Larry Hochman
Offshore Dreaming
Part 3
Posted on November 2, 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
I have no specific argument against outsourcing, moving operations offshore, or both. What I sense, however, is a complete lack of honest debate about the financial trade-offs (apparently some of you believe there are none at all!!), if your service quality negatively impacts customer loyalty as a result. In order to succeed offshore, there needs to be a sustained, passionate, credible and comprehensive effort to do everything humanly possible, to not let your service standards fall as a result of your decision. You must assume they will, and to be brutally honest with yourself about the necessary steps that need to be taken to measure this and correct it immediately.
How and when do you begin to calculate the cumulative loss to the bottom line, when some of your most valuable customers take their business elsewhere, owing to terrible service being provided offshore? At what level is this debate being sustained in your organisation? Is the Board involved? Is the entire Executive Team involved? Or is the debate being driven by your IT Director and your FD, the same people who most likely drove your company to invest (thousands/millions?) in CRM, in order to build more profitable relationships with your customers?
Someone in your company is going to have to be the voice of reason in regard to the necessary additional investment in an outsourced/off-shored customer contact centre, to build, sustain and guarantee that service levels will not fall off a cliff. This person will have to bluntly point out the financial trade-offs of getting this wrong. This person will have to have the sustained vision to do everything humanly possible to develop the customer service skills of these off-shored and outsourced employees. This person will have to represent the customer and their demands (of course no longer expectations, but demands!), in this headlong rush to save money by moving your operations abroad. This is not the same as moving a manufacturing operation abroad, when your customers hardly noticed. This is about human contact, and its effect on the bottom line. Your company needs a champion to guarantee that you get this right. Will that person be you?
end of the “Offshore Dreaming” article by Larry Hochman
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Larry Hochman
Offshore Dreaming
Part 2
Posted on October 31, 2007 - Filed Under Innovative marketing strategies, CSA - Celebrity Speakers, Expert Interviews
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?
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Larry Hochman
Offshore Dreaming
Part 1
Posted on October 29, 2007 - Filed Under Innovative marketing strategies, CSA - Celebrity Speakers, Expert Interviews
THE BUILDING OF RELATIONSHIPS IN THE GLOBAL, MOBILE, TEMPORARY, OFFSHORED and OUTSOURCED WORLD
by Larry Hochman
Every competitor has dreams. Every competitor studies trends. Every competitor attempts to “connect the dots” on its radar screen, in order to better visualise the picture of what sustained commercial advantage may look like in the months and years ahead. Merely envisioning a bold future does not develop a sustained competitive advantage. Hope is not a strategy!!
Take, for example, the bold future of breakthrough customer relationships promised by the “CRM Dream Factory”. Did your investment in CRM software (thousands/millions??) REALLY build better relationships with your most important customers, that you have been able to quantifiably link to the bottom line? Do you REALLY know? How do you know? Would you make that same investment today?
My experience tells me that buying software alone, did not (and does not) transform companies automatically into successful relationship marketers. This was not the fault of the software (which itself was brilliantly marketed), but the fault of the dreamers, who thought the purchase of this software, and the information it provided, would transform their ability to build better relationships accordingly.
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Larry Hochman
The War for Talent
Part 2
Posted on October 25, 2007 - Filed Under Innovative marketing strategies, CSA - Celebrity Speakers, Expert Interviews
by Larry Hochman
Empowerment as a concept has been misunderstood for as long as it has been used. It is not about giving anything to anyone. It is simply about removing fear and bureaucracy from the decision-making process. Every company today is too slow and too bureaucratic - every company! What makes globalization so profound (equal in significance to the invention of the printing press AND the industrial revolution combined) is the speed with which change is happening, facilitated of course by technology. Standing still today is a terminal illness. You may have lots of clever ideas, but are you moving fast enough? Have you peeled away the layers of bureaucracy to allow your best people the greatest opportunity to contribute? Are you fostering a culture of collaboration, and re-directing your energies externally to collaborate - in real time - with both your business partners and of course your customers? Are you facilitating collaboration between your customers?
The ability to see the future before the competition and to get there first, is an integral component of great leadership. No leader can do this alone. The depth of talent that surrounds successful leaders is sometimes the best indication of their wisdom and competence. The legacy of every company operating in the remarkable worlds of work in which we now live, will be determined to the greatest possible extent by a singular determination - perhaps obsession - to find the right people, keep the right people by giving them unlimited freedom to contribute, focus the right people on the right things, and rewarding them handsomely.
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Larry Hochman
The War for Talent
Part 1
Posted on October 23, 2007 - Filed Under Innovative marketing strategies, CSA - Celebrity Speakers, Expert Interviews
by Larry Hochman
The single most important battle to be fought today in the running of any enterprise is indeed “The War for Talent”. Do you often enough summon up the courage to consider the following questions: Are we a magnet for talent? Are the right people, in sufficient numbers, constantly knocking on our door? Are we not only attracting the right people, but are we also retaining the right people for the right reasons and for the right length of time? My belief is that there is never a shortage of talent; there is only a shortage of great companies that the best people want to work for. Are you one of those companies?
New wealth, and therefore future value, will come from the innovative and creative thinking of your most talented people, not from wringing the last bit of efficiency out of the old ways of doing things. You must be free of denial, nostalgia and arrogance to truly understand this. It might be interesting for all of you to weigh the amount of time and energy and focus you put into capital allocation, versus the amount of time and energy and focus you put into talent allocation. If the leaders in your business were asked to rate the three biggest challenges of the next decade, where would they rate “The War for Talent”? Would it even be on their list? If not, they (and you by association) are ten years behind where they should be. Hope is not a strategy. What plans, actions and processes are you undertaking to make your business truly competitive in the future, linked to the talent you must attract and retain?
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Customer Service Leadership - The only sustainable Edge - Part 3
Posted on October 19, 2007 - Filed Under Innovative marketing strategies, CSA - Celebrity Speakers, Expert Interviews
by Larry Hochman
Tomorrow’s leaders must also be capable of recognising where future value will be derived. Chief Executives have blathered on for years about the need to create value for customers. Saying that now dates them terribly, because what really matters today is the ability to create value WITH customers. Successful collaboration with your customers (B to B, B to C and C to C) is the next core competence. Forget about focusing on so-called “Best Practice”. That only leaves you trying to replicate a competitor, and often leaves you ten years behind where you should be. As a leader, what really matters is “NEXT PRACTICE”, trying to become first or second in promulgating a new idea. Dare I say that this will allow you to create the mini-monopoly cash cow that comes from being first to market with any new product or any new idea; this monopoly, of course, will only last a very short time indeed, as your competitors will eventually focus on your success and replicate it at an increasingly dizzying speed.
The ability to see the future before the competition and to get there first, is an integral component of great leadership. No leader can do this alone. The depth of talent that surrounds a successful leader is sometimes the best indication of their wisdom and competence. Your legacy as a leader, more than anything else, will be determined by your ability to find the right people, at the right time, to do the right things.
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