Outsource Smarter, Grow Faster: How Service Businesses Can Scale Without Sacrificing Quality

Jeffro (00:01.696)
If you’re a service business owner wearing every hat in your company, this episode could be the game changer you’ve been looking for. Today’s guest is Adam O’Connor, Chief Commercial Officer at Gear Inc, a global business process outsourcing firm with over 6,000 team members across 24 countries. Adam helps companies from startups to global brands streamline their operations, scale their customer service, and build growth engines without bloating their overhead. So in this conversation, we’re going to explore how even small businesses can start using

Smart outsourcing to unlock more growth, reduce their stress and deliver exceptional customer experiences without losing control of the business. So welcome to the show, Adam.

Adam O’Connor (00:44.271)
Thanks Geoffrey, great to be here.

Jeffro (00:46.616)
So Adam, there’s a lot of small business owners, they hear the term outsourcing and they might immediately think that’s for big companies, but not for me. And I know firsthand that smaller shops can absolutely outsource things. So what are some of the easiest functions that a service business can outsource without a major investment or disrupting the way they do business?

Adam O’Connor (01:11.215)
Sure, yeah, mean, 10, 15 years ago, was only the big companies that would be able to outsource, but the BPO industry has moved a lot within that timeframe and a lot of small to medium businesses are now using outsourcing to help them with their tasks. Most of the tasks that I would recommend to start with the back office tasks, office work, repetitive tasks to take the time.

They can free up the time of the founders of the people within the business to actually make money for the business. And if you find a provider who’s worked with small to medium businesses before, they can help you to set out how to do that in the most effective way.

Jeffro (01:55.48)
So when you are building a global team, obviously a lot of new factors come into play with time zones and meeting, collaboration, things like that. How do you make sure that the customer experience doesn’t suffer? What sort of systems and processes are kind of non-negotiable?

Adam O’Connor (02:16.069)
So, how can I phrase this? COVID was a terrible, terrible thing, but it made a lot of businesses be able to work in a remote scenario with people not being able to come into the office so much. Companies quickly pivoted to allow people to work from home or in different locations, and companies took a giant step forward in finding how they could find their resources working in an environment that wasn’t just in the office.

Making that leap has allowed companies to see what issues can come from that and how to mitigate it. So one of the things that we always set out is make sure that you treat the staff members as a member of your team. They’re not just somebody off in a different location who you don’t know. Make sure you’re having regular standups with them, whether that be weekly Zoom calls, whatever it may be. Get that in place.

Make sure you set clear expectations on the KPIs, what you want to be delivered, and make sure that the people in the offshore location are actually part of your company. It’s not just the name at the end of the phone or the name at the end of the computer. They’re actually a member of your staff. They’re representing you. They’re going to help you to grow the business as well.

Jeffro (03:32.843)
Right. And I imagine, you know, upfront, you’d have to make it clear about when they’re going to work, if it is during the same time zone that most of your customers are in. Because if you’re talking about incorporating them, including them in meetings and things, they might be working while everyone else around them is sleeping. And so you kind of have to figure that out upfront, I imagine.

Adam O’Connor (03:57.527)
Yeah, but the BPO industry as a whole tends to be a 24-7 operation anyway. depending on what you’re looking to do, I mean, you can go to some low cost destinations and extend your available hours within your business if that’s what you’re looking to do. And that’s set a sheet from some of your competitors. But a lot of the time people and businesses are looking for staff to supplement their current staff to help them become more valuable to the business. So they attend.

they’ll work on the same time zones. can set where the staff are working so that there’s a small crossover if you do want to extend the time zones and have the meetings within those times and just try and bring everybody together. You’ve also got operations like Slack and those kind of software that helps to bring everybody together in real time. also you can, nowadays you can just drop a quick video or voice message to people to include them in things and make sure that you’re updating everybody across the board.

Jeffro (04:56.396)
Yeah, that makes sense. Now you’ve managed operations for, you know, different, like 24 countries, I think, right? So how do cultural differences affect this in terms of communication, performance, how customer support is handled? Because I know there’s some different defaults.

Adam O’Connor (05:16.483)
There are some different defaults and it’s taken me over 20 years to understand pretty much. And I’m still learning every day, Jeffery. So, but different people respond to different things. One of the big things and lessons that I learned very early was don’t ask yes, no questions for anybody anywhere in the world. What you want to make sure is that they’re coming back with knowledge so that you know that they’re understanding because

nine times out of 10 people in the low cost destinations like to please the boss and think that saying yes is the right thing to do even if they don’t actually understand what’s going on because they fear a little bit that they’re not doing it. Making sure that you bring everybody together. I mean, if you look in some places in Asia, going out on a Friday with the boss and your work colleagues is mandatory. It’s not a if you want to come for drinks, whereas us in the West, that’s

not really how it works anymore. there’s lots of different nuances. There’s lots of different cultures, but bringing them together and everybody wants to work the best for the company. Everybody wants the best results for the company and bringing that team culture together via video chats, maybe team meetings if you can in other places is always great as well.

Jeffro (06:36.265)
Yeah. And I think a lot of ways, you know, when you’re in the same office, it’s easier to build trust just because you see people every day, you talk to them, you kind of get comfortable with them. How do you build that trust with the remote or offshore teams, even though they’re not present all the time?

Adam O’Connor (06:54.917)
It takes a little time. The majority of small business owners who first dip their toe into outsourcing is their biggest thing. What if the person does this? What if the person does this? But it’s a similar process to if you’re hiring somebody locally and you’re leaving the keys to the shop with them. It takes time to build that trust. You have a bit more trust, but rewarding the people, making sure that

you set clear KPIs, making sure that they deliver on their KPIs, making sure they understand why those KPIs are important and what that does for your business and how it helps you really starts bringing that trust in. And I’ve seen, I’ve seen companies across the globe where knowledge has transferred from the local teams to the offshore teams because they’ve been with the companies longer than the local teams tend to stay with some of these companies. it’s, it’s a fantastic thing to see.

Jeffro (07:51.371)
So for a business that’s new to outsourcing, how do you recommend that they start? Is there a low risk first hire that you would recommend?

Adam O’Connor (08:03.989)
Depending on the business and what they’re looking to do, I would always go to a company that looks after small to medium businesses. I would have a chat with them and say, this is what I’m doing. What is possible for me to outsource? Because there’s not, you can’t just outsource everything within your business. There’s certain roles that are lot harder. There’s certain roles that work better. But the low…

The high volume repetitive tasks are normally the easiest to get going. And what that does, if you’ve got somebody there who’s helping you with the stock taking and they’re taking all of the notes down and they’re making sure that the files are updated when you’re doing a task and things like that, that frees your time up to be able to go and do other things. The first month, two months, you’re going to check it all because again, you’re building that trust. But once you’ve got that trust there and you understand that everything’s working well.

It then frees you up to go and work on your business rather than in your business. And that’s what offshoring and outsourcing allows you to do.

Jeffro (09:05.268)
Yeah, and yeah, it’s a process. So let’s also talk about the cost versus quality. Can you give us some thoughts on how a business owner should think, you know, when they’re pricing and evaluating an outsourcing partner, obviously it’s different because economies are different. So how do you navigate that?

Adam O’Connor (09:27.481)
Yeah. if you go into looking to outsource an offshore, just purely on a price, it very rarely works out. want to be ethical and you want to make sure that you’re looking after the right people and the company that you’re working with are looking after their people as well. Cause we all know that training new people and churn costs you so much in terms of time, money, resources. So

Finding the right provider and making sure that they look after their staff, the retention programs they have in place, the training they have in place, making sure that they don’t take staff from one customer and give them to another customer, and that they’re dedicated to you. That all really helps with those things.

Jeffro (10:13.832)
That makes sense. Can you share a story or some example where outsourcing helped a business scale in a way that they couldn’t have done in-house?

Adam O’Connor (10:26.501)
So one of the biggest success stories I had from a small to medium business was a real estate firm in Australia who had been using two freelancers from one of the freelance websites and they’d been using them for two or three years and they came to us and they wanted to start with a team of four because they wanted to see the difference when using a BPO company rather than trying to do it.

themselves and dealing with all of the headaches with the stuff. So those four people came in and they were doing some of the backend tasks, the paperwork, those kinds of things. And from those four people, we actually grew to a team of 80, looking after a couple of different states within Australia, and all the property, there was lots of different roles that the guys were doing. But what tends to happen is the roles that you offshore or outsource tend to be quite vertical. So if you look at

a software developer, for example, they will tend to be specialized in one language rather than the multi-language. If you start looking for multiple skills within one person, that’s when it becomes a bit more tricky and it can sometimes lead you to not finding the right person.

Jeffro (11:44.328)
So the specialists are the individuals when offshore.

Jeffro (11:51.526)
Yeah. We do have a delay here, so sorry about that. What are some other common outsourcing mistakes or misconceptions that you see business owners making?

Adam O’Connor (11:52.525)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adam O’Connor (12:06.377)
A couple of people in previous engagements have seemed to think that outsourcing an operation will fix the operation where they haven’t got their processes and everything fixed before they start doing that. There’s another thing is thinking that the BPO provider or the people who are coming to work for them understand their business straight away. Just because it’s locked in your head doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily going to be passed on to the person who’s coming in. So making sure that

You’ve got those processes written down. You’ve got the KPIs written down. That’s really how it starts to be a successful engagement with the people.

Jeffro (12:44.232)
make sense. You got to communicate effectively, otherwise things fall apart and you got to have the systems to keep things running smoothly. Otherwise, you won’t know what to measure or if you’re doing well or if things are broken. So that kind of brings me to my next question with AI and automation. You know, what’s your take on using that alongside your offshore teams? How can you make sure they work together effectively?

Adam O’Connor (12:59.119)
That’s

Adam O’Connor (13:13.241)
Well, think, I think AI is everybody’s jumping into AI very quickly and it’s here to stay. It’s, it’s wonderful. love AI. but I do think that there has to be human elements and, a lot of the BPOs now are using AI in ways that can supplement and help your, help your business to make sure that.

Sorry, I think I’ve had a few connection issues there.

Jeffro (13:40.007)
It says reconnecting.

Adam O’Connor (13:44.493)
I just… yeah… sorry. Are we back?

Jeffro (13:53.831)
Thank you, Bec.

Adam O’Connor (13:58.947)
Yeah, sorry, apologies, Jeffrey. Yeah, so using AI with the people offshore, making sure a lot of the BPO’s are currently using AI within there to help the task, to make sure that the people are doing the right things, to help them to train the staff offshore, and to ensure that all of the reporting is done correctly as well. There’s definitely a case for AI helping

process some of the tasks that you can offshore, but there’s also a case for having the people there alongside the AI to really amplify the benefit that you’re getting.

Jeffro (14:34.299)
That makes sense. I agree AI is meant to be used alongside people for the most part, not necessarily by itself, except for certain tasks that are very well defined and contained within a box. So I think this has been a useful conversation. So hopefully for people that are just thinking about, you know, scaling or they’re stuck trying to scale, they’re stressed too thin, you know, growth doesn’t have to mean burnout. This is an option that, you know, our world is connected and you can hire people

Adam O’Connor (14:48.623)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jeffro (15:04.231)
wherever they are and that can save you a lot of money and still get you good quality results as long as you approach it with this mindset that I’m going to take responsibility for making sure there’s communication and systems and things rather than just outsourcing responsibility and be like, didn’t it work? I don’t know. So if you guys listening want to connect with Adam or explore what outsourcing might look like for your business, you can find all the links in the show notes. I do have one last question for you, Adam. If there’s…

One piece of advice that you’d give to a business owner who’s just starting to explore outsourcing, maybe they’re not sure they’re ready to take the leap. What’s that advice for them?

Adam O’Connor (15:43.479)
I would find a trusted partner or find somebody who has done this before. I would ask them and bounce some ideas. There’s lots of small business owners that have done this successfully already. One of the things that you’ll find is some businesses have tried it once before and it hasn’t worked and they give up on it. Whereas sometimes it’s not the process that you’re trying to outsource that’s the issue. It’s the person that you found. can be the same as looking for somebody

onshore. just, I really believe in the global workforce. I really believe that there’s people out there that can help everybody and every business to really grow and making sure you find the right person to help you along that journey. That’s the piece of advice that I would give.

Jeffro (16:28.335)
Sounds good. Well, thanks again, Adam. And thanks to all of you guys for listening. Please share this episode with someone who would be interested in outsourcing some part of their business, because it could be helpful for them. But that’s it for today. Take care, and we’ll see you in the next episode.