The big focal point of the year, in both society and business, was obviously COVID. In order to explain some of our accomplishments in 2020, we thought we’d do a high-level look and then a specific section on COVID because the topic of the pandemic was so pervasive this year.
A high-level look at what we accomplished in 2020
- We broke the 3000 employee barrier, exceeding our targets for 2020 by more than 50%.
- We doubled office capacity in our two locations in the Philippines to ready for an eventual return to the office.
- We added several new clients this year, including a soon-to-be-announced deal in Europe that covers 24 languages, 447.7 million+ citizens, and is powered by Conectys technology.
- We upgraded our facilities in Lisbon and Istanbul and moved to new facilities in Poland.
- We added a new CTO and strengthened the overall executive leadership team.
- We launched our digital-first practice (Robotic Process Automation, chatbots, and other client strategies), hiring ahead of digital and initial consultants.
How we dealt with COVID
First, we needed to evaluate agents who either didn’t have a computer powerful enough or Internet connectivity fast enough. That helped us identify where potential gaps were. Other agents stepped up by using equipment they already had access to. That solidarity was the first step.
Then, we invested significantly in the urgent purchase of additional computers. This was also important because, in most locations, our projects have multiple shifts using the same bank of computers. We also invested heavily in mobile hotspots and other Internet access solutions.
We then started shipping both existing and new computers to the agents’ homes. We required a good condition document from them, ensuring the eventual return of the computers at a high-quality level. We also sponsored taxi transport for agents to move safely between locations with newer computers.
In addition to agents, we moved Project Managers, Quality Assurance, Human Resources, and IT to work-from-home models — using some of the same gap analysis.
We also secured formal approval from all our clients that they agree with shifting to work from home. 97% of clients did (financial services was the outlier).
The entire work-from-home transition process for all clients was completed in under nine days.
The BPO industry is one of the most people-intensive sectors in the world. We had to protect our employees above all.
In those early March and April days, however, while focusing on employees, we also constantly had to discuss that we are a virtual extension of our client’s businesses. We run mission-critical business processes for our clients. Their success is wholly dependent on our success, on our ability to offer continuity, flexibility, and resilience.
We had to get it done. We had no other choice if we wanted to keep delivering for these accounts and grow our own business.
We’re proud of how quickly we achieved the transition (nine days) and we’re proud that we were able to grow (30% overall) as we achieved the transition and settled into COVID normalcy. We did this across multiple locations: the US, Philippines (Davao and Iloilo), Taipei, Istanbul, Lisbon, Ghent, Poznan, and multiple cities in Romania. It was a gargantuan effort to coordinate all these people, processes, and time zones, and we had no negative client feedback in the process.
We have long prided ourselves on the flexibility of our solutions for clients. Usually, this was framed in the context of seasonal demand and scaling agents up and down dependent on product launches, etc. During COVID, the strength of our flexibility was put to a massive test, and we came through with flying colors for our clients. We consider that very significant.
2020 was a crazy year societally and in business. We are all about to come through the other side. Here’s to an awesome 2021 — and if you need any help with content moderation, customer experience, RPA, or chatbots, don’t hesitate to reach out.
For now, enjoy time with family and friends!
