Inside Look Into 'How To Get More BPO Orders With Our AutoAccepter Software.'
This is a big article, but it's also a big topic. The process of maximizing your accepted orders is complicated. There are many variables involved. First, let's look at the factors involved.
Factors
- Number of orders available: Neither you nor the AutoAccepter can accept an order that isn't there. Each company has a finite number of orders.
- Time of day: Different companies post their orders differently. One company may have 10 orders and post them at various times throughout the day. Another might post all 10 at the same time. Yet another company might hold all orders until 11 pm on Friday, then release them all at once. The AutoAccepter has to be running at the moment an order is posted to have any chance of accepting it.
- Competition: Of course, you are not the only one trying to get that order. There are many other agents out there, some of them with AutoAccepters, and they are working just as hard as you to get the order. Some regions are highly competitive. In many cases, orders don't last longer than 1-2 seconds at most before someone scoops them up. In such cases, there is a great deal of luck involved. Your AutoAccepter has to not only be running, but it must be checking for an order at the exact moment it becomes available, or someone else will beat you to it.
- Network performance: Your internet connection should be high-speed and always on. However, just because your connection is fast, it doesn't mean that the entire network will perform as you would like. For your computer to connect with the BPO company's web site, it has to travel across a vast network, going through several (potentially dozens) of computers along the way. A great deal can go wrong along the way, and it frequently does. The performance of this network has some effect on how well your AutoAccepter performs.
- Computer performance: Aside from a good network connection, your computer needs two things to work well with the AutoAccepter: CPU speed and RAM. Don't worry if you don't know what this means.
- CPU Speed: Your computer's CPU speed is essentially a measure of how fast it can get tasks done. It can perform a certain number of small tasks per second. If your computer is loaded with lots of software running in the background or foreground, these are using up many of these tasks-per-second, making it more difficult for the AutoAccepter to do its job for you.
- RAM: This is your computer's memory. Don't confuse this with hard drive space. They don't have much to do with each other. While your hard drive holds things (documents, programs, etc.), it's RAM holds the information needed for what it is working on at the moment. Every application you run, including all of those programs you have running in the background, is taking up some memory - some more than others. As your computer's memory gets full, it slows down while it tries to juggle information. It's just like you. You can only think about so much at once. As life starts to throw too many things at you, you get bogged down trying to juggle them all.
- Website performance: The AutoAccepter does its job by interacting with websites, just like you would do if your were accepting these orders manually. These websites are provided by web servers. A web server is a computer, similar to yours, whose job it is to send webpage content over the internet when someone requests it. This web server has all of the same problems you might have on your computer. Most importantly, the more it is asked to do, the slower it gets. And yes, they also sometimes crash altogether.
- BPO company rules: Some companies have restrictions on how frequently they would like you to check for orders. Others set a maximum number of order you may check in a set period (usually 24 hours). Some companies place limits (usually 3) on the number of orders you may accept at any time. Some only allow you to stay logged in for a certain length of time. All of these rules affect your ability to get orders. It is up to you to understand these rules and to use the AutoAccepter in accordance with them.
- Login speed: You can configure your AutoAccepter to query companies at various speeds. It seems like the faster you run them, the more likely you are to get orders. This is not necessarily true though. Refer to the previous discussion of company rules. The AutoAccepter comes preconfigured to run each company at Normal speed, which we believe to be compliant with their current policies. Running at a faster speed may violate a company's policies, and therefore result in fewer or no orders being accepted.
- AutoAccepter: Finally, the AutoAccepter is a computer program. It is being asked to do a job that was designed for humans to do. It is a simple mindless task for a human, but not so easy for a computer. All of the factors mentioned above conspire to make the AutoAccepter's job more difficult. It does its best to deal with every possible situation, but it is just a program. There are several failsafe measures put in place to ensure reliability and stability, but it cannot possibly handle every problem in the most efficient way possible. Specifically:
- Website changes: This is a big one. The AutoAccepter is given a set of instructions to tell it how to log into a company's website, look for orders, and accept any that are there. Think of these instructions as directions to grandmother's house: go two blocks, turn left, continue to the stop light, etc. Now what happens when a road is closed unexpectedly or the city changes a street sign? Your road map may not get you where you want to go. If you were a robot (or computer program), and were just trying to follow the instructions exactly as written, even just a slight change, such as a change in the spelling of a street name, could cause you to get lost. Websites change frequently causing exactly this problem. Luckily for you, the AutoAccepter downloads the latest instructions from us every time you launch it. We update the instructions as soon as we get word that a web site has changed.
- Your computer: The AutoAccepter has to run on a wide variety of computers. We try to keep system requirements to a minimum and account for a variety of installation enviroments. The bottom line though, is that many computers have things that they shouldn't, don't have things that they should, or both. The longer you have had your computer and the more things you have installed and uninstalled, the more likely you are to have problems.
Solutions
Now that you understand some of the factors that affect your AutoAccepter performance, let's look at what you can do. Let's go back through the list:
- Number of orders available: There is nothing you can do about this. You can't pull orders out of thin air.
- Time of day: This is a bit tricky. If you do not know when your companies post orders, it is best to leave the AutoAccepter running all of the time. Get familiar with your companies' practices. It may be beneficial, for example, to run the AutoAccepter for a certain company at Turbo speed, but only for one hour a day when orders are posted.
- Competition: There is not much you can do about this either. Being familiar with your companies' policies and practices and running your AutoAccepter in accordance with them - these are your best edge over the competition.
- Network performance: You can only control your own network connection, and can't do much about the rest of the internet. Just make sure you have a high-speed connection. If you are able to stream music or video normally with no problems, you have plenty of bandwidth. (Just don't stream them while running the AutoAccepter.)
- Computer performance: Chances are, your computer itself is OK, but you may have problems with software installed or your operating system.
- CPU Speed: CPU speed is rarely an issue. If you have plenty of RAM, but your computer gets really slow when the AutoAccepter is running, your CPU speed may be the problem. Otherwise, don't worry about it.
- RAM: If your computer does not have enough memory, you will see a button on the Status tab suggestin that you check your memory. If your status is Yellow, you may need to uninstall or disable some software running in the background. If it is in the Red, you almost definitely will. If you have removed or disabled every running application that you can, including background applications, and you are still in the Red, you will probably have to add RAM to your computer.
- Website performance: There is nothing you can do about this.
- BPO company rules: There is not much to be said about this except that, if you are serious about doing BPOs and getting orders, you MUST know the policies of the companies you work with. If you do not know, call them up and ask them. You cannot expect good results and a healthy ongoing business relationship with these companies if you do not know their policies and practices.
- Login speed: Read more about this in another posting.
- AutoAccepter: This field changes rapidly. In reponse to BPO company web site changes with almost 30 companies and feedback from hundreds of users, we publish updates daily. We rely on feedback from customers like you to make us aware of issues that come up so that we can take care of them right away. And, we do. Our response time for updates is usually the next business day, and is sometimes hours or even minutes from the time we receive the report.
Written with permission to use from Brent Carey, Lead Programmer of the BPO Automation Group
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