Scale your business with an ethical outsourcing partner

Small e-commerce and service businesses are the backbone of our economy, yet the harsh reality is that many struggle to survive. Add an impact and sustainable layer to the service or product, and challenges increase. As a labor partner to these companies, we understand the unique challenges they face. We know the long hours, focused work, and sleepless nights worrying about making payroll or paying for inventory. We have been there with our clients. We know that sometimes it takes a while for ideas to gel and business dreams to pay off.

We work closely with our clients to understand their labor needs as they also manage cash flow. Our fractional services are an excellent way for businesses to gain experienced and managed help for a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time person on their own. Fractional labor allows our clients to scale little by little — continually delegating responsibilities as processes are defined — so that founders and other internal people can focus on critical product or service development, marketing, or sales (though of course, we can help in those areas too).

We work primarily with purpose-driven businesses and nonprofits—organizations working to drive change and address environmental and societal problems. Our mission is to harness business as a force for good and partner with impact organizations to lighten their load and further their purpose. We create remote, impact employment where our team members and clients are valued and supported in their efforts to advance us all toward a more sustainable world. In each collaboration, we prioritize our client’s goals and help them work towards success—however they define it.

Don’t reinvent the wheel.

Small businesses turn to us so that they don’t have to reinvent the wheel in our areas of specialization, including customer support, supply chain operations, sales & marketing operations, executive assistance, and bookkeeping. We recognize the importance of delivering tangible value from day one. Our service is unique.  We recruit and hire our experienced team members as employees — and then our clients work with us as easily as they would with an independent contractor. Our team members are fully managed, which means we meet with them regularly to understand their work, challenges, and the opportunities they see with each client.  Then, we brainstorm and work through challenges with them to remove roadblocks to their work and, more importantly, solve issues before they affect our clients.

Accessible and flexible pricing for dedicated service

Our smallest contracts are a great way to step into working with us.  For example, many small businesses don’t need customer service all day long—they just need to ensure that their customers are responded to within 24 hours. 

Clients usually have a few choices when outsourcing customer support - they can go to a typical outsourcer, hire part-time internally, or hire us. Typical outsourcers will superficially train a team that then handles tickets from multiple companies. We know the quality suffers in these cases because we know what it takes to run a multiple-company team well. It’s tough. Workers have to know too much, automation still needs oversight to ensure customers feel heard, and high turnover on these teams means management is constantly stressed. 

In our case, our fractional team members are highly trained in client work and perform it without distractions during client time. We consistently maintain systems, keep detailed documentation and templates to support our team members, and proactively prepare for staffing switches or disruptions.  We are big believers in automation and take advantage of it wherever possible. 

Hiring a fractional and dedicated customer service team member is a smart choice to free our clients to focus on more strategic work.

Maintaining Alignment and Transparency

Open communication and alignment with our clients are cornerstones of our approach. We facilitate this through several key practices:

Weekly Meetings: These sessions serve as valuable opportunities to discuss progress, address concerns, provide feedback, and strategize for the upcoming week. They also provide an opportunity for our team to better understand the evolving needs of the business.

Daily Greetings and Summaries: We use Slack to greet our clients each day at the beginning of our shift and to provide daily summaries of our activities, plans, blockers, and accomplishments at the end of our shift. This ensures our clients have a visible record of our work and regular opportunities to offer their support. 

Feedback Surveys: Feedback is the lifeblood of improvement. We actively seek input from our clients to fine-tune our approach and ensure we're meeting their expectations. Regular feedback surveys also help us understand, as management, where we can jump in to redirect or refocus quickly to add more value.

Thorough Documentation: Keeping our documentation updated not only serves as a reference point for our clients it also contributes to our services' overall efficiency and effectiveness. We use project management tools to capture, describe, and assign tasks so that the process is wholly captured and can be completed in a timely manner.  We know process documentation can easily be neglected, so we prioritize time to ensure it’s helpful in the moment and protective in case of staffing switches. Whether that be parental leave, a long-term sickness, or (though this doesn’t happen often) a job switch, we always ensure our client’s processes are up to date.

Demonstrating Our Worth Every Day

Our value proposition goes beyond mere task completion. Clients can trust, see, and feel that we prioritize our team's well-being and adhere to the highest employment standards. They can feel comfortable that their HigherRing team member makes at least a living wage and has access to full benefits. Team members are offered stock options after a year of work with HigherRing. We also practice Open Book Management, and each new team member is trained to read our monthly financial statements so that they know how their work contributes to our overall success. Team members who meet the criteria in our performance journeys can participate in semi-annual profit sharing. We know employees who feel cared for translate that care into their work.

Our expertise, coupled with our adept recruiting and personnel management, ensures that our clients can focus on growth and innovation, knowing their workforce is in capable hands. Additionally, we offer a seamless onboarding process and fully support transitions when necessary. This ensures that operations continue smoothly, even in unforeseen circumstances.

We don’t just support businesses with outsourcing services—we celebrate collaborations with sibling B Corporations and other impact-aligned businesses, leveraging collective efforts for a more significant societal impact. By pricing our contracts thoughtfully, maintaining alignment through regular communication, and demonstrating our value through expert execution, ethical practices, and seamless management, we empower these ventures to survive and thrive. Together, we forge a path toward a stronger, more vibrant, impact-driven business community.