Building a front office for a business involves securing facilities, hiring staff, and preparing systems to interface with the public. Alternatively, companies can hire pre-arranged office solutions or outsource staffing components. Front office departments include reception, service, and sales, and are crucial for customer service and loyalty. Outsourcing to foreign countries with lower labor costs is also an option for mature businesses.
You can build a front office for your business by securing facilities, hiring staff, and preparing systems to interface with the public. Alternatively, you can hire a company that offers a pre-arranged office solution or outsource some of the staffing component to companies around the world. Office planning and management is the key to the success of any company. Implementing a public interface reflects your customer service philosophy and will ultimately determine customer loyalty. Management‘s challenge is to reduce costs while keeping customers happy and creating a competitive advantage.
The front office of a company consists of all departments that come into direct contact with the public. These departments include Reception, Service and Sales. Typically, a new company will have modest needs and may only need a place to meet with clients or customers and equip it appropriately. He then hires staff to answer phones, provide customer support, and make sales. Finally, it establishes systems to make the process smooth.
In the initial stages of business development, the front office may share the same space and resources as the back office out of necessity. The back office is all that the public never sees. Manufacturing firms that need to set up facilities to produce a product tend to initially worry more about the back office, while consulting businesses and service-oriented businesses wax and wane in public relations. As a business grows and has the resources to establish separate facilities for each department, building office operations is a matter of equipping each department that contracts with the public with a customer service philosophy and the staff and the equipment to provide a consistent face company.
An alternative to setting up your own office, particularly in the startup phase, is to hire a consultancy firm to run it. There are companies that provide front office services out of the box for other companies. This type of business service provider will operate a central office with reception, meeting rooms, offices, equipment, hospitality, and anything else a business needs to deal with with a client. For a flat fee, assign a client company a telephone number and mailing address. Handles telephone and in-person reception, processes mail for the company and enables company staff to use the facilities to meet with clients as needed.
Mature businesses have another option for setting up front office operations. Outsourcing parts to foreign countries with lower labor costs, such as India, has become a popular way to keep costs down. Telephone customer service is a department that is often outsourced. Many companies have outsourced parts of their sales departments, especially cold calling and initial contacts. In these cases, a business still maintains a front office presence but key services are outsourced.
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