NEW group formed on LinkedIN ! all the rage...

I started a group for sales professionals in the outsourcing industry. "Outsourcing Sales" is the group name. This site will focus on trends, ideas and general thoughts on what is happening in the ever changing world of outsourcing. Many times it is us sales people that are closest to the pulse as we are meeting with clients and prospects. Join if you are interested

LinkedIN value

Does anyone have anything interesting to say on the LinkedIN groups ? I joined a bunch of groups thinking that there would be great thought leadership discussions with back and forth of genius ideas... so far, the same people keep posting white papers and pseudo articles that coincidentally endorse their product and services.

In today's instant information world, I have become very wary of anything I read... who wrote this ? where did it come from ? what's in it for them ? cynical I know but sad truth. My local newspaper The Globe even has the front of their automotive section look exactly the same as it always does with a big 3 page review of a car... only problem is that it is now always a ringing endorsement, I got suspicious and noticed a small "this is a paid advertisement" disclaimer. Cripes...selling themselves and their opinions to the highest bidder.

My dad always told me "you can not fool yourself" so keep in mind that customers see through it all. The damage done by me finding out that the paper sold themselves out is forever lasting. I will no longer trust anything I read there...

Keep the faith !

DO it !

Nike said it best..."Just do it" another popular one is "Show me, don't tell me"

So many companies talk about "Customer Satisfaction" and have added CQO (Chief Quality Officer) positions. The proof is on the front lines, how is the customer experience when you call them ? Can you understand the agent ? are they reading from a canned script ? are they making you more frustrated than you were before you called ?

anyone have any stories ?

"Customer Service" FROSTBITE !!!!

I heard a story this weekend that I thought was a perfect analogy to the lip service many customers and executives are paying today for their "Customer focus" and "Strategic Customer Experience Initiative" ... sounds good in the board room and in the press to share holders but VERY few live it and make it a way of their company culture.

The ones that DO we all know, the ones that just talk the talk we all know too... we see them in the recent Hall of Shame service rankings from MSN
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SmartSpending/ConsumerActionGuide/the-customer-service-hall-of-shame-2009.aspx

if you drill down into the ratings you will see the canned responses from their spokesperson re the "new commitment to service" etc..., OK so here is the story...

I was at a father & son Indian Guide (like scouts) camp out this weekend and the Dads were sitting by the fire chatting about the economic meltdown and who is to blame. One of the Dads told a story about his time in the Army... They were stationed in Germany and frostbite was a big concern as they went out on maneuvers. The top leader (not sure of ranks...) at the European HQ told his next in command to check feet for frostbite at the end of every day. That guy told his next in command that the commander wants to have a frostbite check after every day. This went down through the chain of command until the squad leaders got the word. After a few weeks one of the soldiers got frostbite. Word went up the chain and the European HQ leader went ballistic. He showed up on site and ripped his next in command a new one and reassigned him. The leader also got reprimanded by the Army for not following through on orders. It was not enough just to say it "Check for Frostbite" his duty was to make sure someone was actually "doing it !"

I thought this was a great analogy to what we see today as quality and service become buzz words "we are a customer service leader" oh really ? then why do none of your customers agree ? "we have a new Chief Quality Officer" so what ??? what power in the organization have you given him/her ? can they impact your organization with your backing ? It is not enough to say it, you have to do it !!! Make it a way of life in your organization. Customers are too connected today and too savvy to put up with poor service, they can see right through the smoke... when options become available, they will leave you in the dust to a provider that treats them like a valuable asset.

Call Recording

Do you use Nice or Verint for call recording ? these are great tools and the software has come a long way in providing clients with analytics. We partner with these solutions to maximize the user experience. If you know what to look for and how to interpret the data you can find out so many amazing things that are taking place on your call center floor between agents and customers. Weed out all of the BAD and reinforce the GOOD. Contact me at

rick_sherman@aon.com

and I can send you a great study we did with Verint on driving customer satisfaction.
- blog master Rick

QUALITY monitoring -ACCOUNTABLE !

Bottom-line on the outsourcing article below... If you ship your calls off to an offshore company to save money and do NOT manage them and hold them accountable for their performance with YOUR customers, then you are exposed. You MUST hold them to high standards and understand what experiences your customers are having with their agents. Does an agent in Manila or India give a rats @#$ about your Customer Satisfaction levels and Loyalty ? They better ! or your days as a company are numbered... Customers will no longer tolerate poor service or the perception of an offshore agent reading from a script without any empathy for their needs.

The REAL cost of OFFSHORE OUTsourcing

The *Real* Cost of Offshore Outsourcing
– Pam Baker, CIO
April 28, 2009

One would think cash-strapped companies would find a heavenly match on foreign soils with plentiful, cheap labor. But that would be the romantic notion and not necessarily the reality. "Companies often 'plan for the wedding, but not for the marriage,''' says Dalip Raheja, chief executive officer and president of the Mpower Group. Now that offshore outsourcing is roughly a decade old, it's time to evaluate lessons learned and tally the real costs before renewing any vows.

The Honeymoon Is Over
"After a period of explosive growth in offshore outsourcing many companies are moving past the learning curve when it comes to the tangible costs of moving services and production offshore," explains Raheja. "Experience has built more certainty around what was once considered previously 'hidden costs,' or costs related to transition, development, selection, etc., which could easily cancel out any financial benefit of doing business offshore."
Now that time has told its tale, flaws are revealed and divorce becomes an option. One example, Delta's CEO, Richard Anderson, announced this month that the airline canceled its outsourcing to India because its customers were very vocal against foreign customer service agents. The struggling airline desperately needs happy customers so it responded to the complaints.
Often it is not simply the loss of disgruntled customers, a loss bad enough in a down economy, but loss in efficiencies and productivity as well that leads to the severing of offshore outsourcing relationships.

"We often find that outsourced agents are not trained as deeply as agents who work internally for an organization, and often lack the tools to do a thorough job for customers," says Dr. Miriam Nelson, senior vice president of Aon Consulting, a global HR/human capital firm. "We hear them rushing through calls, merely repeating the same troubleshooting steps, since they do not have that deeper understanding necessary to explain issues in a different way for the customer."
When call center work is outsourced to an offshore firm, service drops even further according to Nelson. "Offshore call centers are not only challenged by being in an outsourced position, but they also have to overcome language barriers and cultural disconnects," she explains. "When we benchmark offshore service against onshore service, offshore scores much lower."
The cost of poor service translates to hard currency losses for any corporation.

One example: Aon recently observed an outsourcer in the Philippines and found the following, according to Nelson:

41 percent of all calls are placed on hold. The average total hold time is 331 seconds. Agents are typically looking up information or speaking with other departments during these holds. Reducing the average hold time by 30 percent alone would result in an estimated annual savings of $384,000.

Agents are not speaking clearly on 56 percent of calls. The average talk time on these calls is 232 seconds longer than necessarily. This represents an estimated annual cost of $1,219,594 to the organization.

Problems Loom Large
However, problems with outsourcing are not contained to call centers; rather they cover the spread of business functions and business relationships.
One glaringly ugly example of a far-reaching problem: the Satyam Computer Services scandal which involved dual accounting books, mountains of forged invoices, faked bank statements and large numbers of unnecessary workers. Customers and investors alike were bilked and bamboozled by India's fourth largest outsourcing company.
"The Satyam situation dramatically weakens one of the fundamental pillars of the outsourcing model—that service corporations in emerging markets are fundamentally organized and monitored in the same ways as their client companies," explains Tim Carbery, principal of Axis Technology, a provider of IT and data security offerings for outsourcing with a client list that includes Bank of America, Wachovia, Fidelity and Citigroup.
This 'pillar' has been supported, according to Carbery, through specific contractual obligations (such as audited financials) between the BPO firms and their clients, which was considered the client firm's protection against local variations in business culture and regulations. "These client companies will now need to re-assess and audit their SOX and corporate policy compliance across all of their service providers to assure customers, and shareholders that they are not at risk," he says. "At this point only Satyam has been tarnished, but if irregularities surface at other providers through these assessments, even minor ones, then a significant portion of the industry could suffer lasting damage."
Paying the Tab
As the bills land in accounts receivables and checks flow out in payment, many think they have finally accounted for all the costs involved in outsourcing. But that may not be so. "Companies still have uncertainty around the intangible aspects of effectively managing and planning for a successful outsourcing relationship," says Raheja. "These hidden expenses include everything from the high rate of outsourcing relationship failures and the costs associated with a failed relationship, to underestimating the amount of time, resources and capital needed to ensure a successful outsourcing relationship."
There are other costs lurking in the shadows that are often overlooked. "Companies that outsource to China often ignore the big things like the potential loss of intellectual property and the legal costs involved in going to a foreign country," says Daniel P. Harris, attorney at HarrisMoure. "They also oftentimes fail to account for the little things as well, which can add up too. For example, I just finished working with a company that set up a software outsourcing operation in China and in doing their cost numbers, they initially completely failed to account for the fact that employers in China typically have to pay between 30 to 40 percent in taxes for every Yuan paid in wages."
Gutted and Gone
Perhaps the greatest unforeseen cost is how a now gutted company retains its shape after large portions of its inner workings move out.
"The most expensive long term cost is losing the expertise on how to do the 'simple things,'" says Alton Martin, COPC Inc. CEO and co-founder. "When you are outsourcing basics, such as IT, customer care, etc. the company looses insight to these departments to the third party, leaving the company at a loss when they need to fix more complicated issues."
Few companies realize this kind of loss applies to intellectual capital as well.
"Intellectual Capital (IC) includes the knowledge base—the expertise—your team develops solving problems," explains James C. Roberts III, Esq., attorney at Global Capital Law Group. "In this case, we see that the teams do not create the development toolkits they could use in the future. Conversely, the developer now has the toolkit to use for competitors. Intellectual Property (IP) loss arises when the U.S. company has to 'open up the kimono' to show the developers proprietary code in order to do the development."
"Losing the IP and IC is worse when the developed product or service actually requires on-going rights in certain underlying technologies or the developers' toolkit or even maintenance—especially if the offshoring partnership goes under," he added. "We find that much of this gets short shrift in negotiating the agreements."
The remaining elements contained in-house may mold a different vision than C-level management intended. "The greatest difficulty is in foreseeing what the organization will look like post-outsource,' says Dane Anderson, vice president of IT Services and Sourcing Technology & Service Provider Research at Gartner. "At first it was just a reduction in headcount. Now, holy cow, there's a vacuum where institutional knowledge used to be."