Larry Hochman
Offshore Dreaming
Part 2
Posted on October 31, 2007 - Filed Under Innovative marketing strategies, CSA - Celebrity Speakers, Expert Interviews |
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THE BUILDING OF RELATIONSHIPS IN THE GLOBAL, MOBILE, TEMPORARY, OFFSHORED and OUTSOURCED WORLD
by Larry Hochman
Following the universal self-belief that CRM would improve everything linked to the building of more profitable relationships with customers, now comes the universal self-belief that the cost savings of the outsourcing, off-shoring, or the outsourced off-shoring of contact centres, offer so compelling a financial argument as to be a “no-brainer”. It is not my intention to debate the obvious cost-savings of moving customer contact centres to low-cost labour markets around the world. Instead I want to raise the alarm that once again, as was the case with the mad rush to invest in CRM, there seems to be little appreciation, and even less understanding, of how the quality of human contact will impact on customer loyalty, brand equity, and the bottom line.
Will you, however unintentionally, be deskilling your front line staff by moving offshore? Will you, however unintentionally, be deskilling your front line staff by outsourcing? Will you, however unintentionally, be losing relationship marketing capabilities (that you spent so much money on your CRM panacea to develop in the first place!) by outsourcing, by moving offshore, or both? What are these competencies worth? How are you quantifying them? What are you doing to protect them? What have you done to guarantee (yes, guarantee!), that the service levels that matter most to your customers (not the ones that matter most to you), will not decline by moving your contact centres to low-cost labour markets?
Many of you have spent many years, and a lot of money, trying to understand customer trends, and capturing the learning that comes through daily contact with your customers. This is an intuitive, and almost indefinable, “science of the heart”. As you rush offshore with your contact centres, what are you doing to protect this investment? Is it possible? How and in what ways? Do you have a plan? What are the financial trade-offs for getting it wrong? How does this “science of the heart” transplant itself into a new culture? Will it? Have you studied how it might? Have you considered what will happen if this transplant is indeed rejected by the people you cannot afford to lose, your most loyal and profitable customers?
This indeed goes to the very heart of what call centres got so wrong during their headlong drive to automate every possible process. Not enough attention was paid to what the human contact meant, what it was worth, or what the consequences would be for getting it so wrong. Customers hated the automation. They hated the hurdles you put in their way just to receive a simple answer. They hated how difficult you made it for them just to talk to a human being. In a time of increasing connectivity, you actually did everything NOT to connect people with each other!! Call centres in the U.K. and elsewhere are still carrying the stigma of dreadfulness. How many people reading this article love to spend their time phoning through to call centres? Why not? What went wrong? How much money was thrown into the technology that was meant to transform your service? What have you learned from this as you begin your migration offshore?
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