Sometimes the future is obvious

Just saw an article in the local paper today. A company we had spoken to about a year ago, they were interested in outsourcing their call center services to India, we recommended against it as we felt that as new business, trying to establish themselves they would be better to retain close control of their client interactions.

They chose otherwise and outsourced their call center. The article in the paper was a litany of problems they had with the call center...commitments made and not honored, lost call records, credits gone missing. The result a negative article in the local paper which will likely do more damage to the reputation than the actual call center errors actually did. The result will be huge challenge to the senior management and contact center management. Now they need to over come bad press as well as a poorly functioning infrastructure.

This situation should not be an indictment of outsourcing as hundreds of companies do this well on every call every time. It is I think more of cautionary tale about the repercussions of our actions.

I suspect there may not have been enough due diligence in selecting an outsourcer and their reputation and processes. There were also likely challenges within the organizations and their ability to effectively manage an outsource relationship half way around the world.

The morale to each of us should be that these decisions are not just about individual calls and contacts but may have far reaching consequences that impact the business well into the future.

Our customers are our most important assets, we have an obligation to them, to our stakeholders and to our shareholders to treat this assets with care respect, lest we end up in an article in the local paper.