defects, if not zero defect.
Thus, BPOs really stand to benefit from having a good quality system in place. Better even if they can use the Six Sigma methodology to their advantage. I don’t have the exact number of BPOs that are into Six Sigma, but I know these companies do: Sykes, QAI India Ltd., Infosys, and HCL Technologies Ltd.
Services Safari has a good discussion on why a BPO should adopt Six Sigma. According to the post:
Total Quality Improvement techniques work well when tasks are routine and repeated. These quality tools are well-suited for BPO actions as the workers are constantly performing routine tasks (e.g., payment processing, journal entries, invoice matching, etc.).
Initially, when some BPO providers get started, they take over a client’s processes and run them as-is. Rarely would this represent an optimal process design. This is the initial entry point for a quality improvement technique like Six Sigma. If this technique gets these processes to behave more reliably and at lower cost great.
Related Stories:
Six Sigma for Shared Services
Leveraging Lean Six Sigma in Business Process Outsourcing
*Photo credit: MorgueFile.com
