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 .
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Canadian Call Center Business Opportunity
A South Western Ontario based, 60 seat call center, in business for ten years is looking for a buyer. The company has a high quality reputation for providing serious technical support and customer service to clients across the US and Canada. Also capable of outbound lead generation, surveys and sales. Current contracts in place are producing over 1 Million CDN per year. This company has state of the art technology, low employee cost per hour and very low facilities costs of $10 /sq. ft.. Telephony is an Asterisk VOIP PBX, built internally so there are no license costs and all programming is done by internal IT department. In addition, this company has a 32 seat license for a Vocalcom system which includes dialers. Facilities include an additional 3000 sq.ft. which have been planned for 40 stations. Clients include Wireless ISP’s, Consumer Electronics Manufacturer, Webhosting , Web services, Wireless Hot Spot providers, Hotel Internet Provider. Previous clients have included Telco’s, fortune 500 retailers, insurance companies and a major auto industry client. This is a perfect opportunity for an organization that is looking to grow in size with a very cost effective acquisition or a company that wishes to acquire additional technical support income to add to their existing support queue.
Peaks, Spikes, Valleys and Troughs- How to manage your contact center in a high change environment.
Peaks, Spikes, Valleys and Troughs- How to manage your contact center in a high change environment.
We have all experienced this moment, just when we finally seem to have all of the many and disparate elements of our center under control; the Service Level, our speed of answer, abandon rate, handle time and quality, that’s when it happens, the flood gates open and are KPI’s tumble into the cellar. It is like one of the corollaries to Murphy’s Law “If things are going well, just wait a moment and it will all change”.
Every business faces shifts in call and/or transactional volumes. Some businesses have challenges around seasonality built into their business model such as lawn care or snow removal. Others see seasonal peaks due to Christmas or summer; some catalogue companies see more volume in the fourth quarter than they see throughout the rest of the year! Still other companies experience peaks that happen based upon the calendar; the waste company that sees an increase in call volume with recognized holidays such as July 4th and unrecognized ones such as the Super Bowl. Lastly some organizations experience event driven surges in volumes such as the ‘first responders’ that experienced huge spikes in call volumes following hurricane Katrina or that any company can experience with a new product launch or marketing campaign.
Regardless of how your company experiences call spikes how you, the center manager and your team deal with it can make or break your center and even your company. Peaks and valleys are standard fare in the contact center industry. We see them every day: the mid morning or mid afternoon peak in our daily arrival patterns, the Monday peak volumes versus the slow Friday. These peaks we understand, plan and staff for, they are just a part of the business. But how can you manage peaks when they represent quantum increases in volumes? How can you handle 300% more calls for an hour, a week, a month or a quarter? These are the challenges that some companies face and in this article we will examine how companies and organizations can react and respond to these eventualities.
The starting point as always in contact center management must be the forecast. You need to know how many calls, emails, chats and transactions you will process in your center when and how many staff you will need to met your KPI’s in doing so. The forecast will tell you when you need to hire and train staff and you add these activities to your base volumes. You also add vacation time, special projects, marketing and business activities such as bill runs etc. It is here, on the forecast that you may first see the change in terrain as the line climbs upwards signifying increasing volumes.
As outlined above there are a number of very different types of peaks and each of these requires a different approach. There is no one approach that will meet every challenge or requirement, but we will examine a number of the major strategies that companies employ to address these challenges.
Seasonality: many organizations see a dramatic increase in contact center volumes associated with the Christmas rush. These companies include direct marketers, cataloguers and publishers whose products are being purchased as gifts. These companies have developed strategies that help them manage this expected, planned and essential increase in traffic. Management mechanisms include;
Temporary staff. This is a tried and true solution. If you need 100 more staff you hire 100 temporary staff and run them through and abbreviated training. Why abbreviated? Most companies cannot recover their initial investment in hiring and training staff in just 3 months, so they will often only train the temporary staff on the most common call types, such as order taking and they may only work on a single product line. When this is done in conjunction with intelligent call routing the new staff can be brought up to speed fairly quickly.
Seasonal staff. This is very similar to the temporary staff above, but where the temporary staff model is based upon bringing in 100 new staff, the seasonal staff model is based on bringing back as many of the 100 staff from last year and back filling and gaps with temporary staff. There are obvious benefits of this approach: the staff already knows the company, its customers and systems. Of course they will require refresher training but this is far less than temporary staff would require. The key here is to maximize staff return and retention. This is often achieved through the use of return incentives. The staff is informed before the end of the seasonal rush that you will have openings again next year and would like them to come back. This is sweetened with an incentive (cash or product based), for example a $200 gift certificate for company product or cash.
Partnered centers. Not all companies experience the same seasonal peak. While the pre Christmas rush is likely the most prevalent it is not the only one. Tax preparation companies, banks and finance company call centers all experience surges in volumes associated with investment tax deduction deadlines and with tax filing deadline. Many contact center operators have found other contact centers that are counter cyclical. This means that staff could be shared between the gift cataloguer and the lawn care call center, with staff moving back and forth between the centers.
Event peaks: many companies experience short term often event driven surges in call or transaction volumes. These peaks may arise from a fixed event such a the Super Bowl or an opportunity event such as a very effective advertising campaign or the appearance of the spokesman on Oprah or Larry King. These events can be the most difficult to manage; the peaks may be unexpected, may last for a short duration or occur infrequently. Dealing with these challenges through traditional methods can prove expensive and ineffective. It is not always possible to add staff (temporary or otherwise), the costs of doing so can simply be too expensive. In addition to meet with spikes that are multiples of your usual volume would require similar multiples of your existing staff.
So what are the options available?
Outsourcing. While it is true that outsource providers sell their services based upon economies of scale and the ability to handle rapid growth they are not very interested in adding additional staff to a program for a matter of minutes or hours. Some agencies offer short term support options through their DRTV teams or in a shared service group. When most companies look to outsource, they generally expect dedicated staff, that is staff that will work exclusively on their programs. This can offer the best combination from a company perspective, of value (dedicated and trained staff focused soley on their products or services). Shared staff in contrast work for a number of companies at the same time. One call for client A, the next for client B, etc. This of course impacts upon the level and detail of training that can be offered as well as the level of comprehension and recall. This generally isn’t a problem if they are simply taking order, but poses more significant challenges if a more knowledgeable and detailed understanding of the company, the customer, policies and procedures are required.
Home Agents. Remote or home based agents can be deployed through an outsourcer an agency or established by the company. The most common approach is through an outsource provider. Home agents work a self employed contractors who agree to take the company calls. The receive training and bid for shifts often through a hosted scheduling environment. As the home agents are paid by the call and are self employed they often book short shifts and if the company cannot provide enough volume they will stop working for that company. It can require a significantly larger number of home agents to process the same volume of calls as in-house dedicated agents. This number may have to grow exponentially to meet call volume surges in volumes.
Self service provides another alternative. By developing and deploying automated service solutions (IVR, Speech Recognition, virtual agents, call back messaging etc.) a company can deflect a significant number of calls to the self service solution. By extending the same approach to the web with FAQ’s and chat even more customers can be service this way. There are downsides, most people do not like dealing with ‘machines’ and can find navigation difficult and frustrating. This is hardly the mindset you wish to instill in your customers. Automated solutions generally have a poor track record for converting leads into sales. This is a concern if the surge of calls is from prospective customers. Call back messaging doesn’t purport to solve the problem through self service but rather it employs self service and/or self selection technology to allow a customer to request a call back. This affords the company an opportunity to contact the customer once the peak has subsided. The challenge with this approach can be the difficulty then in connecting with the prospect. People have busy lives and they will not sit by the phone waiting for your call. So while this isn’t a lost opportunity it certainly requires addition time, effort and cost to chase down the prospect with a portion never reached.
A final alternative is often the most effective approach to managing peaks can be to look at the underlying processes and procedures that impact or create this peak in the first place. Peaks at one of our clients were caused by mailing hundreds of thousands of invoices out over three days each month. By spreading the invoices over the entire month the peak was eliminated.
There are a number of tools and tactics we have addressed in this article. There is no one magic solution the will fit all situations. You will need to assess your center, your company and your requirements. Good luck.
We have all experienced this moment, just when we finally seem to have all of the many and disparate elements of our center under control; the Service Level, our speed of answer, abandon rate, handle time and quality, that’s when it happens, the flood gates open and are KPI’s tumble into the cellar. It is like one of the corollaries to Murphy’s Law “If things are going well, just wait a moment and it will all change”.
Every business faces shifts in call and/or transactional volumes. Some businesses have challenges around seasonality built into their business model such as lawn care or snow removal. Others see seasonal peaks due to Christmas or summer; some catalogue companies see more volume in the fourth quarter than they see throughout the rest of the year! Still other companies experience peaks that happen based upon the calendar; the waste company that sees an increase in call volume with recognized holidays such as July 4th and unrecognized ones such as the Super Bowl. Lastly some organizations experience event driven surges in volumes such as the ‘first responders’ that experienced huge spikes in call volumes following hurricane Katrina or that any company can experience with a new product launch or marketing campaign.
Regardless of how your company experiences call spikes how you, the center manager and your team deal with it can make or break your center and even your company. Peaks and valleys are standard fare in the contact center industry. We see them every day: the mid morning or mid afternoon peak in our daily arrival patterns, the Monday peak volumes versus the slow Friday. These peaks we understand, plan and staff for, they are just a part of the business. But how can you manage peaks when they represent quantum increases in volumes? How can you handle 300% more calls for an hour, a week, a month or a quarter? These are the challenges that some companies face and in this article we will examine how companies and organizations can react and respond to these eventualities.
The starting point as always in contact center management must be the forecast. You need to know how many calls, emails, chats and transactions you will process in your center when and how many staff you will need to met your KPI’s in doing so. The forecast will tell you when you need to hire and train staff and you add these activities to your base volumes. You also add vacation time, special projects, marketing and business activities such as bill runs etc. It is here, on the forecast that you may first see the change in terrain as the line climbs upwards signifying increasing volumes.
As outlined above there are a number of very different types of peaks and each of these requires a different approach. There is no one approach that will meet every challenge or requirement, but we will examine a number of the major strategies that companies employ to address these challenges.
Seasonality: many organizations see a dramatic increase in contact center volumes associated with the Christmas rush. These companies include direct marketers, cataloguers and publishers whose products are being purchased as gifts. These companies have developed strategies that help them manage this expected, planned and essential increase in traffic. Management mechanisms include;
Temporary staff. This is a tried and true solution. If you need 100 more staff you hire 100 temporary staff and run them through and abbreviated training. Why abbreviated? Most companies cannot recover their initial investment in hiring and training staff in just 3 months, so they will often only train the temporary staff on the most common call types, such as order taking and they may only work on a single product line. When this is done in conjunction with intelligent call routing the new staff can be brought up to speed fairly quickly.
Seasonal staff. This is very similar to the temporary staff above, but where the temporary staff model is based upon bringing in 100 new staff, the seasonal staff model is based on bringing back as many of the 100 staff from last year and back filling and gaps with temporary staff. There are obvious benefits of this approach: the staff already knows the company, its customers and systems. Of course they will require refresher training but this is far less than temporary staff would require. The key here is to maximize staff return and retention. This is often achieved through the use of return incentives. The staff is informed before the end of the seasonal rush that you will have openings again next year and would like them to come back. This is sweetened with an incentive (cash or product based), for example a $200 gift certificate for company product or cash.
Partnered centers. Not all companies experience the same seasonal peak. While the pre Christmas rush is likely the most prevalent it is not the only one. Tax preparation companies, banks and finance company call centers all experience surges in volumes associated with investment tax deduction deadlines and with tax filing deadline. Many contact center operators have found other contact centers that are counter cyclical. This means that staff could be shared between the gift cataloguer and the lawn care call center, with staff moving back and forth between the centers.
Event peaks: many companies experience short term often event driven surges in call or transaction volumes. These peaks may arise from a fixed event such a the Super Bowl or an opportunity event such as a very effective advertising campaign or the appearance of the spokesman on Oprah or Larry King. These events can be the most difficult to manage; the peaks may be unexpected, may last for a short duration or occur infrequently. Dealing with these challenges through traditional methods can prove expensive and ineffective. It is not always possible to add staff (temporary or otherwise), the costs of doing so can simply be too expensive. In addition to meet with spikes that are multiples of your usual volume would require similar multiples of your existing staff.
So what are the options available?
Outsourcing. While it is true that outsource providers sell their services based upon economies of scale and the ability to handle rapid growth they are not very interested in adding additional staff to a program for a matter of minutes or hours. Some agencies offer short term support options through their DRTV teams or in a shared service group. When most companies look to outsource, they generally expect dedicated staff, that is staff that will work exclusively on their programs. This can offer the best combination from a company perspective, of value (dedicated and trained staff focused soley on their products or services). Shared staff in contrast work for a number of companies at the same time. One call for client A, the next for client B, etc. This of course impacts upon the level and detail of training that can be offered as well as the level of comprehension and recall. This generally isn’t a problem if they are simply taking order, but poses more significant challenges if a more knowledgeable and detailed understanding of the company, the customer, policies and procedures are required.
Home Agents. Remote or home based agents can be deployed through an outsourcer an agency or established by the company. The most common approach is through an outsource provider. Home agents work a self employed contractors who agree to take the company calls. The receive training and bid for shifts often through a hosted scheduling environment. As the home agents are paid by the call and are self employed they often book short shifts and if the company cannot provide enough volume they will stop working for that company. It can require a significantly larger number of home agents to process the same volume of calls as in-house dedicated agents. This number may have to grow exponentially to meet call volume surges in volumes.
Self service provides another alternative. By developing and deploying automated service solutions (IVR, Speech Recognition, virtual agents, call back messaging etc.) a company can deflect a significant number of calls to the self service solution. By extending the same approach to the web with FAQ’s and chat even more customers can be service this way. There are downsides, most people do not like dealing with ‘machines’ and can find navigation difficult and frustrating. This is hardly the mindset you wish to instill in your customers. Automated solutions generally have a poor track record for converting leads into sales. This is a concern if the surge of calls is from prospective customers. Call back messaging doesn’t purport to solve the problem through self service but rather it employs self service and/or self selection technology to allow a customer to request a call back. This affords the company an opportunity to contact the customer once the peak has subsided. The challenge with this approach can be the difficulty then in connecting with the prospect. People have busy lives and they will not sit by the phone waiting for your call. So while this isn’t a lost opportunity it certainly requires addition time, effort and cost to chase down the prospect with a portion never reached.
A final alternative is often the most effective approach to managing peaks can be to look at the underlying processes and procedures that impact or create this peak in the first place. Peaks at one of our clients were caused by mailing hundreds of thousands of invoices out over three days each month. By spreading the invoices over the entire month the peak was eliminated.
There are a number of tools and tactics we have addressed in this article. There is no one magic solution the will fit all situations. You will need to assess your center, your company and your requirements. Good luck.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Outsourcing, Offshoring Truth or Consequences Part 2
Outsourcing, Off-Shoring: Truth and Consequences-Part 2
In our last article we examined offshore outsourcing the costs the real and perceived benefits and the steps an organization should take before embarking on an outsource and/or offshore venture.
In this article we focus on how an organization should best move forward to ensure that their outsourcing or offshoring venture will succeed and not be mentioned in the ever growing list of companies that failed in this exercise.
There is a lot of common steps and activities that need to be taken regardless of whether the service will be provided domestically, in a ‘near shore’ location (Canada) or offshore. We first examine the steps and activities that apply to all locations and then look at those that are location specific.
Following this activity checklist can prevent lots of pain and suffering for both the organization and the outsource partner. This is an essential step in building a successful outsource relationship.
The first questions you need to ask are the ones we discussed in the previous article…
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 15%?
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?
If your answer is ‘No’ to any of these questions then you will be creating problems for yourself by moving forward with outsourcing until you can answer “yes’ to each.
Assessing the Outsourcer:
Now with your ‘yes’ answers in hand you are ready to move forward to source an outsource partner, as you move forward keep in mind that all outsourcers you speak with want your business and will regale you with how wonderful they are. The first qualification area we will address in terms of qualifying potential outsource partners is Experience.
Experience:
Take all statements related to experience and knowledge with a grain of salt. Ask the vendor specific questions related to their experience such as;
o Which companies in my vertical have they worked with?
o Are they still working with these companies? (and if not, why not)
o Can they provide reference contacts at these firms?
Based on their answers you may have to ask yourself if you want to work with an experienced firm or if you want to be a guinea pig?
Of course even if the outsourcer has experience in your vertical it doesn’t mean that they are good at it or even that this is a core competency. You will want to ask them:
o What percentage of their business (in terms of dollars, minutes or seats) is in the same vertical as you operate in?
o What types of services they have provided to that vertical? (they may have experience in publishing but if they have only handled inbound change of address requests this isn’t terribly relevant if you are looking to outsource outbound renewals)
o What awards or recognition they have received for their work in the sector? Of course they could do very good work and have received no awards or recognition, but if they have received awards etc., then you can know that some third party assessed their work or submission and felt that it had merit.
Staffing:
It is essential that you understand the staff who will be working on your project. After all it is these people who will be interacting with your customers. It is based on this interaction that your customers will judge your company[1]. You need to know the following:
· What the skills and competencies they look for when hiring staff? Be wary of anyone that only or primarily looks for call/contact center experience as this often just hires someone else’s’ problems.
· How do they test for these Skills & Competencies? The tests should be objective and independent of the interviewers’ subjective opinion. Ask to see these tests.
· What is their annual staff turnover and how is this calculated? Turnover is the percentage of staff that leaves the center each year. This can include ‘turnover’ those that leave the organization and ‘churnover’ those that leave the contact center but are still with the company. Turnover should include staff from the first day they are on the job. Be wary of companies who don’t include ‘churnover’ or who don’t include the training period or the first X days in their counts. These exclusions tend to occur in companies that want their turnover numbers to appear to be lower.
· Ask if you can interview and/or speak with some of their staff. You will get better insight to the staff and organization by speaking with them directly.
Training:
You need to understand how your potential outsource partner approaches staff training. Not just the product knowledge, but also the soft skills related to effective communication, active listening, sales and agent development.
Specifically you should ask:
· To see their agent training program (agree to sign an NDA if requested). This shows how they invest and equip new staff before they go on a program such as yours.
· To see any tests or assessments they complete to ensure comprehension and recall of trained knowledge?
· A training outline for a program similar in nature to yours? They should remove client identifiable elements.
· How will your training be done? Will they train all of the staff, will you train the trainer or will they expect you to train all of the staff?
Management Processes:
You need to understand how the outsource partner will manage your business. Specifically you need to understand:
· The key metrics or KPI’s they employ in managing their business from a macro level? They are in business to make money, so costs and margin certainly need to be present. They also should include metrics such as Service Levels, Quality Levels, escalations, First contact resolution, etc.
· What are the specific metrics they believe your program should be governed by? By asking this question before you provide your desired metrics will tell speak volumes about their perception of your project and requirements.
· Who will manage your business? Will they assign a project manager? Where is that manager located? Are they dedicated to your account? How will you interact with them: phone, email, face to face, instant messaging etc.? What are the response parameters you should expect? Ask them to provide a service level agreement to respond to your phone calls and emails. Ask to see a bio or resume for the project manager. Ask for references for the project manager. This person will be an extension of your company; you should be very comfortable with this person before agreeing to proceed.
· What reporting: type and frequency will they provide to you? Ask to see sample reports and ask if they can produce ‘ad-hoc’ reports and how quickly they can do so?
· Ask for a standard implementation project plan. This will show you how they manage projects and what tasks are required as well as how much time they feel should be devoted to each activity.
Technology:
Any outsourcer you partner with will need to integrate with your systems and processes. It is important to understand both their structure and knowledge levels. Specifically:
· Ask to see their Disaster Recovery Plan. If there is a problem, you want to know what will happen and when. Otherwise your own service to your customers may be compromised.
· Are their telephony and power systems redundant and to what level? Determine if they are speaking of battery back up, on-site diesel power generation or physical connection to two power stations or telco central offices.
· How do they envision connecting into your systems? How they connect and the security around the connection are going to be very important to your own IT group
Pricing:
This is often the only element that companies look at closely. Those that do this, do so at their peril. Price is always important, but it should never be the only consideration. Before you select a vendor you need to understand their pricing model and how it would apply to your project. Specifically you will want to know:
· What is the basis for their pricing model? Is it per connect minute, per talk time minute, per call, staff FTE’s etc.
· Are there discounts or price breaks based upon volumes? We know that there are economies of scale as a business grows, to what degree do they share this with their customers?
· What are the set up or establishment fees and what are these charges for? Some companies charge for training, opening a file, reporting set up, telecommunication set up, data connectivity set up etc.
· What other fees are there and when would they apply? Do their rates for example include long distance and if not what is the ‘per minute’ rate they charge you. Can the long distance or toll charges be billed directly to you by your existing carrier? Are charges for additional reports and what are these fees?
· What service level guarantees are they willing to offer? Are the service levels targets or requirements? More than one company has been burned by thinking that a target service level meant that it would be consistently achieved as apposed to something to strive for.
· What is the measurement period for the service level? There can be significant variances in actual service delivered if it is measured on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
· What penalties and recovery periods will apply when a service level is not achieved?
· What contract terms are they seeking and what benefit do you receive for a longer agreement? It is not uncommon for multi-year agreements to include rate escalation clauses. It is generally in the clients best interest to not have a blanket escalation rate but rather a increase/decrease tied to an independent measure such as ‘cost of living’ etc.
General:
Always do the following:
· Visit the contact center where your business will be completed. Seeing the site and meeting the Supervisors and staff will provide great insight into the company.
· Be concerned if they tell you they do not have a center for you today. While this can speak to growth it can also lead to delaying the project timetable if they are working out funding, have construction delays or need more clients to justify the build.
· Check references. Check a minimum of three current clients. Ask to speak with former clients as well. Find out why former clients are not still dealing with the outsourcer. Ask specifically about adherence to service levels, budgets and timeline and how easy the access was to the project manager and senior company resources.
· Do a ‘credit check’ on the company. You don’t want to risk you customers with a company that is struggling to stay afloat. If they collapse you may be down for days or even weeks.
Location specific questions:
Near Shore
Canada is the most popular near shore location for call and contact center activities. Jamaica, Mexico and Puerto Rico also host a number of contact centers. In all cases these have lower operating costs due to their location. A part of the outsource operating advantage is dollar arbitrage, The lower the exchange to the US dollar generally the lower the costs in that country. Regardless of the country you need to ask a number of questions including:
· Will the outsourcer invoice you in US dollars? This frees you from concerns over the relative exchange rates between US Dollars and the local currency.
· What taxes are charged in that country and can any of these be recovered. Local country taxes often can be applied to call and contact center services, though often you can become exempt or have the taxes refunded if you are a non resident company.
· Language skills vary from location to location based upon the educational system in that country. For US companies seeking English language services Canada often reflects the best option as Canada has an excellent educational system. It is also heavily influenced by American media.
· Culture is important in any call or contact center. All customers will employ slang, idioms expressions and phrases that are not taught in school. It is imperative that the agents representing your company can communicate effectively with your customers.
· Infrastructure can be a concern outside of Canada. Generally in Mexico and the Caribbean the telecommunication and electrical infrastructure is inferior to that seen in Canada or the US. You must ask about reliability, redundancy, failure history, recovery periods etc.
· Weather can be a concern regardless of where the center is located internally, domestically or near shore. Snow in the north, hurricanes in the south, tornadoes in the mid west all pose potential risks that need to be identified and assessed. It is interesting to note that locations with regular and significant amounts of snow loose fewer days annually to weather than locations that see small amounts or infrequent snow storms.
Offshore
There are numerous offshore locations for contact centers around the globe. They include countries such as India and the Philippines but also include countries such as;
o South Africa,
o New Zealand,
o Ireland,
o Romania,
o Poland,
o Malaysia,
o China,
o Singapore,
o The Seychelles,
o Sri Lanka,
o Pakistan,
For each of these countries you must examine all of the universal and near shore questions plus the following;
· Access, will you need a visa to get into the country? This can be a factor sourcing individuals who will work providing training and managing the vendor relationship.
· How safe is the location or how safe will your staff feel when they are there. We often forget that: India is a nuclear state that is in a constant state of near war with Pakistan or that the Philippines has an on-going guerrilla war underway and that there are semi-regular riots in the streets of Manila. All of this has a bearing on your ability to get staff to travel to these locations.
· Infrastructure in many of these countries can range from poor to very good. Often service providers operate their own private networks rather than rely on the public grid. In these cases their redundancy and Business Continuity plans take on far more significance.
· Cultural Context can be very important in countries that have little exposure to the US culture. We see a phenomena call cultural context training. This is a process designed to train staff to deal with North Americans. This can range from the ludicrous (employing a full season of the sitcom Friends to teach Indians about US culture) to good (broad cultural trainings, accent neutralization training, slang, axioms and expressions training). You cannot skimp with this aspect of your assessment as this will likely be the most obvious clue to your customer that you have offshored the center.
· Time zones also play a role in the ongoing management of an offshore vendor; you need to plan to communicate at 5, 8, and 10 hours off the normal North American clock if you wish to stay on top of your partner. Waiting till the next day often means you can’t speak to who you want to and will likely lose another day before changes or adjustments can be made. When was the last time you had an internal crisis where you had the liberty of taking 3 days to fix it?
· Due Diligence is essential before you travel overseas to meet with a potential partner. Before you go, check their references, find a local lawyer, consultant and accountant or tax planner. You will need to know the implications of establishing a contract offshore. For example the laws of what country will govern the agreement? How will judgments be enforced if any are executed? How will disputes be resolved, what are the risks to any assets you send overseas etc.
The world seems to continually become a smaller place and outsourcing and offshoring are here to stay. But with the proper preparation any company can navigate these potentially dangerous waters and develop effective and meaningful partnerships.
[1] Perdue University- 92% of consumers judge a company based upon their experience with the company’s contact center.
In our last article we examined offshore outsourcing the costs the real and perceived benefits and the steps an organization should take before embarking on an outsource and/or offshore venture.
In this article we focus on how an organization should best move forward to ensure that their outsourcing or offshoring venture will succeed and not be mentioned in the ever growing list of companies that failed in this exercise.
There is a lot of common steps and activities that need to be taken regardless of whether the service will be provided domestically, in a ‘near shore’ location (Canada) or offshore. We first examine the steps and activities that apply to all locations and then look at those that are location specific.
Following this activity checklist can prevent lots of pain and suffering for both the organization and the outsource partner. This is an essential step in building a successful outsource relationship.
The first questions you need to ask are the ones we discussed in the previous article…
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 15%?
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?
If your answer is ‘No’ to any of these questions then you will be creating problems for yourself by moving forward with outsourcing until you can answer “yes’ to each.
Assessing the Outsourcer:
Now with your ‘yes’ answers in hand you are ready to move forward to source an outsource partner, as you move forward keep in mind that all outsourcers you speak with want your business and will regale you with how wonderful they are. The first qualification area we will address in terms of qualifying potential outsource partners is Experience.
Experience:
Take all statements related to experience and knowledge with a grain of salt. Ask the vendor specific questions related to their experience such as;
o Which companies in my vertical have they worked with?
o Are they still working with these companies? (and if not, why not)
o Can they provide reference contacts at these firms?
Based on their answers you may have to ask yourself if you want to work with an experienced firm or if you want to be a guinea pig?
Of course even if the outsourcer has experience in your vertical it doesn’t mean that they are good at it or even that this is a core competency. You will want to ask them:
o What percentage of their business (in terms of dollars, minutes or seats) is in the same vertical as you operate in?
o What types of services they have provided to that vertical? (they may have experience in publishing but if they have only handled inbound change of address requests this isn’t terribly relevant if you are looking to outsource outbound renewals)
o What awards or recognition they have received for their work in the sector? Of course they could do very good work and have received no awards or recognition, but if they have received awards etc., then you can know that some third party assessed their work or submission and felt that it had merit.
Staffing:
It is essential that you understand the staff who will be working on your project. After all it is these people who will be interacting with your customers. It is based on this interaction that your customers will judge your company[1]. You need to know the following:
· What the skills and competencies they look for when hiring staff? Be wary of anyone that only or primarily looks for call/contact center experience as this often just hires someone else’s’ problems.
· How do they test for these Skills & Competencies? The tests should be objective and independent of the interviewers’ subjective opinion. Ask to see these tests.
· What is their annual staff turnover and how is this calculated? Turnover is the percentage of staff that leaves the center each year. This can include ‘turnover’ those that leave the organization and ‘churnover’ those that leave the contact center but are still with the company. Turnover should include staff from the first day they are on the job. Be wary of companies who don’t include ‘churnover’ or who don’t include the training period or the first X days in their counts. These exclusions tend to occur in companies that want their turnover numbers to appear to be lower.
· Ask if you can interview and/or speak with some of their staff. You will get better insight to the staff and organization by speaking with them directly.
Training:
You need to understand how your potential outsource partner approaches staff training. Not just the product knowledge, but also the soft skills related to effective communication, active listening, sales and agent development.
Specifically you should ask:
· To see their agent training program (agree to sign an NDA if requested). This shows how they invest and equip new staff before they go on a program such as yours.
· To see any tests or assessments they complete to ensure comprehension and recall of trained knowledge?
· A training outline for a program similar in nature to yours? They should remove client identifiable elements.
· How will your training be done? Will they train all of the staff, will you train the trainer or will they expect you to train all of the staff?
Management Processes:
You need to understand how the outsource partner will manage your business. Specifically you need to understand:
· The key metrics or KPI’s they employ in managing their business from a macro level? They are in business to make money, so costs and margin certainly need to be present. They also should include metrics such as Service Levels, Quality Levels, escalations, First contact resolution, etc.
· What are the specific metrics they believe your program should be governed by? By asking this question before you provide your desired metrics will tell speak volumes about their perception of your project and requirements.
· Who will manage your business? Will they assign a project manager? Where is that manager located? Are they dedicated to your account? How will you interact with them: phone, email, face to face, instant messaging etc.? What are the response parameters you should expect? Ask them to provide a service level agreement to respond to your phone calls and emails. Ask to see a bio or resume for the project manager. Ask for references for the project manager. This person will be an extension of your company; you should be very comfortable with this person before agreeing to proceed.
· What reporting: type and frequency will they provide to you? Ask to see sample reports and ask if they can produce ‘ad-hoc’ reports and how quickly they can do so?
· Ask for a standard implementation project plan. This will show you how they manage projects and what tasks are required as well as how much time they feel should be devoted to each activity.
Technology:
Any outsourcer you partner with will need to integrate with your systems and processes. It is important to understand both their structure and knowledge levels. Specifically:
· Ask to see their Disaster Recovery Plan. If there is a problem, you want to know what will happen and when. Otherwise your own service to your customers may be compromised.
· Are their telephony and power systems redundant and to what level? Determine if they are speaking of battery back up, on-site diesel power generation or physical connection to two power stations or telco central offices.
· How do they envision connecting into your systems? How they connect and the security around the connection are going to be very important to your own IT group
Pricing:
This is often the only element that companies look at closely. Those that do this, do so at their peril. Price is always important, but it should never be the only consideration. Before you select a vendor you need to understand their pricing model and how it would apply to your project. Specifically you will want to know:
· What is the basis for their pricing model? Is it per connect minute, per talk time minute, per call, staff FTE’s etc.
· Are there discounts or price breaks based upon volumes? We know that there are economies of scale as a business grows, to what degree do they share this with their customers?
· What are the set up or establishment fees and what are these charges for? Some companies charge for training, opening a file, reporting set up, telecommunication set up, data connectivity set up etc.
· What other fees are there and when would they apply? Do their rates for example include long distance and if not what is the ‘per minute’ rate they charge you. Can the long distance or toll charges be billed directly to you by your existing carrier? Are charges for additional reports and what are these fees?
· What service level guarantees are they willing to offer? Are the service levels targets or requirements? More than one company has been burned by thinking that a target service level meant that it would be consistently achieved as apposed to something to strive for.
· What is the measurement period for the service level? There can be significant variances in actual service delivered if it is measured on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
· What penalties and recovery periods will apply when a service level is not achieved?
· What contract terms are they seeking and what benefit do you receive for a longer agreement? It is not uncommon for multi-year agreements to include rate escalation clauses. It is generally in the clients best interest to not have a blanket escalation rate but rather a increase/decrease tied to an independent measure such as ‘cost of living’ etc.
General:
Always do the following:
· Visit the contact center where your business will be completed. Seeing the site and meeting the Supervisors and staff will provide great insight into the company.
· Be concerned if they tell you they do not have a center for you today. While this can speak to growth it can also lead to delaying the project timetable if they are working out funding, have construction delays or need more clients to justify the build.
· Check references. Check a minimum of three current clients. Ask to speak with former clients as well. Find out why former clients are not still dealing with the outsourcer. Ask specifically about adherence to service levels, budgets and timeline and how easy the access was to the project manager and senior company resources.
· Do a ‘credit check’ on the company. You don’t want to risk you customers with a company that is struggling to stay afloat. If they collapse you may be down for days or even weeks.
Location specific questions:
Near Shore
Canada is the most popular near shore location for call and contact center activities. Jamaica, Mexico and Puerto Rico also host a number of contact centers. In all cases these have lower operating costs due to their location. A part of the outsource operating advantage is dollar arbitrage, The lower the exchange to the US dollar generally the lower the costs in that country. Regardless of the country you need to ask a number of questions including:
· Will the outsourcer invoice you in US dollars? This frees you from concerns over the relative exchange rates between US Dollars and the local currency.
· What taxes are charged in that country and can any of these be recovered. Local country taxes often can be applied to call and contact center services, though often you can become exempt or have the taxes refunded if you are a non resident company.
· Language skills vary from location to location based upon the educational system in that country. For US companies seeking English language services Canada often reflects the best option as Canada has an excellent educational system. It is also heavily influenced by American media.
· Culture is important in any call or contact center. All customers will employ slang, idioms expressions and phrases that are not taught in school. It is imperative that the agents representing your company can communicate effectively with your customers.
· Infrastructure can be a concern outside of Canada. Generally in Mexico and the Caribbean the telecommunication and electrical infrastructure is inferior to that seen in Canada or the US. You must ask about reliability, redundancy, failure history, recovery periods etc.
· Weather can be a concern regardless of where the center is located internally, domestically or near shore. Snow in the north, hurricanes in the south, tornadoes in the mid west all pose potential risks that need to be identified and assessed. It is interesting to note that locations with regular and significant amounts of snow loose fewer days annually to weather than locations that see small amounts or infrequent snow storms.
Offshore
There are numerous offshore locations for contact centers around the globe. They include countries such as India and the Philippines but also include countries such as;
o South Africa,
o New Zealand,
o Ireland,
o Romania,
o Poland,
o Malaysia,
o China,
o Singapore,
o The Seychelles,
o Sri Lanka,
o Pakistan,
For each of these countries you must examine all of the universal and near shore questions plus the following;
· Access, will you need a visa to get into the country? This can be a factor sourcing individuals who will work providing training and managing the vendor relationship.
· How safe is the location or how safe will your staff feel when they are there. We often forget that: India is a nuclear state that is in a constant state of near war with Pakistan or that the Philippines has an on-going guerrilla war underway and that there are semi-regular riots in the streets of Manila. All of this has a bearing on your ability to get staff to travel to these locations.
· Infrastructure in many of these countries can range from poor to very good. Often service providers operate their own private networks rather than rely on the public grid. In these cases their redundancy and Business Continuity plans take on far more significance.
· Cultural Context can be very important in countries that have little exposure to the US culture. We see a phenomena call cultural context training. This is a process designed to train staff to deal with North Americans. This can range from the ludicrous (employing a full season of the sitcom Friends to teach Indians about US culture) to good (broad cultural trainings, accent neutralization training, slang, axioms and expressions training). You cannot skimp with this aspect of your assessment as this will likely be the most obvious clue to your customer that you have offshored the center.
· Time zones also play a role in the ongoing management of an offshore vendor; you need to plan to communicate at 5, 8, and 10 hours off the normal North American clock if you wish to stay on top of your partner. Waiting till the next day often means you can’t speak to who you want to and will likely lose another day before changes or adjustments can be made. When was the last time you had an internal crisis where you had the liberty of taking 3 days to fix it?
· Due Diligence is essential before you travel overseas to meet with a potential partner. Before you go, check their references, find a local lawyer, consultant and accountant or tax planner. You will need to know the implications of establishing a contract offshore. For example the laws of what country will govern the agreement? How will judgments be enforced if any are executed? How will disputes be resolved, what are the risks to any assets you send overseas etc.
The world seems to continually become a smaller place and outsourcing and offshoring are here to stay. But with the proper preparation any company can navigate these potentially dangerous waters and develop effective and meaningful partnerships.
[1] Perdue University- 92% of consumers judge a company based upon their experience with the company’s contact center.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
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
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
New TeleSales Business- Teleffective
Well launched another new business today. The company is called Teleffective Inc. and the company is in response to our clients requesting assistance implementing effective tele-sales and inside sales projects.
So we opened the doors with 40 stations and three clients!
So if anyone is looking for assistance in implementing successful and profitable direct sales, account management or lead generation programs then please visit our website www.teleffectiveinc.com
So we opened the doors with 40 stations and three clients!
So if anyone is looking for assistance in implementing successful and profitable direct sales, account management or lead generation programs then please visit our website www.teleffectiveinc.com
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Quality Monitoring
Monitoring call and contact center agents is a central and key activity within any call or contact center. Of this is the primary means to ensure that an acceptable level of service is being provided to the company’s’ customers. This process validates the hiring and training process and often acts as a mini-performance review for agent staff, identifying the superior performers and those where improvement is needed.
So how is today that many organization are electing to outsource this key and critical activity? While each company or organization may have their own reasons and rationale for making this decision, a number of consistent themes emerged over the study. Key influencing factors include: lack of resources, an increase in non-phone related activities and technology related issues.
Is outsourced third party monitoring appropriate for you? That depends on your organization and how it operates, but it is clear that as the demands upon Supervisors time increase, adding many non-phone related activities something has to give. For some organizations they have found the best success in outsourcing their quality monitoring.
The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. has just released a research study called " Outsourced Quality Monitoring: Emerging Market or Outsourcing Core Competencies".
Let me know if you would like to receive a copy.
So how is today that many organization are electing to outsource this key and critical activity? While each company or organization may have their own reasons and rationale for making this decision, a number of consistent themes emerged over the study. Key influencing factors include: lack of resources, an increase in non-phone related activities and technology related issues.
Is outsourced third party monitoring appropriate for you? That depends on your organization and how it operates, but it is clear that as the demands upon Supervisors time increase, adding many non-phone related activities something has to give. For some organizations they have found the best success in outsourcing their quality monitoring.
The Taylor Reach Group, Inc. has just released a research study called " Outsourced Quality Monitoring: Emerging Market or Outsourcing Core Competencies".
Let me know if you would like to receive a copy.
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