Servant Leadership in your Call center

Colin Taylor

In the world of call centers, contact centers and customer service centers we are all servants to our customers. We exist to serve their needs and requirements. It is sad that some many centers do poorly at this. The attitude of the call center existing to serve our customers is foreign to some. The point of view that in our call center we are servants to our customers tends to be even more foreign and uncomfortable.





Perhaps the problem is tied to our lack of familiarity with providing service without being subservient.



We too often see those that serve as being inferior to those who are served. This is certainly not the case, ands we know this intellectually, yet our organizations often support this hierarchical, command and control, top down perspective.







The solution, well in my humble opinion it is to embrace the opportunity to serve, and to be servant leaders in our call center.



To be a servant leader, one needs the following qualities: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualization, foresight, stewardship, growth and building community. Acquiring these qualities tend to give a person authority versus power.



This is a concept that is certainly not new. The term Servant Leadership was coined in 1970 by Robert Greenleaf and has since been supported and developed by authors such as Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, and Peter Block. But the ideas underlying servant leadership are far older. in the 4th century BC Chanakya wrote:

“The king [leader] shall consider as good, not what pleases himself but what pleases his subjects [followers]” “the king [leader] is a paid servant and enjoys the resources of the state together with the people.”



Lao-Tzu, who wrote the Tao Te Ching lived in China sometime between 570 B.C. and 490 B.C.:

The best type of ruler is one of whose existence the people are barely aware of. Next comes one whom they love and praise. Next comes one whom they fear. Last comes one whom they despise and defy. When you are lacking in faith, others will be unfaithful to you. The Sage is self-effacing and scanty of words. When his task is accomplished and things have been completed, all the people say, ‘We have done it ourselves!’



Regardless of the antecedence the concept of Servant leadership is ideally suited to call and contact centers. I have espoused this approach for many years and have seen it succeed time and time again.

Servant leaders often share many of the following attributes: trustworthy, self-aware, humble, caring, visionary, empowering, relational, competent, good stewards, and community builders.



Think about your center, in some ways it could be characterized as a ship on a journey. You and your staff are moving through treacherous waters towards your goal. As we know there are many types of i and crafts that could make such a journey. But for the sake of this discussion I would like you to select from the following two choices:



A galley- this ship was popular with Romans, it utilized the power of the crew rowing in unison to the beat of a drum that established the pace.





A longship- this is a vessel of the type that were employed by Vikings as the explored and plundered throughout the North Sea and North Atlantic. This craft employed its crew to paddle or row.



In the case of the longship the crew were freemen they chose to be on the ship and to participate to the goal, their common goal. The crew of the galley on the other hand were chained into place and had no choice; input of option other than rowing to the goal that was established by others.



Now which is your center more like?



Servant leadership in a call center is much more aligned with the longship as those in charge are there to assist the crew in achieving and realizing the goal rather than beating them to try to attain it. Both vessels can get to their destination, but which on would you rather be on?



Call centers are a community of people with individual perspectives, points of view, goals, ambitions and levels of commitment. This hodgepodge lends itself very well to chaos and confusion. Many respond to the challenges of this environment by creating rules, policies and protocols simply to stifle and restrict the energies of this community. These rules can make the group more manageable, but the trade off is a loss of autonomy and independence, ideas and of original thought. Rather than harnessing the unique abilities of the community in this case we have repressed those abilities and forced those who don’t comply out. This leaves with a group malleable, manageable, but uninspired people. The analogy to sheep or zombies leaps to mind.



They are great at following, but do not lead. If this is an apt description of your call or contact centers then you only have one option for sea travel and that is the galley.



A servant leader in a call center on the other hand would see themselves as a servant to the group, whose role was to help the center get to its goal in the best way possible. This creates an environment much more akin to the longship as all members can have input, share their point of view. The role of the leader is to be a part of the crew, by steering the ship, not the master of the crew beating out the drum beat.



So again, I ask which better describes your call center: a galley or a longship?



Regardless of the answer today, you can change it in the future.



Regardless of which strategy you employ, we wish you luck and a bon voyage.

New Issue Customer Reach

The October issue of Customer Reach is now available.

http://www.thetaylorreachgroup.com/data/newsletters/200710_Newsletter.pdf

In this months issue we examine 'Ten dunb things that Bright Contact Center Executives Do', this is a cautionary tale, that reminds us of just how easy it is to lose focus. We also take a look at 'Contact Center Site Selection' with labor markets tightening up and many markets at 7% or more of the total workforce being employed in contact centers, it behooves us to make the best decision when we are looking for potential locations. This article will help you to identify what the important aspects and elements are for your organization. The Survey of the Month looks at the increase of electronic communication within contact centers and we see that many centers and budgeting on increases in emails and web chats. And of course we have news and views from local to international sources, case studies and more.
This issue of Customer Reach is being read by 5,000 senior call and contact center executives around the globe and we encourage you to share the wealth. Please pass on you copy to your friends and colleagues or better yet suggest they subcribe to recive their own copy.
As always we welcome your feedback, suggestions and comments. Let us know what you are thinking about, how we could improve the publication and what you challenges, successes and opportunities are. Drop us a note to feedback@thetaylorreachgroup.com .
We hope you enjoy this issue.

Contact Center Industry Stats

Industry Size
There are presently 60,850 contact centers (with 10 seats or more) in North America, representing 3.3 million agent positions[1]. Those centers with less than 100 seats represent more than 44% of all contact centers and 1.36 million agent positions.

Gartner has valued the Customer Interactions Services Industry (contact centers) at $28 billion dollars per annum within North America, with 30% or $8.4 billion) of this figure representing outsourced activity Outsourcing service agencies (both inbound and outbound) represent 5.1% of the total number of contact centers equating to approximately 2,900 centers. These centers have a disproportionate representation in agent positions (AP’s) with approximately 313,000 AP’s. The average Outsource agency footprint is 108 agents per center (versus the overall average of 54 agents per center across the industry), or 10.2% of all North American agent positions.

In Canada, the outsource vertical represents 8.9% of the approximately 4,000 Canadian contact centers. There are over 41,000 outsource agency AP’s in Canada, representing 14.2% of AP’s. This equates to an average outsource contact center footprint of 118 agent positions.

The shift from US domestic call center locations to offshore and near shore locations will continue for the foreseeable future with US outsource agency seats declining an estimated 8.5% from 2004 to 2008[2]. Contact Babel has forecast that the number of AP’s in the US will shrink by 2% between 2006 and 2010. While the number of Canadian AP’s will grow by 8.6%. The majority of the estimated 40,000 AP’s lost over this time will be a result of move to nearshore and offshore locations. The largest USA AP reductions are forecast to be in the outsource space with a 6.6% reduction. This is followed by Telecom and Finance declining 6.0% and 4.4% respectively. These two verticals alone represent Full Time Equivalent (FTE) employment loss of more than 75,000 jobs over this period. Strong growth in other verticals, Public Services in particular offsets the overall declines to a degree. Retail support, catalogues, shopping and logistics will remain the largest verticals each with more 480,000 AP’s.

The following table presents the McKinsey perspective on the outsourced suitability and risk. While this was published in 2004, it remains accurate today.

[Contact Author for full content]
Figure 1: McKinsey 2004

If we examine specifically the call and contact center industry the following hierarchy exists in relation to suitability of work to be outsourced and/or off-shored. As the chart below illustrates the key considerations revolve around the complexity of the transaction and the value of the underlying business relationship that the transaction is a part of.

[Contact Author for full content]
The lower the transaction complexity, and the lower the underlying relationship value, the greater the likelihood of the task being outsourced or offshored. The likelihood of success, from a clients perspective, of the outsourcing endeavour also increases the lower the complexity and relationship value.

The US contact center industry by region
Region
Agent Positions
Jobs
Contact Centers
Working Population
% Employed in Contact Centers
Average size (AP’s)
West
583,159
991,370
12,246
32,392,000
3.1%
48
North-East
810,399
1,377,678
13,344
26,359,000
5.2%
61
Midwest
791,838
1,346,125
14,230
32,724,000
4.1%
56
South
884,604
1,503,827
17,080
50,235,000
3.0%
52

TOTAL
3,070,000
5,219,000
56,900
141,710,000
3.7%
54

Contact center density, the percentage of the workforce employed in call and contact centers as a percentage of the total workforce, ranges from a high of 6.2% of the population employed in contact centers in New England to a low of 2.3% in East South Central (Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama). Higher density equates to higher wages or turnover and higher operating costs for the center. This density also results in the majority of new center construction occurring in areas where the center density is under 3% (East South Central, South Atlantic and Pacific). Over time this trend will continue to drive up wages, turnover and operating costs and increase the density in those areas.


[1] North American Contact Centers Report- Contact Babel
[2] Contact Center Outsourcing in the United States - Datamonitor

10 Dumb Things Smart Contact Center Executives Do

Ten dumb things smart Contact Center Executives Do

There are a lot of smart, very smart individuals managing and directing call and contact centers today. Yet, these bright, bright people still manage from time to time to do things that defy understanding. This is my top ten list of really dumb things that smart call and contact center executives do. If you have any dumb things to add to the list let me know by email at ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com .

1- Don’t invest in training or professional development.
We spent enough money to train them when they were hired, why would we want to keep them current on changes in the company our processes our customers or technology. They’ll figure it out. Besides we can always use the dollars allocated to training for other areas like executive retreats.

2- Don’t stay current on new technologies impacting on the call and contact center operations.
After all why would we want home agents, speech recognition, higher quality or better staff morale and management?

3-Don’t read trade press, blogs and newsletters.
We already know everything, and besides who has time to read when I an constantly in meetings.

4-Don’t include remote staff in your operational budget.
There aren’t very many of them out there…is there?

5-Don’t share new technologies and their capabilities with senior management.
They will just say no, so what is the point.

6-Don’t share ideas concepts and results with Marketing.
After all they never share with you.

7-Don’t consider the agents point of view when you examine new technologies.
Its just one extra open window on their desktop…they have done fine with the current 14 so what’s one more window?

8- Don’t give agents authority to make any decisions.
It is important that managers make all decisions…I know it is only a $.49 credit, but it’s the principal of the thing.

9- Don’t take a long term view of your incentive program.
Incentive programs are designed to generate short term results. I just don’t understand that while our incentive to reduce average handle time was so successful our call volume increased substantially.

10- Don’t share with HR the staff and skills/competencies work best in the center.
Turnover is a part of life in a contact center so we shouldn’t try to address it.

Each one of the above list reflects comments (or a paraphrased version) that I have heard from contact center executives. Each of the above points reflects a narrow and/or short term view of the center. Now as I said above these are clever people, so how can such ‘tunnel vision’ exist within a group of specialists? The can be many causes that can create situations of ‘tunnel vision’, these can include:

Lack of time: The old saw that “meetings are a nice alternative to work” rings true in many organizations and contact center are not exempt. Days filled with meetings, limits interaction with direct reports, free time to review news stories, white papers, technology articles etc. it also reduces time to speak with industry peers, to attend conferences or seminars. All of this leads the manager little option but to continue to rely on the status quo in operations as this is the only environment the manager is comfortable and knowledgeable about.

Conflicting objectives: Often contact centers are asked to deliver multiple objectives simultaneously: improve customer satisfaction and reduce costs, or increase first call resolution, but don’t spend anything on additional training. These examples of conflicted objectives are frequent occurrences in contact centers today. Mission Statements focus on “providing world class customer service”, but the contact center receives no budget to deliver this.

Unclear objectives: Centers are often charged with broad mandates to “deliver excellent customer care” but benchmarks and standards are not defined to allow the contact center to know how success will be measured.

Each of the above three examples leads the contact center management to revert to what they are most comfortable and those things that they can quantify without ambiguity. Further they tend to focus on the short term as there is no clear long term vision or plan. In short this is what they have done before and what they are doing now. This approach is not conducive to looking forward or acting proactively. To the contrary this approach ensures that the management focuses on the past. The end result is bright contact center executives then make dumb decisions.

Whats new

Well it has certainly been a busy spring. In the past six months we at TRG have gone from solely providing call and contact center consulting to managing the consulting practice as well as three other companies. These companies are Teleffective, Inc an outbound B2B tele-sales service provider, Telepoll a data gathering and research company focusing on Third Party Quality Monitoring (3PQM) services as well as Customer satisfaction and Employee satisfaction services and Scheduling Staff Inc. that offered hosted staff scheduling services employed by call center as well as restaurants, municpal governements and emergency service organizations.

I wanted to share some of the recent news related to all of the companies ane welcome your thoughts and comments regarding these service offering and the exciting challenges of manageing rapid growth.

Teleffective Growth
Teleffective has grown and prospered in the just over three months since the company was launched. Today we are operating three campaigns running: one is securing appointments for a computer peripherals company, securing appointments and completing direct sales for a waste collection company and up-selling directory listings for a large business to business media company. Our tagline is “The Sell, Phone Company”, and we selected this because it accurately reflects what we do. To see what Teleffective can do to help you improve your sales pipeline and sales performance contact Colin Taylor at ctaylor@teleffectivinc.com or visit the Teleffective website at www.teleffectiveinc.com

Teleffective adds to our team
Teleffective has added to our team with the addition of Nancy Philippou as Project Manager. Nancy with more than 5 years of tele-sales experience brings a track record of success and achievement to Teleffective. Nancy will oversee all program completed by Teleffective and will work with the staff to ensure success of each and every project. Please join me in welcoming Nancy to the Teleffective team. You can reach Nancy at nphilippou@teleffectiveinc.com .

TRG secures a new agreement to provide Third Party Quality Monitoring
TRG has recently secured a new agreement to provide Third Party Quality Monitoring (3PQM) services to large financial institution. More than 175 agents will be assessed at least three times per month against the criteria established by TRG and the Client. This agreement was secured following the completion of a six month pilot project. The client characterized the results of the pilot as allowing them to focus more effectively on coaching and developing their agents and helping to improve the overall quality and service delivered to their clients. For more information on TRG please visit our website at www.thetaylorreachgroup.com .

Telepoll and TRG secure new Customer Satisfaction Survey Program
Telepoll, a TRG company has secured a new Customer satisfaction research program to assist an established sports equipment manufacturer to assess their customers and channels satisfaction with the company and its sales and services processes. This program will be executed utilizing outbound telephone interviews with assessments and analytics being provided by TRG. For more information about Telepoll and their Customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and/or 3PQM services please visit our website at www.telepoll.net or email John Cockerill at jcockerill@telepoll.net .

Scheduling Staff Inc. continues to grow
It has been less than one year but Scheduling Staff Inc. (SSI) has already developed a strong following of organizations who rely on SSI to help them to quickly and easily schedule their staff. Today more than 141 companies, representing more than 3,275 individual users and reflecting scheduled shifts that total more than 87,000 days are using SSI. The companies that use SSI represent a broad range of service organizations from Call centers and market research companies to restaurants, emergency services and governmental services organizations across North America. For more information on Scheduling Staff Inc or to set up your own 30 day free trial please visit our website at www.schedulingstaff.com or email Mary Jones at mjones@schedulingstaff.com .

Help Desks...so why can't we get help?

Help Desks…so why can’t we get help?

So why it is that today the helpdesk is derided almost universally, by the people they are there to help? Why that is the help desk has been renamed in many organizations as the ‘helpless desk’. Is the culprit the design of the help desk, the management, the tools deployed or is just that the users are beyond any form of help? To answer these questions we first need to review and understand the function, design, and management that are elements of any help desk.

According to PCMag a help desk is defined as “A source of technical support for hardware or software. Help desks are staffed by people who can either solve the problem directly or forward the problem to someone else. Help desk software provides the means to log in problems and track them until solved. It also provides the management information regarding support activities.” That sounds simple enough, but as with most things the devil is in the details. Users in most organizations will have 25 or more different software applications on their desktop, other software on their laptop and others yet on their pda. These applications include both company provided and user provided applications. IN addition to the software, they may have a desktop, laptop, pda, printer, scanner and network connections, wired and wireless. As you can see it very quickly becomes a very complicated mash of files, applications, hardware and network elements. Keep the users running is the role of the helpdesk.

IT is the owner of all company sponsored applications, as well as the provider of the network connectivity and hardware, so it is left to IT to manage the help desk and make it as efficient as possible. Of course to the uninitiated this sound fairly straight forward; IT knows the applications, hardware, software and networks after all they selected, purchased, configured and installed each of these elements. In addition the IT group has developed a process to manage help desk inquiries that generally runs as illustrated in the graphic below.


A nice linear process. This is way a help desk is intended to work. Make a request, send it to dispatch, it is assigned a case or ticket number, entered in the queue, dispatch assigns a rep to investigate and respond (fix) the problem and once fixed the case (or ticket) is closed.

Of course few things in life actually work as they were originally designed to. This is certainly true of help desks. Even with the experts who know the technology, its configuration and who are equipped with a logical and straightforward management process, help desks are often hopelessly doomed. Why you may ask? Well with the focu on technology; hardware/software, networks and process one critical element has been omitted, People.

Remember to old adage “to err is human, to really mess things up requires a computer”? We I would suggest that today the inverse is closer to the truth…internet viruses notwithstanding. People and specifically the users tend to be the single largest cause of issues requiring help desk support. Now let me be clear people cause most problems, but they do so often in such ways that we do not see ourselves as the culprit when we have a problem. Let me give you an example, Bob contacts the help desk because one of his Microsoft programs crashed and now will not boot up. He has tried rebooting his pc and has closed all other windows. Bob is in a panic, he needs to get a report done and that can’t happen if he can’t get the software to load. The help desk responds and even they are stumped at first and need to research the problem. The map all of the programs and applications on Bob’s pc. They review all of the files within those applications and finally the ah ha moment. There are two programs that employ a file called “abcd.dll” one in his Microsoft application and one in that new golf game software Bob recently installed to provide some entertainment on those long flights he is required to take. Bob in his haste to install his new game, did what we all do when going through a similar process we click ‘yes’ to any and all ‘replace file x with newer file x’ queries and in doing so Bob replaced the file that was needed to boot his MS file with a snazzy new that works great for golf,, but so good with Word.

We are all Bobs’, we all have software application, instant messaging, media players, sound players, games and other goodies on our machines that IT not only doesn’t know about, but that they have experience troubleshooting. The result is longer time to research and repair a help desk request. But besides the software we have installed we can create other problems…the virus the came when we opened that joke, the synchronization software for the pda we got for our birthday, the new business card scanner we purchased as an efficiency tool (not knowing we could actually crash the mail server). Face it people are the problem, not intentionally, but we are just the same. People do not view a pc as tool to just do spreadsheet, report writing and presentation preparation and to access the company CRM database, but rather we view computers as tools that can do thousands of wonderful and entertaining thing to inform and entertain us besides doing all of those functions and tasks that IT has designed and equipped them to do. In developing specifications and configurations for our pcs and networks etc. the IT group will ensure that we have compatibility and that the systems will function as designed…but they can’t even imaging all of the other things we will try to do with our machines.

So all the havoc wreaked by you and I and Bob has an impact on the help desk. They receive more cases and tickets needing attention than forecast, with more requiring research in order to fix. All the while the user is popping blood vessels wondering how they will get the report to the VP by 2pm. The net result of this becomes longer delays in the help desk queue and a general feeling amongst users that the help desk isn’t very helpful. So faced with a 2 pm deadline and the belief that the help desk isn’t very helpful, what is a manager to do? What we always do in times of challenge and crisis, we innovate. Remember that neat and tidy linear process we reviewed above? The one that sets out the process of managing a help desk case? Well enterprising users can turn that on its ear very quickly. Have a look at the graphic below which is actually far more accurate of most help desks.

Being innovative we all understand the concept of work-arounds, but in relation to our help desks many of us have become masters of this. We have cultivated relationships with the helpdesk reps individually just so we can by pass the dispatch and queue steps to speed our fix. We discover the secret queue email address and naming convention and try to jam a bogus case into the queue, we butter up the folks who dispatch to seek preferential treatment, we call our buddy asking for 5 minutes on the phone to see if we can get a quick fix and bypass the whole ugly process. This whole process is often greased by glad-handing, feigned friendship and doughnuts for the Help desk staff. Of course soe help desk staff will try against all logic to actually follow the process they have been instructed to do and forward a work-around request back to dispatch where it gets entered into the queue much later than it originally would have ( I guess we know who didn’t get the doughnuts). While much of the above is ‘tongue in cheek’, the activities and work arounds are not.

Now try designing an effective help desk with people who are always and with little if any consideration of the consequences adding ‘stuff’ onto their computers and a process that often doomed to work-arounds. A daunting task isn’t it? Daunting yes, impossible no. To get a handle on your help desk operation you need to get a handle on the primary cause of help desk cases…people. In practice it makes little sense to try to get people to stop adding stuff, because it is unlikely to work. A better approach is to look at what people do add and determine which ones ( there is a multitude of choice for most of the add ons we install) and determine the ones that are least likely to cause problems and share this with the users. This sharing process is one of education, there likely will be applications that you will forbid text chat and Voip are two of the most common banned applications, but tell them why; security, hackers, viruses etc. Train your people to ask before they install and not to mindlessly click yes to everything. This should be part of your staff induction training and part of the process whenever anyone gets a new or upgraded machine. This will reduce demand for the help desk are reduce the average time to repair, thereby reducing the queue.

Once you have you people and their pc’s under control, or as much control as we can reasonably expect next we need to turn our eye to our help desk staff. Doughnut aren’t good for us anyway so work with your staff to follow the process and be rigorous about it. Set up measures and reports on each of the staff: track mean time to repair, review their tickets/cases and determine what percentage followed the process and call them on it. Of course the senior VP may still get preferred treatment from time to time, but the overall incidence and use of work-arounds and back doors will diminish. This will of course further improve the through put of the help desk and improve their responsiveness both actual and perceived.

The truth of the matter is that most help desk challenges and those that lead us to label the help desk, the helpless desk have much, much less to do with technology and much more to do with people, both within and outside of the help desk.

To view this complete article (including graphics) please visit the TRG website ans subscribe to receive Customer Reach each months, follow the following link http://www.thetaylorreachgroup.com/register.php and join 5,000 + senior call/contact centers executives from around the globe.

Contact center research

Recent TRG research studies
In “Outsourced Quality Monitoring: Emerging Market or Outsourcing Core Competency?” TRG studied more than 160 organizations and their views regarding the outsourcing of quality monitoring. Every Contact Center senior manager knows that agents require coaching, training and guidance to become more effective and more efficient, unfortunately in most organizations Supervisors spend a significant portion of their time completing non-agent related activities. The question becomes how can we improve the supervisors’ efficiency in completing all of their tasks and still ensure we coach and develop our agents.

In “Assessing Outsource, Offshore and Domestic contact center operations”, TRG examines the opportunities and challenges associated with processing live agent voice calls, email and whitemail processing internally and outsourced. In addition the study examines advantages and disadvantages of Domestic near shore and offshore locations.

If you would like to receive a complimentary copy of either of these reports please email your request to info@thetaylorreachgroup.com .

Consulting firm launches B2B Tele-Sales Contact Center service provider

Ajax, Canada. February 27, 2007- The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. (TRG) announced today that it has launched “Teleffective Inc.” a call and contact center service provider. Colin Taylor the CEO of TRG said, “Many of our clients asked us to assist them in sourcing a high quality service provider. After some mixed experiences we concluded that we should create our own. Then we ensure the highest level of quality to our clients by proper control of the process.

No stranger to the world of outsourced call center operation Taylor spent 18 years with Watts Communications Inc. (now part of Resolve). During his tenure as CEO at Watts Colin grew the business more than 700%. He personally generated a third of a billion dollars in call and contact center sales. In addition Taylor is recognized for excellence in contact center operations through the receipt of more than 27 awards on two continents.

“To be successful in any business”, said Taylor “you must add value. We have done that at TRG and we will do that at Teleffective. At the end of the day our success will be a result of the value and benefits that accrue to our clients. We can only succeed when they do”.

“Teleffective will focus on assisting clients in: Business to Business Sales lead generation; account management, direct sales and interim inside sales/telesales programs. Teleffective will succeed through effectively developing, implementing and operating programs using best practice methods for all programs. These sales functions are grossly under serviced in both Canada and the US today and there is great opportunity to redefine the value proposition.”

Teleffective opens its doors with a stable of clients including a major technology company and large financial service organization and two business services companies.

About The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. - With offices in North America and Australia, The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. (TRG) is one of the leading Call/Contact Center and Customer Service consultancies. This award winning company founded in 2001 by Colin Taylor today boasts a stable of Fortune 1000 companies. The staff at TRG possess more than 100 years of Call Center, Customer Service and Customer Satisfaction experience in delivering effective and significant benefits from Operational Innovation.
The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. may be reached at 905-426-5055 or on the web at http://www.thetaylorreachgroup.com/

About Teleffective – With offices in downtown Toronto and Ajax , Ontario Teleffective provides: Business to Business sales support in lead generation, account management, interim Inside sales/telesales and direct sales.

For more information on Teleffective visit our website at http://www.teleffectiveinc.com/ .
Teleffective can be reached at 1-888-732-5470 or 905-426-2305 or by email at info@teleffectiveinc.com

Some proven examples of getting past the gate keepers of the C-Level suite.

Relevance, persistence and value. You must offer something of value, real value not just sales fluff. Contact tactics -
1-Try building a relationship with the gatekeepers...they can be your friend or ensure you never talk to anyone
2- Call when the gatekeepers aren't there. You would be surprised the number of CEO's who are in the office at 6 am and 6 pm...their admins are not.
3- Mine the company for a referral. Even if it is a "only the CEO can make that decision"...reference the name of the referrer to the gatekeeper,
4- Tell them what you want..."5 minutes of time". Avoid sales speak..." to show how we can help, demonstrate value" etc.
5- Leave Voice mails- no one will know how hard you are trying without a trail. Be specific- don't just use your elevator speech, tell them what you have done, where and why it is relevant to them..voice mail allows you a 30 second commercial to the CEO
6-Keep calling- persistence often gets you through eventually

Outsourcing, Off-Shoring: Truth and Consequences

Outsourcing, Off-Shoring: Truth and Consequences
Outsourcing and Off-Shoring are not new ideas or a new way of doing things. Companies have been moving manufacturing to lower cost of production centers since the sixties and services since the late eighties. It isn’t new but once service outsourcing received the stamp of approval from mainstream media it has increasingly been perceived as a panacea for all ills that are impacting the company. Of course outsourcing/off-shoring won’t solve all a companies ills, it can if, executed well, it can reduce the cost of delivering service. But there are risks in outsourcing: degrading service quality, eroding customer loyalty and negatively impacting employee morale. So how can a company determine when and where to employ outsourcing/off-shoring and estimate what the savings might really be? In this article we will examine a number of questions that a company should ask when considering outsourcing the provision of service to help gain a realistic perspective or what they can achieve through outsourcing or off-shoring.

First a couple of definitions:
Outsourcing is the use of an independent company to provide services that previously were delivered by a companies own staff.
Off-Shoring is the use of resources that are located in a country remote to the company.
Both of these concepts can be executed independently or in combination. There are domestic outsource service providers, there are off-shore outsource service providers and there are captive (company operated) off-shore service providers. Another term that comes up in discussions of outsourcing and off-shoring is ‘near-shoring’ the provision of services in another country, but one that is close both geographically as well as culturally.

The news has been full of outsourcing stories gone bad…British Rail outsourcing their call center to India and then telling customers that they cannot book a ‘slipper car’, when the customer wanted a ‘sleeper car’. Dell has publicly announced moving support services to India and then publicly returning it to the US. An automaker outsourced technical support for their mechanics to India only to have the mechanics boycott the center and ultimately bring it back to the US. In the latter two cases the costs to move the business off-shore and then to bring it back cost significantly more than leaving it alone in the first place. What were the company executives thinking when they made their original decisions, did they ask themselves and their organizations the right questions?

The media message related to outsourcing is that companies can save 40, 50 even 60% of their processing costs simply by moving the services to an off-shore location like India or the Philippines. The truth is quite different while the costs of labor in off-shore locations are significantly less than the costs to operate domestically (often less than half), there are other costs which can be significant. These additional costs include: Management costs; to support a service operation half way around the world requires a team of staff to support this initiative, Systems and networks need to be expanded and secured, Travel costs to deliver trainings and to attend meetings is not insignificant in terms of both costs and senior management time. So what is the bottom line? According to Gartner the average savings a company actually achieves is only 12%. Savings greater than 12% can often be achieved domestically by streamlining or reengineering the current operational model. In call and contact centers we often se organizations that save 20% to 30% by improving the existing center.

So what should a company consider when considering outsourcing and/or off-shoring? First, we must understand what the nature of the services that are being provided. Specifically we must look at whether the service provides direct interaction with customers. Back office processes where no customer interaction are the easiest services to move to an outsource and/or off-shore provider. This assessment focuses almost exclusively on the price and quality of the work that will be completed. But where the service involves direct interaction with customer such as a call center the assessment becomes far more complicated. For simplicity’s sake we can classify customer interactions into two categories: those that are one time or one-off events and interactions that are a part of a broader customer relationship. In the case of a one off one time transaction then quality of service is often less important than the cost to provide the service. These types of interactions can usually be off-shored within acceptable cost and quality parameters. Where the interaction is a part of an on-going relationship we must consider the value of the relationship, the lifetime value of a customer and the quality of the service that can be delivered. The costs of executing service may well be lower off-shore, but the quality is impacted by customer perceptions, actual quality of linguistic or communications skills and the context of knowledge that the provider may or may not possess. Thus the service quality may actually erode customer value, drive churn and increase customer dissatisfaction.

Second, before any company looks at outsourcing or off-shoring they need first to ensure that they have taken all possible measures internally to improve the service quality that is delivered to customers. Outsourcers of all kinds but significantly domestic outsourcers employ labor arbitrage and economies of scale to deliver an operational cost lower than that possible internally. In reality outsourcers take the existing processes and procedures and deliver the service employing these operational parameters with lower paid staff and across a larger more technologically sophisticated and more efficient operation. Outsourcing and expecting the outsource provider to reengineer your processes and procedures is unrealistic. So if your processes are dysfunctional or your procedures are counterproductive the outsourcer will deliver the service with the same dysfunctional and/or counterproductive activities at a lower cost. There will be no operational breakthroughs through outsourcing. The company must ensure that they have optimized their service provision before outsourcing, because it won’t happen after.

So as you assess your company’s suitability you must determine:
 Are your service transactions a one-off or are they part of a broader on-going customer relationship?
 What are the risks to the customer relationship associated with off-shoring?
· From the companies perspective?
· From the customers perspective?
 Can these risks be mitigated?
 Are we willing to accept these risks and the worst case scenario to save approximately 12%?
 Have we optimized our existing internal operational model?
· Is our technology the best possible to support the delivery of service?
· Do we have the right people with the right skills delivering service today?
· Do we have the appropriate training and development in place to grow and develop our staff to deliver ever improving service?
· Are our operational metrics aligned with the goals and objectives of the company?
 Do we have the resources and appropriate knowledge internally to source, implement and manage an outsource provider?
 Do we possess a network and IT infrastructure that can support extension to an outsource provider?

Outsourcing can be an effective and efficient means of delivering service. Outsource agencies can deliver superior service than a company may be able to deliver internally. While this seems counter intuitive often companies cannot secure sufficient resources to provide appropriate technology, sufficient staff or may simply lack the knowledge or resource bandwidth to create and deliver effective hiring, training and service delivery.

Outsourcing any service carries risk and we must take the time ask the important questions before we jump. Failure to take the appropriate steps and assessments can result in higher costs and a loss of customer loyalty. Unfortunately many companies fail to complete appropriate due diligence before they jump: a survey conducted by Orbys found that almost 50% of blue chip companies entered the sourcing process to select an outsourcer without “knowing exactly what they want or how best to source it”. Perhaps not surprisingly one third of the companies ultimately found that heir outsourcing arrangements failed to meet their needs and almost 25% ultimately brought the services back in house.

In our next article we will discuss the steps and activities a company should take once they have made the decision to outsource service delivery to ensure that they have the best opportunity for success.

Highest Rated Call Center Newsletter

My day job is Chairman of The Taylor Reach group, Inc. a call center and contact center consultancy with offices in North America and Australia. One of the services we provide to our clients is a free newsletter called Customer Reach®. Customer Reach® is one of the highest ranked call center or contact center newsletters in existence. The newsletter is one of the top scoring newsletters in terms of page rank and more than 53% of readers have implemented change within their call centers.

So I thought that I would share this newsletter with you. Below is a description of the current issue and a link for you to access it. Let me know what you think of the publication. We are always looking for ideas and suggestions to make this even better.

In this issue we examine why Home Based should be considered by everyone, reveal of survey findings on outsourced Workforce Management, look at the dangers of not doing your homework when outsourcing, as well as news, views the Poll of the Month a new career opportunity and a case study. We have attached a pdf copy of this month's issue to this email or if you prefer you can download your copy by following this link
http://www.thetaylorreachgroup.com/data/newsletters/200612_Newsletter.pdf

Each month we send Customer Reach® out to more than 5,000 call center executives around the globe. In addition we see more than 1,000 issues downloaded from our website. In the last month more than 35,000 people visited the TRG website.

Please feel free to pass your issue onto friends or colleagues or suggest they visit our website to subscribe for their own copy at http://www.thetaylorreachgroup.com/register.php

New Call Center Manager- Congratulations or Condolences

Congratulations! you are the new Call Center manager/director...now what?

Should it even be congratulations? Perhaps condolences would be more appropriate. Why would this not be a celebratory moment? Well consider that ,
more than one third of a call center managers time is wasted on recurring everyday problems (firefighting)...how can we prevent fires if we are too busy fighting them?
Only 38% of executives have the tools to solve customers problems http://www.thetaylorreachgroup.com/news.php?item=20040728_075131.txt ...how can we improve customer satisfaction without the proper tools?
The staff you will rely on is likely untrained, 30% of Supervisors receive no formal training! http://www.thetaylorreachgroup.com/news.php?item=20041022_091502.txt ...how can we expect them to complete a job they have not been trained for?
Is this a recipe for success? Is it any wonder that 58% of senior executives said that they don't deserve their customers loyalty? http://www.thetaylorreachgroup.com/news.php?item=20050215_084722.txt ...So it can't be much of a surprise that almost one third of all call centers and contact centers miss their KPI's at least one a week http://www.thetaylorreachgroup.com/news.php?item=20060106_085652.txt

The prime business objectives for call centers and contact centers today are improving efficiency and reducing costs. So against this back drop I ask if you really want this role?

It reminds me of a story where a sea captain in the 1800's is sailing in pirate infested waters and one day the look out shouts "Pirate ship straight ahead", The captain turns to his mates and says "bring me my sabre and my red shirt". The mate does so and after a fierce battle the captain and crew successfully drive off the pirates. A few days later the look out shouts "two pirate ships dead ahead", Once again the captain asks for his sabre and red shirt and the mate comply. Following a hard fought struggle the captain and crew are able to win the day and turn back the pirates. As they recovered on the deck the mate asks the captain about his pre-battle requests, the mates says "captain I understand why you ask for the sabre, but why the red shirt?", The captain answers "that's easy since we are going into battle I don't want the crew to become frightened or concerned if I were to be wounded and bleed in the fighting...with the red shirt they won't see the blood". The mate nods and now understands. The very next day the look out shouts down to the captain, "five pirate ships coming towards us". The captain without a seconds pause turned to the mate and says..." bring me my sabre and my brown pants"

OK not original, but I think you get the message. With so much lined up against you how can you succeed? The answer requires you to step back from the day-to-day and to look at the center holistically. You need realize that every activity and process that occurs within a call center or contact center is inter-related and that dealing with the symptoms will not cure the disease.

Congratulations or Condolences, I say Congrats, because given the poor state of service in business today there is lots of room for improvement and lots of opportunities for those that can rein in chaos and create effective, efficient, productive contact centers