Welcoming Your New Service Provider

If you haven’t already, register a username for yourself so you can discuss this topic in our Outsourcing Forums.

As an outsourcer, you play a critical role in how well your service provider performs his or her job, and a project’s success could very well depend on how you initiate its start. Here are some tips that will help you begin and maintain a professional relationship with your provider for the duration of both a short-term and long-term project.

Tips

• Write a brief welcoming message. Create a few paragraphs that describe your role in the outsourced project and provide the times you’ll be available for support and help. If allowed, that is, if your project is priced at $500 or more, include your contact information (email address, Skype ID, phone number, etc.) too.
• If you have a preferred method of formatting your messages, describe that method as well. For example, you may want to format your provider’s responses in italics and format your responses in bold. Or perhaps you may want to use a different type of font to emphasize parts of a message that contain programming code. Whatever your preferred method of formatting is, make it known so that communication between you and your provider maintains consistency.
• Give your provider a brief summary about the company, its history as well as its mission and objectives. This will help keep your provider’s submissions in line with your own goals. If you tell your provider for instance, that your company is a 10 year old music production studio that wants to expand nation-wide, your provider will use that information to design imagery, advertisements, or brochures which emphasize that very message.
• If possible, demonstrate your company’s products and/or services so that your provider can see the type of quality you’re expecting.
• For projects that require access to a separate website, give your service provider a tour of the areas s/he’ll access. You could create a tour with a video for instance, or with something as simple as a Word documents adorned with helpful screenshots. Just be careful not to forget to give your provider a unique username and password for private areas.
• With small projects, you’ll more than likely work with your service provider alone. Bigger projects may need collaboration among you, your service provider, and several colleagues. In this situation, introduce your service provider to your co-workers along with a brief description of their jobs and responsibilities so your provider won’t be confused as to who to ask for help.

Covering these points at the start will help new service providers feel welcome, appreciated, and eager to work – much more than if they were left on their own.