In your experience how can businesses build a better outsourcing relationship?

Everything we do as a business is about making sure that we hold a strong relationship with the clients we’re servicing including regular conversions and direct visits.

What are you finding to be your clients main interests and requirements?

They are three main services that our clients are interested in at the moment. Firstly it’s supporting their businesses in an out of frame capacity and support companies during peak business time. Some companies have decided to outsource of their communications and switchboard services to use, particularly with city based companies and the expense of maintaining communication services. The third is business continuity and disaster recovery. Most people have covered procedures, if IT systems go down but the biggest requirement when you lose systems is how customers can contact you and the perception they have. If you lose your telephone system all the calls come to Moneypenny and essentially the service can carry on.

One of Moneypenny’s on-going projects is 24 hour telephone service. Does that reflect more of an emphasis on global connectivity and are businesses trying to reach a wider audience?

I think we are finding now that big businesses want to provide a 24 hour service. We are looking to provide a slightly different service than the norm. By manning a switchboard with Moneypenny staff from the UK in New Zealand, so that when UK switchboards close the New Zealand staff carry on. The quality of staff remains the same with the same cultural background and accents remain consistent. Its offshoring, but offshoring with a difference as it is UK staff.

In future developments - what other areas are you looking to develop, what areas will become more in vogue?

I think we have to recognise that the internet, smart phones and mobile technology are becoming more relevant. We currently have apps that allow clients to communicate with us, we want to align our service with this new technology.

Do you think public perception of outsourcing is important? If it is - how do you think that the image can be improved?

I think the public perception is important, but it does depend on the sector. We can see that in the furore of the banking sector, some banks have chosen to bring services back on shore because of public pressure. From our perspective we are working from more on a business to business level rather than consumer, and it is all about the service. If people like us and we can deliver better quality service than can be done in house, at more cost competitive price, then I don’t believe that any customers would be able to tell the difference and in that respect it shouldn’t matter.