It is easy to identify bad telephone branding and what not to do when branding the telecommunication channel by simply assessing the many irritating situations encountered daily while using the phone. These unpleasant occurrences include the phone ringing with no answer, calls delivered into “voicemail jail” with no way out, lines ringing busy resulting in repeated call attempts, phones answered by hurried, agitated or rude receptionists, an abrupt placement on hold for what seems like an eternity, a caller relegated to dead silence while holding with no music or message, noisy cell phone connections and reaching an agent that the caller cannot understand, sometimes because the call is outsourced overseas.
Unfortunately, these experiences are commonplace. Businesses often fail to remember that branding encompasses every impression they make on their customers. Leaving phone answering and the call center component out of the branding equation is a crazy thing to do. The focus of this article is on the last of these irritants, the outsourced offshore call center.
It is important to understand that there are applications where offshore and near-shore outsourcing work well, but it is easy to conclude based off of experience and intuition that they are few and far between. What is the typical reason that companies outsource their call center needs offshore? The obvious answer is the right answer: cost savings.
While overseas outsourcing is often appropriate, it is repeatedly fraught with problems that greatly outweigh the simple goal of getting the work done for the lowest price. The adage is well known: “You get what you pay for.” Everyone has had the experience of talking to an agent overseas that can’t be understood and who doesn’t understand the caller…not only is the language barrier a factor, but the cultural barrier is in play as well.
Here are eight reasons why it is typically a bad idea to outsource call center needs to a call center located overseas.
1. Language Barrier
It’s common to hear complaints about communication failures when discussing conversations with agents in overseas call centers. Why is that? It’s simple; callers do not want to talk to people who can’t understand them and they do not want to talk to people they can’t understand.
2. Cultural Barrier
The inescapable truth is that the cultures of the United States, India and the Philippines differ in many ways. Often, an overseas agent won’t understand American colloquialisms and doesn’t have any comprehension of holidays and customs in the United States, just as most Americans have no comprehension of theirs.
3. Privacy Issues
Not many people are comfortable with their social security number, financial and medical information floating around in a foreign country, and for good reason. In today’s world of heightened security requirements, what’s more important, cheap labor or exposure to security issues? It is vital to carefully consider when sending sensitive customer information offshore. While privacy laws are relatively new in the United States, they are almost nonexistent in many foreign countries. FBN
To read the complete article, Eight Reasons Why USA Call Center Work should not be Outsourced Overseas, please see www.sound-tele.com/blog/8-reasons-usa-call-center-work-outsourced-overseas-2.
Michael LaBaw is president and founder of Sound Telecom, a leading 27-year-old call center outsourcer and is a frequent contributor to the Sound Telecom Blog, www.sound-tele.com/blog/, which is designed to impart useful business information to businesses and entrepreneurs.
Sound Telecom is a leading nationwide provider of 24-hour Telephone Answering Services, Contact Center Solutions and Cloud-based Phone Systems professionally serving customers since 1986 with USA based agents. For more information, please visit www.sound-tele.com/.
