Untapped Small Business Niche: Rural Outsourcing Services

Living in a small town in the United States can make earning a good living difficult to do. However, there is a new business niche that makes small town charm a marketable commodity. The business niche is domestic outsourcing.

Outsourcing

If you have been following business news over the last ten years then you are well aware of the fact that outsourcing has been viewed as a way for U.S. companies to save money. You may also be aware that outsourcing to other countries has raised business ethics questions related to security and economic stability concerns. While outsourcing is a valid business concept, outsourcing to other countries has damaged the American economy.

Domestic, Rural Outsourcing

The solution to many of the problems associated with outsourcing is to outsource to American companies. This is where living in a rural town can actually be a marketing advantage. Rural communities are known for their hospitality, charm and quality customer service. You can use these attributes to market your outsourcing company to companies found in larger cities in the U.S.

Building an Outsourcing Company

When you develop an outsourcing company you need to think about what the biggest complaints about international outsourcing companies are. For example, quality customer service is a big problem. The people that you hire to handle incoming calls need to speak English fluently, you need to have bilingual staff members as well to handle calls from non-English speaking customers, you need to establish and 24 hour a day schedule and you need to train your employees to handle each call with consistent service.

Another concern that you will need to deal with is customer information security. Often outsourcing companies handle sensitive customer data such as payment information, personal statistics and company secrets. To ensure that you can protect this information you need to design security safeguards into your company culture and infrastructure. These safeguards will include data encryption, payment collection oversights and security training for all staff members.

The final step is to decide what type of services you will be offering to your customers. The most common services that are outsourced include technical assistance, customer service, order taking and after hours reception services. For each service that you select you will need to make sure that you can find staff members that are qualified to deliver these types of services. This means you need to know what your local employee pool looks like.

Reference

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/sep2010/sb20100922_365099.htm