How the ArenaCX Marketplace Works with BPOs

What do we consider a "good fit"?

How Marketplace Partners are vetted & selected to be an exclusive ArenaCX partner.

We don’t take the process of selecting our partners lightly. While we want to make onboarding as a partner as seamless as possible, we also need to make sure each one is going to be a strong partner to us and to the clients whose portfolios they serve. That’s why we look at dozens of factors and rigorously vet candidates before deeming them a good “fit” to join our network.

We dive into the specific vetting process and selection criteria on our Partner Vetting page, but from a high level there are a few major factors we look at first.

First, we create a thorough profile with all the details of your offering (i.e. the languages you serve, your hours of operation, the channels you represent, the level of support offered, etc.). Included in this profile is a reference check. We take historical performance and behavior into deep consideration when determining partners and we conduct calls with past and present clients of yours to ensure there are no red flags that might affect your success in our marketplace.

Once we have a comprehensive BPO profile on your company, we then conduct a series of discovery calls with you to learn more about you, your team, and what you can bring to the Marketplace. If after these discovery sessions, we still think you’re a strong candidate we will discuss our universal set of marketplace terms & conditions.

Once a BPO has agreed to the terms we then place you on a ready-to-admit list. Being placed on this list means that you’ve checked out as a strong, trustworthy partner but we still need to check our capacity standards and marketplace needs before sending clients your way.

Our full list of acceptance criteria can also be found on our Partner Vetting page and includes criteria like market fitness and your ability to fill a gap in our network.

For example, if we have 10 BPOs in the network who already offer exactly the services yours does, we may not have room for you in our network based on clients capacity and skill needs. We want to ensure that each BPO in our network receives demand, so we don’t want to onboard partners and then not have the demand to send them new clients.

The goal of our marketplace is to create a level-playing field with fair, transparent rules, and win-win incentives that maximize the success of both marketplace buyers and sellers. If we were to add too many of one type, our partners wouldn’t get the maximum value out of the marketplace.

However, if a BPO is added to our ready-to-admit list but we don’t have a need for them at the time, they will remain on the list and we will contact them in the future if demand rises for what they offer or we have another member exit the marketplace who brought similar offerings.

So, now you might be thinking “It seems like hard work to get into the ArenaCX Marketplace. Is it even worth trying?"
YES!
In the next section I’ll dive into the many benefits of joining the marketplace.

The benefits of joining the ArenaCX marketplace.

Being a Marketplace Partner offers huge benefits, like never having to say "no" to a client (or future client) again.

We accept only the best BPOs into our network, as you can tell from our strict acceptance criteria, but the value of being a marketplace partner is apparent almost immediately (to you and your CFO).

Let’s start with the money-savings for your business.

Your cost to find and onboard customers just got a whole lot less expensive. ArenaCX hands you new clients on a silver platter. If your offering, performance-history, and pricing match our clients needs, you’ll be recommended as a strong partner match for the brand to include in their portfolio.

We don’t operate on a pay-to-play model. We’re 100% performance-based and won't recommend BPOs because of slick payment deals. We agree to the same, low commission from each of our partners for delivering perfect-fit clients to them.

Plus, our exclusive smart software (which all marketplace members and partners receive access to at no additional cost) helps you streamline your client interface and governance with aggregated demand plans and KPI reviews, simplified contracting, and consolidated invoicing. Simply put, this allows you to cut costs on unnecessary softwares (like KPI-tracking and dashboard-building platforms) while improving the accuracy of your demand forecasting.


Another great revenue-generating benefit of the Marketplace is your ability to earn referral commissions. It works like this: If you receive an RFP that you partially fulfill (or even don’t fulfill at all), you can still say “yes” to the potential client as you refer them into the ArenaCX network.

Because you can tap into the robust capabilities of the entire network, you can confidently keep the business that’s in your sweet spot while we match them with other vendors capable of offering the needs that you can’t or that are low-margin for your business.

Not only does this allow you to keep the business you want most, but it also earns you money if the client chooses to also tap into the ArenaCX Marketplace to fill the demands for services that your BPO doesn’t offer.

I’ve mentioned the benefits to your bottom line, but there’s also huge operational benefits that you and your sales team will love.

With perfect-fit clients served to you on a silver platter from ArenaCX, you close more deals with little to no effort (plus ArenaCX only takes commission at HALF the industry average --- much better than the fees you’d be expected to pay a broker).

You also can tap into the network to access instant capacity during seasonal spikes or unexpected bursts in client demand. This makes the finding and hiring process of additional agents much simpler and quicker so you don’t get caught flat-footed and have to turn away potential clients.

With ArenaCX, your day-to-day operations look a whole lot simpler while your bottom-line looks a whole lot better.

How does ArenaCX match BPOs with perfect-fit clients?

And how does it work once you're in the network?

First, we start by assembling a recommendation of BPO partners to make up the brand’s portfolio. This is done by conducting a mini-RFP session where we recommend our top choices of BPOs for the customer based on their specific needs. From our recommendations the brand selects the partner(s) they believe will be a strong fit for them.

With ArenaCX as the liaison between contact centers and brands, we facilitate the signing of short-term agreements by both/all parties. We don’t believe in long contracts and pride ourselves on our ability to offer brands and BPOs the flexibility and freedom to explore the right partners for them if it turns out that the initial relationship isn’t a great fit for both parties.

Once agreements are signed, the ArenaCX routing engine will immediately start to work its magic, routing tickets to the right partner based on the criteria set by the brand. This is where the co-opetition among you and other partners in the network start to “compete” for share of the brand’s cases.

As we’ve mentioned earlier in the blog, we operate 100% on a performance-based model. In short, if you continue to perform to high standards, you will continue to win more and more of the business you’re performing well at.

This happens automatically using our smart software, which you can learn more about by reading our blog Customer Service Software Improves Outsourcing Partnerships.

Underpinning our marketplace is exclusive ArenaCX software that automatically routes and triages tickets. Using AI, our routing engine determines which tickets to route to each BPO based on a handful of factors, including a BPO’s historical performance at those types of tickets, availability of agents, ticket priority, ticket pricing, etc.

A brand can choose to have as much or as little control over this routing as they desire. It can be set to a set-it-and-forget-it routing technique or they can choose to cap the percentage of tickets each of the BPOs in their portfolio receive.

Regardless of how a business chooses to control their case routing, the principle of the marketplace remains: the better you perform, the more cases your business will get, and the more money your business will earn. And, because you’re paid on a case-by-case (aka per-ticket) pricing structure, you truly are paid for the amount of work you do vs. the standard by-the-agent model employed by most BPOs.

Feel like you could be a great fit as an ArenaCX Marketplace Partner?