People Risks
In countries like India, the turnover with BPO vendors is at least 50% or higher. People issues affect the conduct of business processes to a great extent. So personnel turnover is a key metric that predicts the success or failure of your outsourced business process. In addition, absenteeism is an important key metric. Metrics such as average waiting time suffers if absenteeism is high. Also if turnover is of concern, a constant stream of new recruits being trained is of great importance. Training metrics also become important in this case.

Technology Risks
Technology risks need to be mitigated for good operations management. Almost always, technology integrating a company's systems with those of the service provider is involved. Service providers could be using the buyers' internal systems through a browser or a dedicated network link. Many outsourced business processes involve scanning and digitization of paper documents that are manually processed at onshore or offshore destinations. In these cases, unless a seamless computing and communication infrastructure is maintained at high levels of availability, business process execution suffers.
Service providers could have their own systems, networks and applications for providing process services. An example of this is outbound telemarketing services where the deliverables are qualified prospects; the service provider may invest in technology shared among many buyers of such services.
Technology metrics such as system uptime, network uptime and application uptime need to be measured so that business processes can be executed without interruptions. If a customer calls and the service provider can't access the customer relationship management system, your business process suffers.

Process Risks
Process risks are, by far, the most comprehensive set that needs to be managed properly for ensuring minimal operational problems. Each business process has its own set of metrics that are important to the buyer as well as the vendor of these services. The perspectives of the clients and vendors of BPO services regarding risks are interesting. To the BPO services buyer, overall high customer satisfaction is the goal of customer-facing processes. Other risks may be important, but are subservient to the customer satisfaction goals.

The BPO services vendor is interested in making sure that process risks covered by contractual obligations are addressed first and foremost. Since many contracts include provisions for incentives and penalties for meeting and not meeting certain metrics, they end up high on the agenda. However, many vendors go above and beyond these and keep track of other metrics that help them with internal agent performance evaluations. Other metrics that will help them make sure that the business process is executed properly could also be monitored, whether they need to disclose these to the customers or not. They know that if these metrics aren't met consistently, the entire contract may be in jeopardy sooner or later.
A broad classification of process risks is one of qualitative risks and quantitative risks. Qualitative risks may deal with customer satisfaction issues and are measured usually by the BPO client using customer satisfaction surveys, in case the processes are customer facing. In non-customer facing processes such as financial accounts finalization, qualitative risks may be linked to an assessment of how well the services were provided.

Quantitative risks broadly deal with efficiency and effectiveness risks. They can be dealt with appropriately through prudent and appropriate choice of metrics. Efficiency metrics usually deal with time-related aspects of a business process. Average handle time and average hold time are good examples of efficiency metrics that deal with telephone support. Efficiency metrics may also include such items as number of loan cases handled per hour or number of claims handled per hour.

Effectiveness metrics deal with outcomes of business processes such as those that involve outbound or inbound selling. Percentage of outbound calls that resulted in a sale is a good effectiveness metric example.

Process metrics are usually few in number but highly relevant to the business process in question. These often encompass currency denominated metrics such as invalid credits issued and improper claim items allowed. These effectiveness metrics directly hit the bottom line performance of business processes such as credit card issues or insurance claims handling.