Case Study Retail BPO Strategy

The moment insourcing beats the vendor contract, calculated

Fast-growing regional pet retail franchise · Appointment scheduling via text and voice

Per-Contact Vendor pricing, uncapped

Multi-BPO Outsourced operation

The Challenge

Every new store made the contact center contract more expensive.

The franchise paid its BPO providers per contact and per appointment, with no volume caps and no pricing tiers. The model had worked at lower volumes. Now every store opening and every demand spike pushed costs up in a straight line, and ownership suspected they were overpaying for work that could be renegotiated or brought in-house. What they lacked was the math to know when.

Linear cost growth

Costs scaled one-to-one with volume, so growth made the problem bigger instead of smaller.

Contracts without guardrails

No volume caps, no reduction tiers, no terms built for the growth the business was already having.

Inconsistent customer experience

Multiple providers handled the same customer journeys with no shared standard across touchpoints.

Our Approach

Model the true cost per contact, then find where the math flips.

01

Data Consolidation & Volume Analysis

Aggregated calls, texts, website visits, and bookings into one picture of volumes and channel mix. The data lived in pieces across providers, and assembling it was the hardest part of the engagement.

02

Unit Cost Modeling

Built the true cost-per-contact and cost-per-appointment across all channels and providers, establishing the financial baseline the contracts had obscured.

03

Crossover Analysis

Applied growth assumptions across strategy permutations to locate the volume threshold where insourcing becomes cheaper than the vendors.

04

Strategy Review & Contract Recommendations

Walked ownership through the model, the timing, and the risk, with market-based contract terms to fix the current agreements in the meantime.

The Results