One Critical Area Growing Companies Should Never Outsource

Outsourcing typically is brought up as an option when companies are looking to cut costs or expand quicker.  Both of these are great reasons to start getting creative.  But before making a big decision based on just the bottom line, look at it from the customers perspective.  Since they are the reason a business stays in business, standing in their shoes will help you determine which outsourcing is the right one to start with. 

There are two areas that are the most frustrating points for customers when dealing with big corporations.  First is getting different answers with each new rep they talk to.  Second is the lack of note taking and account updating with each call the customer makes to the company.  When a customer calls in, spends 45 min on hold, then an hour on a call with the customer service rep, it can feel like progress is being made.  But when they have to call back a few days later to follow up, they can’t find any record of your last conversation or they tell you different hoops that have to be jumped through for the process to actually start. 

When these big corporations hire 3rd parties to take over portions of their customer service, the break down in quality happens quickly.  Having reps that don’t speak clear English and that aren’t given the most up to date information on systems that don’t keep everything in sync, creates extra headaches for the customer and wasted resources for the company.

Here is an example of an everyday situation of crossed systems and services.  Sasha has an insurance claim that she is talking with her designated rep about.  She is told to call the local repair shop to get the repair scheduled.  She is also told to let the insurance company know if she will need a rental car so they can get that scheduled for her.  Sasha calls this repair shop and gets on the schedule, at this time she does not need a car rental.  A few days later the insurance company decides the repairs will exceed the cars value and now this has turned into the car being totaled. 

Sasha also gets a call from a company stating they are the repair shop confirming their appointment.  She says, actually I no longer need the appointment, please cancel it.  A few days later she gets a call confirming her rental car pickup time.  What rental, I never requested one?  Then Sasha calls the local repair shop to confirm the appointment was actually canceled; it was not.  They said the call center that does some scheduling for them doesn’t have accurate integration of their schedule so they run into this issue often.  So, appointment is finally canceled, rental car is canceled (who ordered it in the first place?) and now Sasha is just dealing with her insurance contact again.

From a customer’s side, this was very frustrating having to make several calls, taking up time and energy to straighten out something that wasn’t her doing.  From the companies side this is a whole other mess.  The car rental company set aside a car for a client that never needed it, making it unavailable for another customer.  The repair shop had a canceled appointment scheduled on their books for several days longer than needed, making it unavailable to be used for another customer.  All of these companies have a loss in potential business and are paying out expenses to double back and fix things that could have been avoided if it wasn’t sourced out.

If companies took the time to read their customer’s reviews, they will very quickly see the areas that are becoming road blocks to customers returning.  Lack of quality customer service is a very big complaint across many large companies.  When there is great customer service leading up to the sale, many times there is not great continued service afterwards, during the handling of issues, returns or warranties.  Just because you earned a sale once, doesn’t mean that the next time you work with them they can be given less attention and care.  In fact you now are in the business of proving yourself as a consistent, reliable, customer valuing company every time you interact with that customer.

When it comes to outsourcing, we want to look at things that don’t directly connect with the client.  Anything that’s on the backend of running a business, we can find ways to simplify, cut costs, raise efficiency, and duplicate what is working well.  Anything that involves working with the client directly such as any form of communication, appointments, and Q&A still needs to have the personal touch and small business feel.  If there is more than one location, having the phone calls be routed directly to the location closest to the customer will give them better results when they have to go into that physical location. 

There is a popular show called “The Undercover Boss,” I’m sure many of you have heard of before.  Its main focus is on seeing the inner workings of a company at every level through the eyes of a new hire.  Now this usually leads to the undercover boss discovering employees and areas that are in trouble with how they are being ran.  This is great because it always leads to improvements being made at the top that then get implemented down the line to the company employees.  Now if we were to take this to the next step and have the boss go undercover as a customer, this would be a huge eye opener.  Experiencing the long hold times, the customer service rep who speaks poor English, the round about answers given when dealing with a faulty product, warranty or scheduling, and the lack of flexibility when working with each customer in their grey areas.  

If you don't know exactly what it feels like to buy from, complain to, or seek support from your own company, you have a big blind spot that is weakening the company.  Taking the necessary steps to navigate this unknown area will help strengthen your companies reputation and inadvertently your profitability.