Do You Outsource Your Call Centre?

Everybody does it. Outsource call centre services in order to keep business costs down. Countries like India and, according to a recent report from Info-Tech Research Group, the Philippines, are popular countries to look to. But in the grand scheme of things, is this really good for business?

Reduced costs is the obvious advantage: it costs less to pay a team of call centre reps in an outsourced country than it would locally in Canada, or even the U.S. But what are the potential drawbacks? The risk of poor customer service is certainly one of them. Another concern that shouldn't be taken lightly, though, is the loss of jobs in one's own country. Sure, outsourcing a call centre can result in significantly cheaper operating costs, but if a large portion of your target customer segment can't afford to buy your products or services because they are finding it difficult to hold a job, what good has outsourcing accomplished?

In addition to adding jobs to the economy, keeping a call centre local also has many other advantages. For one, agents can work directly with the sales, marketing, and even research and development departments in order to create a holistic solution that serves the customer's best interests. The lines of communication both ways can be much more open; and internal staff can more easily monitor who's talking to the customers, and how customer service issues are being handled. Plus, from a consumer perspective, let's face it: knowing that you're speaking to someone who lives in the same country that you do, regardless of what that country might be, is always reassuring. Someone anywhere outside of Canada might not understand how critical a situation it is that you have all your buddies over to watch the hockey play-offs and your flat-panel isn't working!

Nevertheless, many companies continues to outsource their call centres, and reap the benefits. Some end up with reputations for horrible customer service, while others are applauded for their efforts, no matter where the cell centre might be located. Info-Tech claims that the Philippines is now the second-largest call centre outsourcing player (behind India), and is known for offering a high level of service due to "educated English-speaking agents with accents similar to their North American callers."

The primary focus, of course, is that the customer's issues or questions are always answered adequately, and in a timely manner; no matter who ends up on the other end of the line or where they're located.

Customer Service Redux

By: Lee Distad

Last week, John Thomson, the Associate Publisher of Marketnews & here’s how! Magazines wrote a fantastic blog post entitled “Customer Service – Doesn’t Everyone Behave Like This?” about his refreshingly positive experience in an American retail store. In addition to thanking him for writing it, I wanted to expand on his thesis a little with my own opinions.

One of my old mentors in big box retail liked to say to us “retail is easy: you’re selling stuff to people!” In his mind, anything and everything from operations to merchandising needed to address that core principle, otherwise it was a hindrance to doing business rather than a help.

Yet amazingly, as retailers we often find ourselves shackled in chains of our own making. All of us, at some point in our careers have either created or blindly followed unfriendly policies without really thinking it through. Less than 5% of customers are “problem customers” who either steal, swindle or abuse return policies (“renters” as we used to call them), yet often retailers create policies intended to foil that 5% while inadvertently alienating the 95% of customers that we want to keep.

I’m certainly not advocating that when you have a genuine problem customer you should indulge them, but what’s important is that in a customer service situation you have a clear picture of who and what you’re dealing with, right now, and make a decision that’s in both yours and the customer’s best interest, at that time. A little creativity and goodwill will take you a long way in building lasting relationships with your clients.

Oftentimes, little details that we think are a good idea are in fact bad ones. A few years ago, on a trip to Victoria, we stopped in at a little boutique in the Inner Harbour whose name escapes me but it was a toy store with a year-round Christmas theme: mid-summer and there were Christmas decorations everywhere! Since my wife is absolutely bonkers about Christmas, of course we had to check it out!

Years in retail have left me really hard to impress when it comes to merchandising, but this store was beautiful; too beautiful in fact. All over the store mixed in with every single display were little 5x7 hand-written note cards with exquisite penmanship forbidding and admonishing against touching anything, and with a snotty tone to boot: “don’t touch the displays;” “please keep your children off of the rocking horses;” “absolutely do not touch or fold the tags on the Beanie Babies.” You get the picture. Never mind that I wasn’t inclined to do any of the above in the first place, the warnings everywhere made me feel like a four year old being scolded to be on my best behaviour.

I get that the proprietors take pains to make their store a work of art, but honestly, if you don’t want anyone to touch anything ever, open up a toy museum and put everything behind glass. The reality of the situation is that instead of the load of cash I anticipated having to spend following my wife around the store, we didn’t spend a dime. As they say, you only get one chance to make a first impression, and theirs wasn’t positive. Since the customers are the ones who make our paycheques, care needs to ensure that our relationship with them is not only profitable, but enjoyable.

How Important is Customer Service?

That sounds like a dumb question: of course customer service is important! But just how important is it? I've been wondering lately as I go through different scenarios that both I, and friends of mine, have encountered over the past few months. There have been instances where the service has been absolutely horrible, yet the customer continues to support the brand and/or product. On the flip side, there have been times that it has been great, yet the customer hasn't taken the time to show his appreciation.

Let me give you a few examples. My partner spent a good half hour on the phone with a service provider over the weekend to get something done that realistically, should have taken about 2 minutes. Yet we still subscribe to that service, and have no plans of changing. A few months ago, a friend of mine had an issue with a consumer electronics product and went through a horrible experience just to have it fixed. But when the opportunity arose for him to receive another product from that same brand, he happily accepted, thus continuing to promote its name. In both cases, the all-important customer service experience was negative, yet the company didn't suffer one bit because of it.

Now let's look at the other side. I recently returned to a store with a very expensive pair of shoes that I had purchased, and a zipper had broken. Without even asking, the sales manager said to give her an hour and she'd have it fixed. When I returned, she told me to feel free to come back at any time should anything go wrong again. Wow. I left feeling on top of the world, especially after thinking that I was going to have to argue my case. I decided I would send a letter to head office complimenting the company and the manager on the service experience, but just never got around to it. I'll put money on it that, if my experience was bad, my entire mobile phone contact list would have heard about it!

Unfortunately, this is just basic human nature. No matter how good an experience is, people are more likely to speak out about something when they're angry than they are when they're happy. Think about how many water-cooler stories you've heard that praise a company's fantastic service versus ones bitching about a horrible experience. I'll bet the scale is heavily weighted on the negative side, isn't it?

Providing good customer service is important, regardless of what industry you're in. But we, as consumers, should also put some of the onus on ourselves to make a point to praise companies that do well, not only the ones that have us pulling our hair out in frustration. If the stories of good customer service spread as quickly as the tales of bad, maybe it'll encourage more companies to kick service up a notch. Why strive to improve when no one talks about the good that you do, right? On that note, I'll be the first to start: I've just sent a quick note to that shoe company to express my thanks for its fantastic customer service. How refreshing...

[Photo courtesy of http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/].