11 December 2024
Insights
We get it — CX looks great on paper. It sounds great, too. But it’s more than marketing’s next big talking point. When done right, it’s everything it says on the tin.
Whether you’ve been in business for years or are just starting, customer experience is your golden goose. It’s your Tesseract. Your Holy Grail. It’s one of the most important things people still have qualms about.
Don’t get us wrong; the qualms aren’t unfounded. After all, how can you know if you’ll exceed your targets without risking quality? Because surely, if you’re getting something fast, the quality will suffer, right?
Sometimes. But that doesn’t have to be the case. We’ve proven it’s possible to ramp up at scale while keeping the quality solid.
Honestly? For speediness, traditional CX falls short
We all know Aesop’s tale about the hare and the tortoise: the hare is so overconfident they’ll win that they decide to nap on the way and end up losing. That’s usually the case for CX, too. Traditional brick-and-mortar customer experiences operate slowly and steadily to great success, but speed is a huge driver.
While steadiness works, you won’t excel if you lag against competitors. Yet just because you need to scale quickly doesn’t mean you have to leave quality behind.
As 5CA Operations Director Nuno da Costa explains, “Partnering with our clients through long-term forecasting with a customer-centric approach allows us to ramp up at speed without compromising quality.”
To execute with speed, you must prepare
—often at a slower pace.
— Nuno da Costa, Operations Director
Regarding CX, the only people who think that are those used to the brick-and-mortar experience of yore. And while they work, our ways work even better.
Where typical brick-and-mortar CX doesn’t cut it
Brick-and-mortar models have been successful for years, but they have drawbacks regarding scalability and quality. After all, when you treat geography as a limitation, reaching the heights required by living in an increasingly digital and remote-first world is challenging.
Traditional operating models are limited in a few ways: location, time, and flexibility. So, how does 5CA differ?
At 5CA, we can scale rapidly for many reasons
We’ve been in the game a long time. As a result, we’ve also fine-tuned our own way of doing CX. Working remotely, we can ramp up way faster than more traditional models. We’re almost limitless in our capabilities because of how we operate.
Not being limited to one place, a single time zone, or one language has been huge for us.
We have a distributed operating model
Our distributed operating model is the cornerstone of 5CA. We were a remote-first company before most start-ups were a glint in their CEO’s eyes and have always championed the remote workforce. And not just what it can do for us but what it can do for our agents, too.
Although our mission control is in Utrecht, we work with people from all over the globe. In doing so, we can cover every time zone, making us a legitimately 24/7 company. Furthermore, our distributed model ensures everyone gets quality customer service whenever they need it.
We have a solid blueprint
Our ops manager, Miguel Afoichini, recommends having a solid blueprint before ramping up. He says it significantly enhances the likelihood of a successful run.
“Blueprints ensure support departments are ready to fire at all cylinders,” he adds. “Having structured timelines and clear deliverables minimizes the risk of compromising on essentials due to time constraints or flawed processes.”
Structured timelines and clear deliverables minimize the risk of compromising on essentials due to time constraints or flawed processes.
— Miguel Afoichini, Operations Manager
We have a global talent pool
Our global talent pool consists of thousands of people from all over the world. We have 40 nationalities across 90 countries, speaking over 75 languages and dialects.
We’re a global team with global clients and the potential to dip into billions of talented people. It’s something a static office simply can’t compete with. It’s CX done differently, and we can’t wait to see where we are in five years.
We have a solid knowledge base
Our Fans of Brands are a knowledge base that keeps on giving. We match clients to brands they love because they love them as much as their customers do.
Using Fans of Brands, those seeking advice can get it quickly and well. After all, the only people who know a brand more than its owners are its customers.
As Operations Director Gerardo Bono says, “In a normal situation, you can rely on tribal knowledge to bring people up to speed; in a rapid growth scenario, you might not have that luxury.”
With our Fans of Brands, you can have both. But Gerardo also suggests keeping important knowledge in a central database, just in case.
Keep important knowledge in a central database everyone has access to and keep it up to date.
— Gerardo Bono, Operations Director
We have a lean and agile setup
Our lean and agile setup keeps things simple and flexible. While traditional models tend to set rules in stone, we know we must adapt to the times.
With a more open structure, we can change things as they see fit. If something isn’t working, we can address it immediately with our flexible schedule.
The main challenge is building a strong and clear structure that is also very flexible. Because of the rapid changes in the world and our industry, flexibility is essential.
— Joep de Jong, Operations Director
Speed but not at the cost of quality
We’re a future-ready company superpowered by our incredible global team. Furthermore, the foundations we have in place are without limits.
That makes for unlimited scalability. Additionally, we can cover all time zones, holidays, and languages — all thanks to our fans of brands.
Because of them, we can guarantee speed without compromising on quality. Because when people are passionate, they can use first-hand knowledge.
And they can do that because they might have also had those same questions once upon a time.
If you want to see results fast, we got you
We know better than anyone how much of a long game CX can be. But we also know it doesn’t have to be.
The world is moving quickly, and it can swallow us whole if we don’t keep up. Thankfully, we have all the tools to scale at speed built into our core values. From a distributed operating model and global talent pool to an extensive and unique knowledge base, we’ve got it covered.
These founding values are why we’ll always stay true to who 5CA is — where even its culture provides a CXperience to remember.
If you want to scale up your brand without risking quality for speed, drop us a line.