Getting Oriented: Why Now?

• To get us started, describe the trigger that brought you to consider outsourcing now.
• In a typical month, how many inbound contacts across voice, chat, email, and social does your team handle? Options: Under 10,000, 10,000–50,000, 50,001–200,000, 200,000–1,000,000, Over 1,000,000
• Which customer segments generate the highest contact volume or complexity? Options: New customers / activations, Billing and payments, Technical support, Returns and refunds, High-value customers, Other
• Give an example of a recent spike or incident that strained your internal team, including root cause and impact.
• Estimate your current average handle time and how that compares to your target, in seconds.
• How satisfied are your leadership and agents with current first contact resolution and CSAT trends? Options: Very satisfied, Moderately satisfied, Neutral, Concerned, Very concerned
• Would you still run a pilot if you could not free up any internal subject matter experts within 30 days? Options: Yes, No, Maybe, depends on scope

Where the Work Actually Breaks

• If your busiest week repeated every month, what would break first in your support operation?
• Who on your team notices problems first when quality slips, and how do they typically escalate?
• How often does incorrect product information from agents cause escalations, refunds, or regulatory reports? Options: Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Rarely, Unknown
• Walk me through the last time an external partner caused a customer service failure and what fixes you required.
• Which metrics do you trust least right now, and what makes them unreliable?
• Would you halt the engagement if those failures reoccurred during a pilot? Options: Yes, No, Only if customer harm occurred

People, Owners, and Hidden Blockers

• Who would block a decision to move support outside the company, and what would convince them otherwise?
• Tell me about the internal owners for CRM, telephony, security, procurement, and workforce management.
• List any union, labor, or vendor agreements that constrain hiring, location, or scheduling.
• And how quickly can each named owner commit time during a pilot, in hours per week? Options: Under 5 hours/week, 5–15 hours/week, 16–40 hours/week, Over 40 hours/week
• Would a refusal by any required owner to commit time pause the project? Options: Yes, No, Depends on which owner

Operational Constraints and Technical Readiness

• If your engineering team could only commit 40 hours over the next 30 days, which integration work would you prioritize and what would have to wait?
• Where do you host your CRM and telephony endpoints, and who controls admin access? Options: Cloud CRM, vendor-managed, Cloud CRM, customer-managed, On-prem CRM, Hybrid, Multiple systems
• Are APIs available for conversation history, user profiles, and ticket updates, and are they documented? Options: All documented and available, Partially available, Limited or no APIs, Unknown
• Identify the owner for data privacy and compliance reviews, and the typical approval cycle length in business days.
• Estimate the percentage of customer and agent data that is usable for training within two weeks. Options: 0–25%, 26–50%, 51–75%, 76–100%, Unknown
• List infrastructure or network constraints that could prevent real-time voice routing or screen pops.
• Would you pause the pilot if credentials or access are not granted within 15 calendar days? Options: Yes, No, We would escalate but continue

Alternatives You're Weighing

• Staying with your current provider, what three things would need to change for you to walk away from considering a new partner?
• Describe the internal options proposed to scale support and who proposed each.
• Identify incumbent vendors you are evaluating or under contract with, and contract end dates if applicable.
• What would have to be true about continuing to run support in-house for you to cancel this search?
• Has anyone internally recommended solving this without an external partner, and what was their proposed plan?
• Suppose an incumbent matched your pilot success metrics but offered no outcome-based pricing, would you still consider switching? Options: Yes, No, Maybe — price must improve

Pilot, Measures, and Acceptance

• Imagine a single-channel pilot that met your ramp and FCR targets but lagged CSAT by 5 points, would that be acceptable? Options: Yes — acceptable, Maybe — depends on root cause, No — unacceptable
• State the exact acceptance criteria you will require for pilot success, including numeric thresholds and timeframes.
• Rank the KPIs by commercial importance: FCR, CSAT, cost per contact, SLA adherence, average handle time. Options: FCR highest, CSAT highest, Cost per contact highest, SLA adherence highest, AHT highest
• Provide your target ramp time in weeks to reach steady-state volume for a single channel pilot. Options: 2–4 weeks, 5–8 weeks, 9–12 weeks, Over 12 weeks
• Provide the approver for pilot acceptance and their budget authority.
• Select the channel to pilot first Options: Voice, Chat, Email, SMS, Social, Other
• Should a pilot meet all acceptance criteria, will you commit to a phased roll within the next quarter? Options: Yes, we will commit, No, more approvals needed, Maybe — need executive sign-off

Timing, Budget, and Deal Breakers

• What single operational risk would make you stop the project immediately?
• Share the budget range you have allocated to this program for the first year. Options: Under $250,000, $250,000–$1,000,000, $1,000,000–$5,000,000, Over $5,000,000, Not yet defined
• When is your ideal go-live date for phased deployment? Options: Within 30 days, 1–3 months, 3–6 months, 6+ months
• Are there compliance approvals, legal reviews, or audits that must finish before onboarding can begin? Options: Yes, specific approvals required, Some reviews needed but not blocking, No formal approvals required, Unknown
• Describe the change-management support you will need to minimize attrition and knowledge loss during ramp.
• Select the pricing models you are open to Options: Per-contact, Per-seat, Outcome-based, Hybrid, Fixed-fee pilot
• Should data security reviews require on-site audits you cannot pass, will you halt the procurement? Options: Yes, No, We would seek remediation

• Service Experience Walkthrough

• Confirm the current state and its cost to your team
• You confirm the restated current state and the quantified cost to your organization.
• Provide a written pilot acceptance criteria document that lists target SLA, FCR, CSAT thresholds, pilot duration, and evidence formats within three business days.
• You agree that the demonstrated end-to-end handling of priority scenarios eliminates the specific failure modes you described in Discovery.
• Walk two priority customer scenarios end to end across channels
• Share representative call and chat transcripts and the top three escalation scenarios to be used during the pilot within two business days.
• Run the staffing and cost model against the last 30 days of contact volumes and deliver a headcount and ramp schedule before pilot kickoff.
• You accept the proposed staffing and ramp plan plus attrition mitigation as sufficient to meet your SLA and KPI baselines for the pilot.
• Show staffing, ramp, and attrition mitigation tied to your SLAs
• Demonstrate security, integration, and knowledge-transfer controls
• You confirm the security and integration controls meet your compliance expectations or list the remaining gaps to resolve before pilot kickoff.
• Confirm legal and compliance points of contact and provide any required compliance attestations needed for integration testing.
• Validate the future state in your language
• Agree on pilot acceptance criteria and required evidence

• Service Experience Walkthrough
• Service Experience Deck
• Service Experience Brief

• meeting
• slides
• document

• Recruit and onboard multilingual agents
• Deliver product training and populate knowledgebase
• Operate inbound voice support per SLA
• Operate live chat and messaging channels
• Manage customer email and back-office processing
• Run outbound sales and retention campaigns
• Integrate source CRM and telephony to agent desktop
• Deploy AI-assisted agent assist and call summaries
• Provide workforce management and real-time adherence
• Perform QA scoring focused on first-call resolution
• Execute single-channel pilot and operational handover
• Activate outcome-linked pricing and performance invoicing
• Implement secure PII handling and compliance controls

Recruit and onboard multilingual agents

• Which languages and dialects must agents support for peak-season voice and chat (for example English US, Spanish LATAM, Portuguese BR)? Options: English (US), Spanish (LATAM), Portuguese (BR), French, Other
• How many named agent full time equivalents (FTEs) must be available at peak for the primary product-support queue? Options: Less than 10, 10-25, 26-50, 51-100, More than 100
• What target average handle time (AHT) in seconds should we plan for product-support inbound voice calls? Options: <300s, 300-600s, 600-900s, >900s
• Who on your team will own SME interviews and final approval for agent hire decisions?
• Describe required background, certifications, or security clearances for agents handling regulated accounts (for example PCI awareness, financial licensing).
• Are there maximum acceptable monthly agent attrition thresholds during ramp and steady-state, and if so which threshold applies? Options: No threshold / flexible, <=5% per month, <=10% per month, <=20% per month, Custom

Deliver product training and populate knowledgebase

• What product SKUs, feature sets, release notes or troubleshooting guides must be included in the initial training curriculum?
• How many training hours per agent do you require before graduation for Tier 1 product-support? Options: 8-16 hours, 17-40 hours, 41-80 hours, 80+ hours
• Which artifact will serve as the single source of truth for answers used in agent scripting (knowledgebase articles, product manual PDF, or internal wiki)? Options: Knowledgebase articles, Product manual / PDF, Internal wiki, Shared folder, Custom
• How will you validate product-knowledge retention during training: percentage correct on knowledge-check quizzes, simulated call assessments, or another method? Options: Knowledge checks (%), Simulated calls pass rate, On-the-job monitoring, CSAT comparison
• What acceptance criteria will confirm your knowledgebase is sufficiently populated for pilot handover (minimum article count, search hit rate, accuracy threshold)?
• How often must product release notes be pushed to the published knowledgebase (per release, weekly, monthly)? Options: Per release, Weekly, Monthly, On major releases only

Operate inbound voice support per SLA

• Which IVR flows and telephone numbers must be configured on day one, including overflow and emergency routing?
• What target service-level objective should we meet for the inbound voice queue (percentage answered within X seconds)? Options: 80% in 20s, 90% in 30s, 95% in 60s, Custom
• What call recording and retention duration is required for compliance and which regime applies (for example 90 days for PCI, 1 year for audit)? Options: 30 days, 90 days, 1 year, Custom
• Who is the internal escalation owner for Tier 2 technical troubleshooting during product outages?
• Do you require local number presentation or dual-metro routing for specific regions, and if so which regions? Options: Local numbers for regions, Dual-metro routing, No
• Provide expected average simultaneous calls at peak and forecasted concurrency growth over the next six months.

Operate live chat and messaging channels

• Which messaging channels must be active for the initial scope (web chat, SMS, WhatsApp, social direct messages)? Options: Web chat, SMS, WhatsApp, Social DMs, Other
• What target first response time for chat interactions do you expect in seconds or minutes? Options: <30s, 30-60s, 1-5 minutes, 5-15 minutes, Custom
• Which conversational handoff triggers should escalate chat to voice or supervisor (for example sentiment score threshold, keywords, customer tier)?
• Do you require templated message responses to be stored in the knowledgebase for common chat flows? Options: Yes, No
• How must chat transcripts be stored and linked to CRM cases (for example session ID, case number, or activity log)?

Manage customer email and back-office processing

• Which email processing workflows must be automated (triage, template replies, SLA-based escalation)? Options: Triage and routing, Template replies, SLA escalation, Attachment handling, Other
• What target email response SLA should be configured for priority and standard queues (hours)? Options: 2 hours, 8 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours, Custom
• Which back-office task types will be included (order changes, refunds, data-entry tasks) and what throughput is expected per shift?
• Do you require automated case creation from email parsing and which fields must be extracted into the CRM (order ID, customer ID, issue type)? Options: Yes - extract fields, No - manual
• Who will own SLA escalations and SLAs for email and back-office processing within your organization?

Run outbound sales and retention campaigns

• Which campaign types will you run in scope (win-back, retention, upsell, collections)? Options: Win-back, Retention, Upsell, Collections, Other
• What opt-in or compliance requirements apply to outbound lists (TCPA consent, do-not-call lists, opt-out handling)?
• What performance targets should outbound campaigns meet (conversion rate, contact-to-sale ratio, revenue per contact)?
• How will leads and campaign segments be delivered to the outbound platform (batch CSV, API feed, CRM export)? Options: Batch CSV, API feed, CRM export, Other
• Do you require call scripting and numeric compliance verbiage embedded in dialer dispositions? Options: Yes - scripting required, No

Integrate source CRM and telephony to agent desktop

• Which CRM objects must synchronize in real time to the agent desktop (for example contacts, cases, orders, subscriptions)? Options: Contacts, Cases, Orders, Subscriptions, Other
• What is the telephony integration endpoint type for click-to-dial and screen pop: SIP trunk, cloud telephony API, or carrier portal? Options: SIP trunk, Cloud telephony API, Carrier portal, Other
• Which authentication method will the integration endpoint provide for API access (OAuth 2.0, API key, SAML)? Options: OAuth 2.0, API key, SAML, Other
• Provide the acceptable API latency threshold for screen pop and click-to-dial in milliseconds. Options: <200ms, 200-500ms, 500-1000ms, >1000ms
• Who will be the technical contact and which sandbox credentials can be provided for integration testing?

Deploy AI-assisted agent assist and call summaries

• Which call-summary fields must be autogenerated into the CRM case (for example resolution summary, next steps, disposition code)? Options: Resolution summary, Next steps, Disposition code, Tags, Other
• What PII redaction rules must be enforced on transcripts (for example mask account numbers, redact SSN patterns, mask credit card PAN except last 4)?
• Are real-time agent prompts required for cross-sell and mandatory compliance verbiage during calls? Options: Yes - full prompts, No, Prompts for compliance only
• What accuracy threshold do you require for automated call summaries before a human review is mandatory (for example 80%+)? Options: 70%, 80%, 90%, Custom
• How will you validate AI call summaries during pilot (sample size, review checklist, acceptance threshold)?

Provide workforce management and real-time adherence

• How many scheduling populations must be modeled for forecasting (for example by time zone, skill group, full-time vs part-time)? Options: 1-2, 3-5, 6-10, 10+
• What shrinkage rate should we apply for forecasting as a percentage to cover sick time, training, and breaks? Options: 10%, 15%, 20%, Custom
• Which real-time adherence signals should trigger supervisor alerts (for example missed login, late wrap, schedule deviation)?
• Do you prefer intraday schedule adjustments to be automated by the workforce system or handled manually by ops? Options: Automated adjustments, Manual adjustments, Hybrid
• Who will approve weekly schedule changes, overtime exceptions, and shift swaps within your organization?

Perform QA scoring focused on first-call resolution

• Which QA rubric items must be weighted most heavily for first-call resolution (correct resolution, knowledge accuracy, compliance steps)?
• What FCR measurement method do you use today (agent disposition, post-call survey, call-backs within X days)? Options: Agent disposition, Post-call survey, Call-backs within timeframe, Other
• What minimum QA pass rate on sample calls must agents achieve before being certified for live handling? Options: 70%, 80%, 90%, Custom
• How frequently should QA calibration sessions occur with your SMEs and ops leaders? Options: Weekly, Bi-weekly, Monthly, Quarterly
• Do you require QA reports to be mapped to agent coaching actions and workforce forecasts? Options: Yes, No

Execute single-channel pilot and operational handover

• Which single channel will be executed for the pilot (choose one: inbound voice or a single messaging channel)? Options: Inbound voice, Web chat, SMS, Email
• What pilot duration do you require to validate agent ramp, FCR, CSAT, and knowledge retention (for example number of weeks or one quarter)? Options: 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 1 quarter, Custom
• List the KPI targets you will use for pilot acceptance including numeric FCR, CSAT target, ramp days to full schedule, and minimum knowledge-check score.
• What specific acceptance criteria will confirm pilot success and allow operational handover (numeric thresholds, sampling method, and signatory)?
• How many live customer contacts minimum must be included in the pilot sample to provide statistical validity for the chosen KPIs? Options: 50-100, 101-500, 501-1000, 1000+
• Who will sign the pilot handover document and which legal or data-transfer approvals must be in place before handover?

Activate outcome-linked pricing and performance invoicing

• Which outcome metrics should be linked to pricing adjustments (for example FCR improvement, CSAT delta, cost per contact)? Options: FCR, CSAT, Cost per contact, AHT reduction, Other

• desired_state
• current_state
• stakeholders
• gaps
• success_criteria
• decision_readiness
• desired_state
• decision_readiness
• current_state
• success_criteria
• gaps
• stakeholders
• desired_state
• decision_readiness
• stakeholders
• gaps
• current_state
• success_criteria
• decision_readiness
• decision_readiness
• decision_readiness
• decision_readiness

• Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA)
• Master Services Agreement (MSA)
• Statement of Work (SOW)
• Service Level Agreement (SLA)
• Outcome-Based Pricing Addendum
• Order Form & Fees Schedule
• Data Processing Agreement (DPA)
• Data Security Controls Addendum
• Regulatory Compliance Addendum (conditional)
• Pilot Acceptance Certificate
• Go/No-Go Decision Record
• Change Order Agreement
• Termination & Transition Plan

• Go-live Health Check
• First Measurement Review
• Acceptance Gate Review
• Quarterly Operational Review

• Provide a quarterly attrition mitigation plan that includes hiring cadence and retention interventions.
• Provide a reproducible KPI report and data dictionary used to calculate ramp time and FCR.
• Restate acceptance criteria and numeric targets
• Produce a documented pass or fail for each acceptance criterion recorded in Program Scope.
• Capture the buyer's formal acceptance decision or conditional acceptance with a named signatory and resolution timeline.
• Verify the incumbent is appropriately decommissioned or retained read-only and that data migration or archive tasks are complete.
• If conditional acceptance, deliver remediation completion evidence by the agreed date and confirm verification steps.
• If accepted, publish the acceptance record and update the operational runbook to remove legacy fallback procedures.
• Archive or migrate legacy data and provide confirmation of storage location and retention policy.
• KPI trend review
• Confirm whether CSAT, attrition, and SLA adherence remain within acceptable ranges or require remediation.
• Agree a prioritized backlog of enhancements and operational fixes with clear owners and timelines.
• Ensure training and QA actions are scheduled to reduce knowledge drift and lower attrition-related quality risk.
• Schedule a targeted knowledge refresh session for any area with repeated quality failures within 30 days.
• Deliver a prioritized enhancement roadmap with expected delivery quarters for the top three items.
• Re-confirm success criteria and owners
• Confirm integrations and endpoints required for contact handling are operational and monitored.
• Surface and assign owners for all critical open issues that could block normal operations.
• Ensure dashboards and alerting are active so the team can track early health signals without manual checks.
• Restore any failed connector or routing rule and validate end-to-end calls/chats within 48 hours.
• Publish the live dashboard link and data source owners for adoption monitoring.
• Deliver a 72-hour remediation status update listing closed and open items.
• Present first-month KPI data versus Program Scope targets
• Establish whether first-call resolution and ramp-time are trending toward Program Scope targets or require remediation.
• Capture a prioritized list of corrective actions with owners and target dates to close KPI gaps before the acceptance gate.
• Ensure the data sources and reports used to measure KPIs are validated and reproducible.
• Deliver updated training module and short knowledge refresh for the top 3 failure scenarios within 14 days.
• Implement routing tweak or skill adjustment and validate impact on FCR in the next 7 days.
• Present outcome data against each acceptance criterion
• Persistent issues and escalation log
• Deployment and integration validation
• Root-cause diagnosis for any gaps
• Document pass/fail per criterion and capture acceptance decision
• Early adoption signals and usage patterns
• Workforce stability and knowledge retention
• Agree corrective actions with owners and dates
• Blockers and open issues with owners
• Confirm timeline to acceptance gate
• Enhancement and backlog prioritization
• Incumbent wind-down verification
• Agree immediate remediation actions
• Agree remediation plan for any failed criteria
• Agree owners and next steps