Outsourcing has been heavily practiced in the industry since the late 1980s and early 1990s when outsourcing core business functions became a popular strategy to keep up with the growing labor costs and a more global economy. Business owners soon understood the importance of outsourcing and how it extends their team’s reach beyond the confines of their offices and workstations.
Today, outsourcing has become a buzzword, as more and more cost and quality-conscious firms around the world are outsourcing their non-core business procedures. It speeds up the product development process and ensures on-time delivery in the manner agreed upon while negotiating with the vendor. Outsourcing has a variety of compelling advantages that can help a company reach zeniths.
If a firm lacks the necessary resources to complete a project, outsourcing is the greatest approach to substantially shorten the turnaround time while working with industry experts. The fundamental advantage of outsourcing is that the less crucial aspects of a project can be outsourced, saving time that can be spent on the business’s higher-value-added objectives.
Looking at this ever-growing sector, many companies started delivering outsourcing services. One of the prominent names on that list is Bill Gosling Outsourcing, which helps companies build a perfect outsourced communication solution to reach their customers.
Brief About the Company
Bill Gosling Outsourcing has over 65 years of experience supporting the contact center and customer service needs of its clients in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Operating from 10 global facilities with 2700+ production seats and offering three core services (live agent support, technology solutions, and professional services), the company is positioned as a strategic partner for developing and implementing an all-encompassing customer contact solution strategy.
With clients past and present from many different industries (primarily FinTech, FSIB, E-commerce, Retail, Automotive, and Utilities), Bill Gosling Outsourcing is a well-oiled contact center hub with the functional experience, industry agility, and global flexibility to meet any challenge with confidence, eagerness, and a steady, capable hand. As the company draws strategies, techniques, and experience from a myriad of diverse programs and services, its breadth allows it an invaluable wealth of knowledge that its team has worked hard to develop over the last six decades.
The company has created a unique culture that helps it to stand out from the crowd. Bill Gosling is focused on its five core values:
- Never Satisfied – Never resting on the laurels or relying on the status quo
- Creativity and Innovation – Thinking outside the box and pushing innovation to its absolute limits in order to achieve success.
- Make Others Better – Engaging every relationship as an opportunity to learn and become better and make others better.
- Able to Grow with Eager – Constantly and hungrily accepting new challenges and opportunities for growth
- Have Fun, Energetic – Remembering to be human, having fun, and engaging with energy.
Remaining at the Forefront of the Contact Center Industry
Bill Gosling provides contact center support in the following ways:
- Customer Care
- Customer Sales and Acquisition
- First Party and Third Party (under the name Allied International Credit [AIC]) Accounts Receivable Management
- BPO (Business Process Outsourcing)
- GooseTek – Technology-based solutions to enable clients to interact with their customers with and without live operator support, an ideal solution for any business application.
- Contact Center Training Outsourcing Solution (content creation and facilitation)
Throughout all of the offerings, the company’s clients choose it because it is trusted to do the right thing, and, regardless of the situation, Bill Gosling will always guarantee certainty of supply to keep its clients’ business running smoothly.
Bill Gosling’s omnichannel support, facilitated via voice, SMS, email, video, digital letters, chat, social media, IVR (Interactive Voice Response), and a customer-facing collections website, allow it to remain agile and flexible when meeting a wide array of client and industry needs. Compounded by thorough digital integration and constant innovation – call centers can no longer solely rely on phone calls and analog support; they must become innovative, cross-channel contact centers to survive – Bill Gosling remains at the forefront of the contact center industry and the needs of the modern client.
Eminent Leadership
Kenny Johnston is the President of Bill Gosling Outsourcing. He brings 28 years of industry expertise in customer care, collections, and outsourcing strategy. Alongside Kenny, Bill Gosling’s CEO Dave Rae and the Executive Team manage global operations and strategic growth with clients and Goslings.
A few major things that the team has overseen in recent years:
- Introducing the company to the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) at the beginning of 2019. Based on the learnings from Gino Wickman’s classic business book Traction, the formalized EOS system structures the internal culture of Bill Gosling and how its team operates with its clients while helping to produce better outcomes as measured by client engagement, bottom-line results, and collective trust.
- In 2013, the company invested in a new ERP System, ‘Workday’ (HR, Financials, and Payroll platform), which made the working more efficient and globalized. Workday provides the team with real-time, accurate information; automated business processes drastically reduced manual work, analytics, and dashboards at an operational level, as well as a learning portal that offers on-demand training to the Goslings.
- In 2015, the company bought Alliance iCommunications in London, Ontario. This acquisition increased redundancy in the Ontario area and vastly increased the sales and customer care experience by incorporating long-standing service relationships that Alliance had already built with some premier client partners.
- A continued push into more technological and digital methods of communication with clients’ customers as well as digitizing and streamlining all business processes where possible.
Technology Aiding Outreach and Response Accuracy
Modern technologies have impacted the industry massively, especially in the equalization of the relationship between outsourcer and customer. In the past, the outsourcer defined the timing and method of all interactions, and customers fell into a response pattern based on the outreach strategy in question. Modern tech has allowed outreach to become fully omnichannel and much more self-serve, customer-driven, and autonomous.
The relationship between outsourcer and customer has become symbiotic as the dialogue of interactions is now much more equally informed than it once was; technology has empowered the customers. Additionally, tech has helped with the outreach and response accuracy across all channels – allowing more conversations and interactions to occur with customers than ever before, while also allowing for more rigorously tracked output data and analytics to continue to improve the strategies, and the client and customer experience.
Kenny said, “In the future, I see more predictivity with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning continue to take hold and inform outreach and interaction strategies. But I also see the need for what I’ll call ‘acceptable predictivity’; predictive data – i.e., best channel and time of day to contact customers, as well as chosen tone, calls to action, etc. – must allow the customer to feel empowered, not controlled or force-fed. Advanced tech needs to assist customers without restricting their autonomy or wholly prescribing their response options.”
Braving the Pandemic
When COVID-19 hit, the proactive planning and structuring of Bill Gosling’s Business Management System – including its Pandemic, business continuity, and crisis communication plans – prepared the team for massive changes to their operating procedures, and they were able to provide very minimal downtime to their valued clients. Regardless of the situation, the company guarantees certainty of supply to keep its clients’ businesses running smoothly and hitting SLAs and KPI metrics – as always.
“We began preparing for the specifics of the COVID-19 Pandemic in late February 2020, and weekly planning committees were arranged that required the invocation and deployment of the aforementioned plans. We worked with our clients to determine which programs could and should be migrated to work-from-home (WFH) models, as well as confirming which ones would be placed on hold,” said Kenny.
Folded into meeting service targets was their need to take care of Goslings. When lockdowns were imposed, it was important to support the employees’ safety and allow them to continue to deliver for the clients. This included arranging safe, reliable transportation to and from work and providing hotel accommodation in regions with extreme restrictions. Providing facemasks and shields, regular deep cleaning of facilities, temperature screening, and paid leave as required have been routine since the Pandemic’s onset.
“As challenging as the pandemic has been, it was an opportunity to deliver for our clients and our Goslings, and we are proud of our ability to rise, in the spirit of our Core Values of ‘Able to Grow, Eager’ and ‘Never Satisfied’, and meet the challenge head-on,” added Kenny.
Bequeathing the Keys to Excellence
Kenny advised young entrepreneurs to take advantage of the modern technological and entrepreneurial landscape. Never in the history of technology has there been so many low-cost and open-source options to utilize and play with. And the ability to leverage that tech with DIY and entrepreneurial learning is equally unparalleled. The outsourcing market – as well as many other industries across the world – is extremely fertile for experimentation, low-risk, high-reward speculation, and technological trial and error.
For those willing to teach themselves and take informed risks with open-source tech, the industry is a sandbox to play in. Get out there and assess what makes outsourcing work from new and exciting perspectives; one never knows where that path can take them.
Exploring New Horizons
Bill Gosling reviews its one-year and three-year business plans every 90 days as part of its EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) review cadence. Major strategic goals include (but are not limited to):
- Continuous review of the current and expanded physical footprints to accommodate human capital needs and growth in domestic, near, and offshore locations.
- Continued investment into technology and data analytics framework and impact to operational capacity, core network, cloud, and digital strategy.
Expansion and new locations to further support the clients is always top of mind at Bill Gosling, and its team is actively looking at new market opportunities in nearshore and offshore locations to support the continued growth of the company. The team is also investigating the possibility of a new nearshore center in the CALA market to be operational in 2022.
Kenny said, “We also embrace our Core Values of ‘Able to Grow, Eager’ and ‘Creativity and Innovation’, strap on our VR helmets (well, not really), and step eagerly into a fully digital world. We spearhead this with a vigorous commitment to our technology solutions enabling clients to interact with their customers with and without live operator support.”
“We push to be the best Flock we can be for ourselves, our clients, and our shared customers,” he added.
Within this continued investment into technology, the management has identified areas for growth and is currently working with a variety of vendors on discoveries for Machine Learning and AI-driven technology from a telecommunications perspective. This includes STT, ChatBots, Inventory/Account Modeling, and a variety of other internal functions. As part of the company’s security programs, the team has deployed an AI product, Darktrace, that monitors and digests network traffic for unusual traffic or behaviors, with automatic alerting and response.
Demonstrating Excellence
- Green Apple Award – Bill Gosling is passionate about being green, so much so that it has been awarded the coveted Green Apple Award. This award is given to those organizations that demonstrate outstanding environmental practices.
- Healthy Working Lives – Bill Gosling’s UK branch, AIC UK Ltd., is thrilled to be a Gold Award winner of the Healthy Working Lives award presented by Public Health Scotland. The Gold level award demonstrates that the organization has a long-term commitment and culture towards improving health, safety, and wellbeing both within the workplace and in the broader community.
- GTACC Team Award – Company’s Newmarket client-launch team won a Team Award from the Greater Toronto Area Contact Centre Association in 2020. This award was presented to the client launch teams, who were very successful at launching a new program amid the COVID-19 Pandemic.
- Deloitte’s Best Managed Company – Platinum Status (Bill Gosling has been an award winner since 1999. Canada’s Best Managed Companies set their sights on global competition, defined purpose, and investing in technology and innovation.)
- Achievers 50 Most Engaged Workplace Awards – Bill Gosling was honored to be the recipient of this award in 2021. This award recognizes top employers displaying leadership and innovation in engaging their workplaces.
When it comes to client feedback, Bill Gosling’s working mantra underlines all about the company: “No matter what adversity was thrown at the Bill Gosling team, we never heard one complaint, or one person doubting the success of our program launch – it was a manifestation of the alignment we originally felt with Bill Gosling. Their ‘Can Do’ attitude was going to make it happen.”
