One thing that always amazes me about outsourcing and working with small businesses is that, while they are generally very cost conscious, in many cases they are also not prepared to spend a small amount of time at the outset of a new campaign to get the process worked out and up to speed. One of the key concepts behind successfully taking time consuming tasks off of your plate is to create a process that ensures they are going to be carried out correctly. That's not to say you want to build a campaign that you need to check in on every hour of every day, but at least for the first few days its important to be proactive to make sure things are going smoothly.
Recently we got a call from a small manufacturing company that had a simple task they wanted performed: call through their contact list, verify the information was correct and let the contact know that they would be sending an annual product mailer. This seemed simple enough.
The campaign got underway without the client going over the process with anyone directly and instead simply emailing a script and list to the agent. The agent was never informed the calls were to existing contacts and assumed they were cold calls and she needed to get the information and permission to send mailers and schedule follow ups (the script was very vague and the agent had worked in appointment setting previously).
The client followed this up by not checking on progress for a full week and did not respond to several questions from the agent. After two weeks we received calls asking why the campaign did not work, which were easy to answer.
While outsourcing can be a huge time saver and really increase your productivity and bottom line if used correctly it is still a highly human based process. Building a process, and making sure that process is understood are the most important parts. Imagine hiring a new sales guy in your office. The first few days are filled with training, learning company policies, studying industry information and generally preparing for the job. While most outsourced tasks are much simpler than the one your sales guy is preparing for there is still a basic level understanding on what the process is designed to do and how to accomplish it your outsourced agent needs to achieve to have success.