Enshored

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the customer experience manager at Skybound Entertainment, a multi-content platform in the media and entertainment space. I manage the BPO partnership with Enshored.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Enshored?

We needed help with email ticket support and BPO services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Enshored provides email ticket support for all our inbound and outbound customer and player interactions. Currently, that's the only communication channel our customers have with us. However, they also provide those services if we ever want to open an online chat. Our plan with them allows for flexibility regarding our different channels.

At present, since we only provide email ticketing support, they help us manage our CRM ticketing system for all inbound communication. They provide a mixture of support services so they can make decisions independently. If nobody is available to escalate something, they know how to create language aligned with our tone.

We prefer they utilize their voice and freestyle in real-time with a customer. We provide scripts for them, which we have processed at certain times, but we also rely on their ability to craft language that corresponds with how we like to do business at Skybound.

What is the team composition?

We have a team of one lead support agent, two support agents, and a client management team. The main contact points are Katie and Alex, the client services managers. I

How did you come to work with Enshored?

I wasn't part of the team when they were chosen.

How much have you invested with them?

We have a $3,000 per-month contract that entails a certain number of hours and agents, so it would be around $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in October 2019, and the partnership is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We have a rubric of metrics that defines success in our partnership. This includes customer satisfaction ratings, ticket attendance, and ensuring that a certain number or below are unresolved at any given time. They’re in charge of monitoring our ticket volumes during times of sales or upticks throughout the season. They report on it and let us know when we see more of an increase throughout the year, which helps us establish support allocation for that time.

Overall, they’ve allowed us to provide exceptional customer experience while not increasing headcount, which would also increase costs. They’ve effectively provided us with good value in this partnership. Between our CSAT expectations and customer satisfaction results, those expectations, and the attendance of our tickets ensuring that nothing goes unanswered and that all customers are being taken care of, I’d say those are the biggest areas of impact they have for us.

Even during times of uncertainty or change in leadership, they’ve experienced those waves with us and have been able to provide support.

How did Enshored perform from a project management standpoint?

When it comes to different ad hoc projects, they help us with our Kickstarter campaigns, which oftentimes revolve around new books we’re creating for content creators or new tabletop games, like board games. These are all essentially product launches, and they support these projects based on access, resources, and various documentation processes.

Essentially, the way it works is that I provide them with all of the resources, access, and touchpoints they need to support a new project launch. They come to me with questions about being able to support, areas they might not be able to, and areas of need that we discover along the way. Typically, we play it by ear, and the measurement of success is the same as the rubric of metrics we look at from the past.

They’re not in charge of the launch, sales, or any aspect of that; they’re in charge of ensuring that the customers are being taken care of, that all of them interact, and that their satisfaction is up to our standards.

We have Microsoft Teams ecosystems, so we communicate in dedicated channels for escalation or various pillars of our business. We also use Microsoft Drive and the Microsoft Office suite. For our ticketing system, we use Freshdesk, so we communicate a lot in that system. We also use Zoom for our actual client calls. 

Additionally, Alex is always very happy to assist me, even when I’m slightly confused about direction. She provides advice and lets me know what they can provide us with. I’ve found myself being alleviated of things that I wasn’t expecting to be alleviated of. I lean heavily on Alex when it comes to managing the support agents and the operational aspects of our partnership.

Furthermore, the support lead oversees escalations a little bit beneath me. The team dynamic has been really helpful for me. 

Are there any employees from the service provider's team that you would like to give a shout-out to in this review?

I want to give a shout-out to Alex because she regularly attends our meetings. She’s in charge of giving presentations and coaching the other team members with less stature regarding their growth and career development. She genuinely cares about the business that we provide at Skybound.

I also want to give a shout-out to the support lead because they started out as regular support agents and have shown through their hard work and discipline that they remember the content, processes, and documentation. They stayed on top of everything and were promoted to lead agents, which is wonderful.

Between Alex and the support lead, everything has been working really great.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Since its early stages, the team has been an essential partner for Skybound, particularly in shaping and supporting the Skybound store customer experience. Their BPO services have enabled us to scale efficiently, avoiding significantly increasing our internal headcount beyond traditional customer service.

Their team has seamlessly integrated into various other facets of our business, from supporting the expansion of our customer loyalty program to driving the success of our various Kickstarter campaign launches and our different video game player support environments.

All of this has been under the supervision and support of the customer experience manager overseeing the partnership, ensuring that the integration of their team with Skybound is smooth, efficient, and aligned with our overall business strategies as we go through quarter to quarter.

Enshored has become the go-to team for customer interactions related to our company. Whether engaging with our fans, addressing questions about products, or assisting with technical inquiries, their team provides an invaluable touchpoint for customers and our fans alike.

Their consistent dedication to aligning with our brand ethos has made them a trusted extension of our team in delivering a customer experience that reflects the Skybound values of innovation, quality, and fan engagement.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Perhaps we’ve challenged them to think on their feet and critically through support ecosystems without established processes. As we have new product launches, sometimes we don’t have the right process or documentation in place just yet. They’ve been very good at supporting it for us, but I recognize that it can become a little more challenging if there’s no process, documentation, or script.

We’ve worked on this throughout our partnership, and I’ve definitely seen improvements in this area. Overall, their bread and butter are if you can give them the scripts and the process, you can literally turn over an entire department, and they know how to execute and proceed. If there are areas that are a little bit mixed, have gray areas, or lack processes, they could challenge themselves to improve in those areas.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The more process, documentation, and operational efficiency you can provide them with, the more success you will have in your department regarding a partnership for BPO. They’re very strong at executing things that are already planned and have resources for them.

In hindsight, the relationship would have been much stronger if I had equipped them more strongly. For someone who’s starting a new partnership, I’d say review all of your internal processes, documentation, and what you’re looking to achieve through this partnership. Make sure you’re also well-equipped to provide them with so that they can provide you with the level of success you’re looking for.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Co-Founder / CEO of a hospitality & leisure company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Founded in 2019 in Louisiana, our company is an innovative marketplace built by avid RVers that allows RV travelers to discover and book the best RV sites.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Enshored to accomplish?

• Using our provided directions, accurately place RV camping spots on a map.
• Using provided guidance, complete RV park profiles in our system.
• Using provided guidance, accurately update RV spots with correct amentities, lengths, and other detailed information.
• Returning to our system, update park profiles to include other stay accomodation types.

SOLUTION

How did you find Enshored?

Referral

Why did you select Enshored over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from Enshored were assigned to this project?

10-15

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Using our system and guidance, the team members would meticulously build out each campground in our system. This task requires the team to meticulously place numerous RV spots on a map. Then, the team would apply precise amenities and specifications to each RV spot. The tasks require 100% accuracy and completion within a specified period of time by contract.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Every task has a pre-determined target time for accomplishment. Enshored coordinated every report and mutual metrics review.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Enshored has the skills to completely train their team and manage the project towards completion. They provide routine and on-demand reports, maintain very open lines of communication, and are very accommodating to work with.

What was your primary form of communication with Enshored?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The Enshored team is extremely flexible and accommodating. They are always responsive to the ebb and flow of our start-up business.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Enshored could have done differently?

This was a new line for both of us. We learned along the way and shared new ideas. Honestly, we both grew through our mutual goal accomplishment and learned from our errors on how to improve.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of ShineX, a marketing company specializing in RFPs and contracts.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Enshored?

As a marketing company, there are many different tasks we have to do. However, it’s not possible to recruit full-time staff to do it profitably. Therefore, we started working with Enshored to outsource some of our work.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

First, we worked with Enshored to look at some of our activities to see if we could break them down into regular functions we could outsource to them. There are hundreds of hours worth of work in our activities, so we’ve stratified those activities so that Enshored helps us do part of that work. Pretty much, they support our team in everything we do in marketing.

For example, Enshored helps us with our demand-generation activities, which include market and target research, identifying potential leads, and providing us with lists of industries. Their team also supports our digital activity and SEO work. Whenever we launch a campaign, there are 40–50 assets involved. We do the primary creation and send Enshored the guidelines so that they can help us create the remaining assets.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with Enshored’s head, their client services department, and many different teammates in charge of activities execution, depending on the project we’re working on.

How did you come to work with Enshored?

We found them through a referral. At the time, we didn’t know any other company, so working with Enshored was really natural.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around January 2019. Our engagement was small at first, but we’ve worked on and off since then, and our collaboration has been growing. Now, we support each other; we help them with their marketing, and they help us with our activities.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Thanks to Enshored, we’ve been able to have access to data and working time that we couldn’t have had access to without spending thousands of dollars. Consequently, we’ve been able to provide our customers with much more affordable services. Enshored’s work has resulted in tremendous cost savings. Additionally, we now have the unlimited ability to scale our team up and down as needed.

How did Enshored perform from a project management standpoint?

Enshored’s project management is great. Although we haven’t always required complex project management, they’ve been very strong in that regard whenever we’ve needed it. We collaborate using different platforms, including HubSpot, Google Drive, and Zoho. Additionally, we communicate via email, Zoom, and Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I love Enshored’s no-drama attitude. We can ask them for different things, and they always take it all in their stride.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Enshored could articulate better the breadth of services they provide. If we wouldn’t keep asking things to which they say yes, we wouldn’t know that they’re able to do them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Spend time looking at your business functions and stratify them into things you want to keep doing as part of your business’s core activities. Be clear about which activities you want to keep in-house, and be exploratory as to which activities you think you can outsource. From there, connect with Enshored’s client services, tell them your idea, run a short pilot, and take it from there.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at a SaaS company that sells a program for appointment booking and scheduling. I run our internal and external operations teams.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Enshored?

We wanted to provide our customers with 24/7 support, which was difficult to provide in the UK. We wanted a cost-effective but efficient solution for our global customers. Enshored was already providing evening support, so we expanded their scope of work to fit our needs. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Enshored provides us with ongoing customer service support via a chatbot for our self-serve customers, although they’re starting to provide it to our enterprise customers as well. They also help with onboarding. 

Our software is constantly upgrading, so although we’ve done an initial training with their team, we retrain them whenever there is a software upgrade. Specifically, we retrain their team leads; they go on to provide training to the rest of the team. We expect their support to expand as our partnership grows. 

What is the team composition?

We work with about 8 support personnel, a quality manager, and two team leads. 

How did you come to work with Enshored?

We were referred to Enshored — their CEO connected with us because of their Scottish background. 

How much have you invested with them?

We invest around £40,000 (approximately $46,000 USD) with Enshored. 

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership began in February 2019. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

The services Enshored provides are absolutely excellent. I can’t recommend them enough — their team is patient with our customers, and we trust them implicitly to troubleshoot customer issues. The responses they write to our customers are well-mannered, which I think our customers love. 

How did Enshored perform from a project management standpoint?

We have clear and open communication with Enshored’s team. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their commitment to never disrupting the service they provide, even during major weather events, is incredible. Their team is flexible and constantly adapts to what we need. We’d love to expand the partnership with them and use them for phone support. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would be great if Enshored could provide more services for us to use. However, I believe they’re already working on expanding their service lines as they work to open a new office in Lisbon, Portugal. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the chief of staff and head of operations at a fintech firm that operates an online marketplace for buying and selling companies. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Enshored?

We wanted to either automate some of our manual tasks or to enrich our team by supporting them with better data sets. Our team hired Enshored to help us do both of those. Their team also helped us support our clients around our backend functions. That way, our clients could use our product better without us supporting them directly. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We work with Enshored on 12–15 ongoing projects on a daily or weekly basis. Our team doesn’t direct them; they simply function on an ongoing basis. We have a wide range of projects with them. One example of such a project is scraping website data for either prospect customers or existing clients. Enshored provides a handful of data points that we then put into our CRM. The team gathers data from those sources and other venues across the web to make our data-related products more valuable to our customers. 

Enshored also helps us in backend automation processes. Instead of clients having to use the product directly, the Enshored team uses it on their behalf. As a result, our customers don’t have to deal with the platform by themselves. 

What is the team composition?

I work with a project manager and a lead execution officer, along with two analysts that work under the execution person. 

How did you come to work with Enshored?

Our company was already working with Enshored when I joined it. I inherited the relationship from our past operations head. From there, I never had any reason to look elsewhere. They were easy to work with and capable, and the team was concerned about quality. They knew how to be serious about the projects, plus their resources were personable. As a result, I decided to continue engaging with them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spend around $65,000–$70,000 per year. In total, we’ve invested around $500,000 in their services. 

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement with them started in January 2016, and it’s ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

If we compare their services with internal hires, Enshored saves us around $2 million. In terms of KPIs, they support 20% of our deal flow. 

How did Enshored perform from a project management standpoint?

Enshored’s project management is phenomenal. I have no qualms about their performance and communication. In terms of tools, we use spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations. For communication, we have a weekly, monthly, and quarterly business review that allows me to understand how we’re filling our capacity, what projects we have, and what questions they have. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have consistency, and their communication skills and obsession over quality are impressive. Their services are truly convenient, and working with their team is easy. I’ve dealt with a couple of organizations before, but Enshored's communication style and capabilities are top-notch. Moreover, they have good internal processes. Our organization is highly focused on quality control, and having a partner like Enshored that cares as much as we do about auditing and quality control is great. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They can ask me for more help. Enshored likes doing everything by themselves, which is great for the majority of the time. However, I’m more willing to help them think through different processes than they ask. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be communicative and explicit with your needs. Push the envelope when assigning Enshored to areas where they must use their own judgment. In our engagement, I’ve been a little slow in giving them harder tasks. However, every time I do it, they overdeliver.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of pelotonRPM. We do video-based trainings for HR and sales enablement.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Enshored?

We do a lot of video-based work, so we were looking for a scalable way to process our videos.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We send them raw video, and their team will edit out certain segments or dead air. They’ll put in an intro and an outro. After those edits, they’ll upload it to our hosting provider.

What is the team composition?

We have one point of contact.

How did you come to work with Enshored?

I met Ian (CEO) eight years ago. I’ve been following their process from the beginning.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $10,000–$25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our engagement started in January 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Their work has had a tremendous impact on our business. We’re a small team, so bandwidth constraints are always an issue. They save us so much time not having to do this ourselves. We can share the video clips, and we will have the results the next day.

Their video quality has always been very good. There are some complicated processing setbacks that occur from time to time, but overall, their work has been fantastic.

How did Enshored perform from a project management standpoint?

We work with them daily. A lot of our communication is through Slack. We upload the files to them and then shoot them back our way. We might’ve had a SweetProcess resource set up, so they can refer back to that.

I’ve never had a complaint about deadlines.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team is reliable and dependable. The fact that we don’t have to worry about this makes all of the difference.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It’s hard to think of any hiccups we’ve had. Nothing comes to mind.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Structuring our communication early on was the key to success. Being clear with these expectations right out of the gate and documenting as best as you can help everyone.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of customer support at a corporate travel management platform.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Enshored?

We needed support with customer service that was less expensive than resources in the US.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Currently, Enshored provides 20 support agents who help us with technical support and travel inquiries. At one point, we worked with 40 agents from Enshored.

What is the team composition?

We work with several managers and agents of different seniority levels.

How did you come to work with Enshored?

Our CEO found Enshored through their professional network.

How much have you invested with them?

We spend between $25,000–$50,000 a month with Enshored.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started with Enshored in August 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

We review how many tickets their agents process and our customer satisfaction score, which is a response to Enshored’s services. Our satisfaction rate’s driven by them. They offer quality agents.

How did Enshored perform from a project management standpoint?

Their team’s managing agents are well trained. They try to make customers happy not only internally but also externally. Their team was able to run many reports and initiatives with me.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their agents have good work ethics. They are knowledgeable and treat their employees well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would be good if they could look more closely into agents’ productivity.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

It would be helpful to get more involved with the team and set the right expectations.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Venture Scanner is a research company. We study emerging technology startups, create insights, and sell that to corporations. I am a co-founder and Chief Research Officer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Enshored?

Our company is a small team, and we were hitting bandwidth constraints in innovating while trying to maintain our business. We hired Enshored to take well-understood tasks of our hand so the core team could develop new revenue drivers.

What were your goals for this project?

To rapidly create the marketing and research content we needed, while maintaining a high level of quality and professionalism in the end result.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We went through a rigorous review process of dozens of vendors in many different fields. Our selection of Enshored was the result of that process.

Describe the project in detail.

The project is multi-faceted and continuously evolving. We have the Enshored team create a variety of marketing content for us, drawing information from Excel and flowing that into PowerPoint presentations. They also do research tasks for us, where they review a list of companies, determine what the company does, and share that information with the team.

What was the team composition?

We were connected with a Project Manager who worked with us to define our tasks and expectations. Then, a full time person was hired to execute the various tasks. On a day-to-day basis we task the hire directly. We are in the process of hiring an additional full time support.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Enshored has continuously impressed me. They complete work very quickly and with a high degree of quality. They are able to take feedback and integrate that into future work. We have developed new tasks to challenge them, and they have succeeded.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow is very effective. We use email and shared documents to communicate and delivery project output. They also provide a weekly summary of where the hours have been allocated per task.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their ability to take on new challenges and work their way down the learning curve sets them apart.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm in charge of customer success at a consumer electronics company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Enshored ?

When we first hired them, we were a small but growing presence in North America, and I needed to quickly onboard a support team.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

I hired Enshored to be our front-line customer support agents for phone, email, and chat. They provide technical support and now sales support. They were super accommodating and I was able to get them trained and up to speed in just a couple of weeks and it was great. They allowed me to start off small and grow with them.

What is the team composition?

I started off with contact with their owner, and two other managers. We started off with five agents, and we were able to scale up as our needs grew. Now we're up to 30 agents and three support personnel who manage the team there.

How did you come to work with Enshored?

After interacting with 6-7 other teams, I liked their ability to offer a small team, their availability to use my technology, and I had good rapport with their CEO and team captain. They knew where we are and seemed like a smart team that could get up to speed quickly.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in June 2017, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We rate the quality of our support with feedback from about 10,000 people per month. When we sent out a customer satisfaction survey, they've improved every quarter on their customer satisfaction rating. Response times have also improved; I think it's attributed to their strong management team in Manila. We save money and our quality has gone up. They also don't have high turnover and keep their employees happy, which keeps us happy.

How did Enshored perform from a project management standpoint?

Initially, all I asked them to do is respond to customer email inquiries. They've fully taken it upon themselves to suggest projects to do, to do product testing, write support articles or even videos. I can't complain. We're on Slack every day, so we're in constant communication. We have a weekly meeting with them too, and about once every six months I go to Manila to say hello and to do training.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I think their longevity is amazing. I've worked with call centers before, and all of a sudden, your team turns-over every three months; then you need to train everyone again and the quality goes down. At Enshored, they treat their employees well. They recently had a big Halloween party, everyone was dressed up and having fun, and they had performance awards. It’s clear people want to work with Enshored, which makes life easier for me.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don't think so. They're a growing company and have gotten 6-7 times bigger since I began working together and there have been rocky things at the start, but they've pounded out the kinks in the process. They made improvements along the way and I'm pretty happy with them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to stay in daily contact with them. Partly because they like it too, and they want to learn. Daily management and not just meetings are important. Going to visit them is also important, you'd be impressed with the team and the people they hire.