How do you lead a BPO team through a major change initiative?

Above all else, assess the culture of the organization. Culture will eat all the above suggestions (and, yes, strategy) for breakfast. Is this an organization accustomed to, comfortable with, and committed to change? If 'yes', then the foundation is set to proceed to identifying the quantifiable elements of the change, and how to go about putting it into effect. If 'no', this is a much heavier lift - perhaps an impossible one without serious organizational, leadership, and incentive realignment. At the end of the day, the DNA of the enterprise will establish the laws of physics under which any change initiative must comply to survive.

The cardinal rule in communicating change is, you can never communicate too much. It's important that messages about 'what', 'why', 'when', and 'who' are baked in to all corporate comms (both via formal and informal channels). People are busy, and will often not see the first few messages. And, for those who see the message several times, it will serve to reinforce their understanding and appreciation for the commitment to change. You can never communicate too much! I repeat.... you can never communicate too much. (See what I did there? ;-) )

Even if team members help management in the planning of a new process or organizational framework … it is the team members (and NOT managers) who must find the outliers that cause delay or error. Encouraging the team to fail fast and prepare to adjust fast… makes the finding of outliers a victory, and not something to be hidden or ignored. And real-time capture of enduser discoveries, catalogued with the resolution… will create a knowledge database that is more useful to production than the original instructions created for the change.

Don't assume technology will provide all the answers. For example, the move to "artificial intelligence" can give the erroneous impression that BPO tools and technology can "solve" for a lack of planning and governance, which are still critical to success. As was demonstrated over the years in Robotic Process Automation (RPA), without defining and optimizing business processes first, you automate a bad process.

Having spent my career in BPO, it's VERY difficult for BPOs to change. For a number of reasons: 1) it's an industry defined by client contractual obligations, constraints, and commercials 2) a BPO company is a loosely affiliated collection of client accounts - each operating under rules set by that client (see #1). So, it is difficult for a BPO to maneuver, and even more difficult to invest in, and deploy, enterprise-wide change 3) Change requires all stakeholders be involved, and BPO clients often have little incentive to change - contracts are locked-in and measured by metrics that all their providers are being compared to (NPS, AHT, etc.) Change is not impossible, but it takes a lot of finesse and leadership ability to make it happen.