Free resource
The BPO vendor evaluation checklist.
24 questions to ask any outsourcing provider before you sign — on compliance, proof, people, pricing, operations and AI. Use it on every vendor on your shortlist. Including us.
Compliance & security.
Which certifications and audits can they document — PCI DSS, ISO/IEC 27001, SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR — and will they share reports under NDA?
How is client-system access controlled — least privilege, named accounts, audit trails?
Where does your data physically live, and who can see it?
Is there multi-site redundancy, or is one building a single point of failure?
Proof, not promises.
Can they name references you can actually call?
Do they run real operations of their own, or only sell capacity?
Ask for live metrics from a comparable program — and how those numbers are verified.
How long have they operated, and what is their client retention story?
People & training.
How are agents recruited and screened — and what is annual attrition?
Who trains agents on YOUR brand, and for how long before go-live?
Will your team be dedicated or shared across clients?
What is the agents-to-team-lead ratio, and who do you call by name?
Pricing transparency.
Is the quote all-inclusive — recruitment, training, management, QA, infrastructure, reporting — or will line items appear later?
Which pricing models do they offer (per-agent, per-hour, per-interaction, outcome-based), and why is theirs the fit for you?
What exactly triggers overage or extra charges?
Can you pilot with defined success criteria before committing to scale?
Operations & quality.
Which SLAs will they sign — and how are misses reported and remedied?
What does QA actually look like: how many interactions scored, against whose standards?
What reporting do you get, how often, and can you see raw data?
What is the escalation path when something goes wrong — with a named owner?
AI capability (2026 and beyond).
Do they build AI capability or only resell it — and can they show it live?
Are AI claims honest about status (deployed vs in development)?
How does AI hand off to humans — and is every AI action auditable?
Can the human/AI mix shift over time without re-tooling or re-contracting?
Because we're happy to be graded on it.
A checklist like this only helps a provider who does well on it. Our answers live across this site — compliance, our own operating companies, transparent pricing, how engagements run and honest AI status labels — and we'll answer all 24 directly in a scoping call.
Questions, answered.
Is this checklist biased toward Tribe?
It's written by us, so judge for yourself — but every question is one a good buyer should ask any provider, and we're happy to be graded on all 24.
Do I need to give my email to download it?
No — the PDF is free and ungated. Use it, share it, print it.
How should we use it?
Put the same 24 questions to every provider on your shortlist and compare answers side by side. Vague answers are answers too.
Put us to the test.
Bring the checklist to a scoping call — we'll answer all 24, in writing if you want.