Effective Outsourcing
Outsourcing all or part of production or service is common
nowadays as businesses concentrate on “core competencies” and leave others who
are more ”expert” at something to provide that part of their product offering
to their customers.
Outsourcing is any task, operation, job or process
that could be performed by employees within an organization, but is instead
contracted to a third party for a significant period of time.
A manufacturer may, for example, ask another factory to
build certain components or parts for that manufacturer’s finished
product. A mobile telephone operator may
ask a "call centre"in another country to handle customer enquiries, requests,
complaints and other matters.
In all cases, what is happening is that the business
outsourcing to another is putting its reputation in the hands of a third party
over whom they have less control than they would have over their own people. A number of myths exist about outsourcing,
mainly:
·
Outsourcing will solve all your
problems;
·
Outsourcing companies will do
it better than you can;
·
Outsourcing will save you money;
·
Any product/service lends
itself equally well to being outsourced.
Amongst the many
advantages of outsourcing are:
·
It allows the company doing the outsourcing to
focus on “core activities”;
·
It may reduce costs;
·
It may result in efficiency savings;
·
It allows for flexibility in staffing;
·
It offers a smaller company the potential to
serve multiple markets or to handle higher business volumes;
·
It provides jobs in areas that need them.
On the downside, outsourcing may
result in:
·
High initial set up costs;
·
A loss of control;
·
Hidden costs if contracts can levy higher
charges for volumes over the agreed amount);
·
A potential threat to security and
confidentiality;
·
Quality control problems;
·
Problems if the contractor goes into
administration or drops your business;
·
A loss of reputation if goods/services are seen
as “substandard”;
Other problems that you might
face are:
·
Language and culture issues;
·
High staff turnover in certain outsourcing
centres;
·
A contractor in another country is subject to
foreign laws which may affect your product or service delivery;
·
The standard of hiring and of staff may not be within your control.
·
Periodic Quality Control reviews
Ask anyone who outsourced to
China when that country first started as a manufacturing centre and you will
have a clear view of the issues that they faced and how they overcame them.
A prime example of the perils of
outsourcing surfaced when laptop computers manufactured by Dell, Apple,
Toshiba and Lenovo started to catch fire.
The problem was traced to the battery pack, the manufacturing of which
had been outsourced to a well-known company.
Another example is that certain UK financial institutions have brought
their call centres back “onshore” after receiving a high level of complaints
that the overseas staff were difficult to understand.
In short, outsourcing is an
additional risk and before proceeding, you should ask:
·
Why am I doing this?
·
Do I need to?
·
Can I guarantee the same quality?
·
What standards are not negotiable?
·
What will it cost?
·
What’s my “contingency plan” if things go wrong?
·
Who’s responsible for compensating customers
where the service/product provider is at fault?
When done well, outsourcing will boost business volumes,
customer satisfaction and profitability.
The trick is to:
·
Make sure you do it for the right reasons;
·
Have a focussed selection process based on your
business’ needs, standards and strengths;
·
Ensure that
you have properly defined and easy-to-use quality measurements;
·
Review your supplier’s performance regularly;
·
Use an experienced consultant if you’re
outsourcing for the first time.
I have spent more than half my life working in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in the world financial services industry running different service, operations and lending businesses, I started my own Performance Management Consultancy and work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.Labels: Customer Care, Productivity, Selling, Strategy, Teamwork
Help For Help Desks - 2
Last week, I looked at some of the main problems facing CallCentres and their staff. This week, I
will examine in more detail what to do to reduce their impact.
Your Call Centre and/or the way your business handles calls is
your reputation and dictates how successful your business is at retaining
customers.
Don’t just concentrate on sales.
You need to
retain to maintain revenue streams
. It’s three times more
expensive to get a new customer than to keep one.
I wrote earlier about an
example of a call
that I made to a company about buying its products and got the impression that
they couldn’t really have cared about my interest.
Whether your Call Centre is owned/operated by your business
or by a third party, here are some key pointers for effective service:
Knowledge: staff must
know your product/service intimately. Don’t let them “on the shop floor” before
ensuring that they have this knowledge.
They should also have thorough customer records of who said/agreed what
to/with whom and when. If they don’t
know the answer, they should know where to find it - fast.
Training: this
should be on the various aspects (positive and negative) of your product or
service, any important terms and conditions of use, and how to use your business’
(or Call Centre’s) systems.
Additionally, staff need training in customer care: for example
questioning, or how to handle upset/angry people. Surprisingly, some of the “common sense”
approaches aren’t known, understood or appreciated. “Telephone Courtesy” courses are more
relevant than ever.
Speech: staff must
sound “natural”. Often, I feel that the
person speaking to me has learnt something by heart, but doesn’t realise that
it sounds unnatural (and worse, long-winded or irrelevant).
Above are the skills on which staff can be trained. However, there are also skills that are more
“innate” – someone described them to me as “either you have them, or you
don’t”. They may be there and need to be
developed. These are:
Empathy: the
ability to understand and share the feelings of another. I have had to deal with complaints that
arose because the staff member concerned couldn’t empathise with the customer’s
problem. With the outsourcing of call
centres overseas, cultural differences may exacerbate this.
Attitude: you can
tell whether the person on the other end of the line feels that they are “here
to help”, or see you as an intrusion into their day. Staff need to be able to take “ownership” of a
problem and see it through to the end.
Finally, you’ll never know how you’re doing unless you can
measure:
Performance: the usual
measures are: number of calls answered; time taken on calls; percentage of
problems resolved. If you’re using an
outsourced service, what measures do they use, and how they actually work? For example, if they say that they spend an
average of three minutes per call, does that mean that they resolve the problem
in three minutes, or hang up after three minutes have passed? If calls are “always answered after three
rings”, does that mean that they switch to an automated system or to a “real
person”? Have qualitative as well as quantitative measures.
Whether you’re looking to set up your own "Helpdesk", Call Centre, or to
outsource it (not always a wise idea), there are consultants who
can help either in the setting up of your own centre, or to select a provider. The key is to know what standards you want to maintain.
Ask questions such as: “When it’s busy, do you put more staff onto
answering calls, or do customers wait longer?”
All standards agreed must form part of the Service Level
Agreement. Check regularly to ensure
they’re being maintained. One of the
best ways of doing this is to use “mystery shoppers” who can report in detail
on the standards that you have set.
If you outsource your Call Centre, remember that providers
will negotiate price and then do as much as possible to make profit, often at
the expense of service.
Understand what
you get for the price that you pay.
How
long is your contract, how easy to break, and how easy to find another
provider?
I have spent more than half my life working in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in the world financial services industry running different service, operations and lending businesses, I started my own Performance Management Consultancy and work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.Labels: Customer Care, Productivity, Selling
Help For Help Desks - 1
“Help Centres”, “Call Centres”, “Customer Contact Centres”
all describe a place that customers can call to: seek information, solutions to
problems, changes in contract terms, complain about poor service and satisfy other
needs. As businesses look to cut costs
and ensure that staff spend their time selling or serving customers rather than
answering questions/dealing with complaints, “Call Centres” have become the
solution. Some “get it right”, others don’t.
Call Centres have advantages and disadvantages; some advantages
are:
·
Concentration of expertise;
·
“One-stop” customer enquiries and
problem-solving - can usually handle 90% of “simple” problems;
·
May have comprehensive customer information
systems;
·
May be able to perform other tasks when enquiry
levels are low;
·
Shift work allows centres to remain open 24/7, improving
customer service.
Some of the disadvantages are:
·
Staff may have insufficient expertise, customer
knowledge, “soft skills” or incomplete, insufficient or inconsistent information;
·
Customers may have to speak to several operators
to solve a problem;
·
Remoteness (often “outsourced” to other
countries);
·
Lack of face to face contact results in lack of
empathy and understanding;
·
“Internal policy” often dictates what can/can’t
be done/said and escalation of “difficult cases” can be next to impossible.
I have heard and seen any examples of frustration with “Call
Centres”; if you need to see examples for yourself, just Google “complaints
about…” or “… complaints” and insert the
name of the organisation in place of the “…”.
I recently spoke to the call centre of my mobile services
provider to reduce my contract pricing in return for reduced talk time in line
with one of their packages. I was passed
amongst three different operators (each of whom asked security questions to
confirm my identity), but none of whom could resolve my issue. The security questions should only have been needed
at the initial call-answering.
Call centres are potentially more “vulnerable” due to their
lack of face-to-face contact. The
customer at the other end may be more stressed and aggressive than in a
face-to-face situation, and it’s impossible to tell from body language what
they’re feeling. Operators rely on voice
and speech for clues.
Operators may often be younger workers who lack experience
of dealing with people and therefore react in a way that may be provocative. They may be dealing with customers from a
different culture or part of the world, and have only their limited frame of
reference.
Another issue that affects call centre operators is that
they often have strict rules or incentives that run contrary to customer
interests about what they can/cannot do, about numbers of calls answered and
other performance measures. One operator
let slip that staff were paid extra if a customer wanted to cancel their
contract but were persuaded not to.
Result:staff used every trick in the book (including hanging up) to
ensure contracts weren’t cancelled.
Information is critical; a large number of complaints that I
hear relate to dealing with different operators who don’t know what has been
said/agreed/promised before, or who may not know their product/service well
enough. This is slowly being addressed,
but systems need to be able to hold details of conversations, actions agreed
and commitments made.
Escalation (referral) processes are vital for good
service. Call centres are there to help,
and if operators can’t resolve a problem for reasons beyond their control (and
assuming that the customer isn’t being unreasonable), they need to be able to
refer quickly to a more experienced colleague with more authority to
commit. Far from being penalised for
this, they should be rewarded. If too
many problems are escalated up, it may indicate a problem with the product/service,
processes, pricing, communication with customers or staff training. Whatever it is, it needs to be fixed internally,
or reputational problems arise.
Call centre operatives not based in the country of the
caller need to understand that, despite all efforts to the contrary, there will be differences between their
perception of the problem and the customer’s perception. Sadly, for many customers, just speaking to a
“foreign” customer services operative will raise their stress levels. Empathy is essential.
Quoting internal “rules” or “policy” as a reason for not
doing something (especially if it’s not in the customer’s Terms & Conditions)
is unacceptable.
Customers aren’t
interested in internal guidelines.
They
want their problem resolved professionally, and will move if it isn’t.
I have spent more than half my life working in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in the world financial services industry running different service, operations and lending businesses, I started my own Performance Management Consultancy and work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.Labels: Customer Care, Productivity, Selling
Telesales - Improve Your Effectiveness
The telephone is a vital sales tool for businesses large and
small. Some companies employ others just
to make calls on their behalf to prospective customers. With the ability that the telephone gives us
to reach out to complete strangers, why is it that this isn’t as successful as
it could be?
Here are several ways to improve your chances:
1. When
you call someone unexpectedly, you’re interrupting their day. Find out first if you’re calling at a good
time and whether the person on the other end of the line has time.
2. Explain
clearly who you are, where you’re calling from and why. Keep it short. Too often, I’ve answered the phone to have a
salesperson at the other end launch into a prepared speech. I hung up.
How long did it take them to realise that they were talking to thin air?
3.
Ask questions to find out whether what you’re
selling is right for the person on the other end of the line. This may mean you spend longer on the phone,
but you establish a relationship, trust and whether you should be selling to
them.
4. Keep
it short. Not everyone can remember (let
alone process sensibly) the vast amount of information that can be thrown at
them. Your sales pitch may look
brilliant on paper, but may be too long when delivered over the phone, annoying
the customer. It makes your job more
difficult. Try reading it out aloud and
get a friend or colleague to listen.
5. Stick
to easy-to-remember facts. Pause to let
the other person take it all in.
6. Remember:
unlike face-to-face conversation, you can’t see the other person, so you can’t
see when they look interested, bored or confused. Listen for clues such as hesitation or
requests to repeat information. Ask if
you need to repeat anything.
7. Lead
the customer on in easy steps, each one of which builds on what has gone
before. If necessary, repeat where you
have reached and how/why.
8. Offer
to send information by email or even regular mail. It’s surprising how many organisations forget
this.
9. Offer
to call back later to continue the conversation. Provide a contact number for the customer.
10. Keep
the “verbal small print” to a minimum. I
hung up once on one consumer magazine when their representative started reading
out a long list of terms and conditions.
Perhaps their lawyers had said this was necessary, without realising
that people generally don’t want to listen to this. If necessary, send the terms by mail or
email.
Many “telesales” staff are taught that their goal is to make
as many calls as possible as this often produces the highest number of
sales.
This approach emphasises
“quantity over quality” and may expose your company to accusations of mis-selling.
Fewer calls emphasising “quality over
quantity” would perhaps result in fewer sales, but the chances of keeping those
customers are higher and the risk of damage to your reputation will be lower.
I have spent more than half my life working in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With more than 20 years in the world financial services industry running different service, operations and lending businesses, I started my own Performance Management Consultancy and work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.
Labels: Customer Care, Selling
