7 Falsehoods About Outsourcing Your Call Center

00:00Hi guys. Tom Laird here. You've heard me break down contact center technology advice from a. A weekly podcast with a focus on all things call center will cover it all from call center operations hiring culture technology and education we're here to give you actionable items to improve the quality of yours and your customers experience this is an evolving industry with creative minds and ambitious people like this guy not only is a passion call center operations but he's our host he's the CEO of Expivia interaction marketing group and the call call center geek himself, Tom Laird. What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of Advice from a Call Center Geek, the call center and contact center podcast, where we try to give you some actionable items to take back in your contact center, improve the overall quality, improve your agent experience, hopefully improve the customer experience as well.

01:19How's everybody doing? My name is Tom Laird. I'm the CEO of Expivia Interaction Marketing, Expivia is a 500, 600 seat contact center outsourcer located here in Northwestern and getting a little chilly here in December, Erie Pennsylvania. I hope everybody's doing well. We're winding 2020 down. I know for a lot of us, that's a kind of a sigh of relief, but But for this podcast, I wanted to talk about, and again, I don't like to get salesy the and rescue, you guys know I never sell anything about Expivia or really anything that really has to do with going outside the realm of trying to add value to you guys,. But I've had a couple of my client services managers come to me and said, hey, will you do a podcast on some of the kind of misnomers or the falsehoods about outsourcing. And I thought about it for a while.

02:13They've been coming to me for this. So I thought maybe this would be a good episode to do that, or a good time in the year to do that. We're kind of getting into 2021, you may be thinking about some, some things down the road for next year. But I wanted to give, and this is kind of came from, these are seven falsehoods about outsourcing outsourcing your contact center. So I guess these are kind of things that they come up with against time and time again when a client is either thinking about outsourcing or they're on a call with somebody who wanted more information. You know, and these kind of always kind of creep up. Now, you know, I'm going to do this, but we did do an episode on on 10 reasons why you should not out-source Your call center, right? So I'm trying to be fair and journeys life so to speak that you know you might look to outsource to improve lots of different things from from the quality of the of getting more analytic data to being able to save money so there's there's a lot of different reasons for it but let's talk about some of the seven ways that people kind of you know think that you shouldn't wear really you know while it's not for everyone these should not be really the reasons that you're choosing not to one, which is the most, the scariest one for some organization or a group of looking to outsource, and they think that they're going to troll, right? Now, losing control to a certain extent is kind of why you're outsourcing, right? Because there are certain things you don't want to be doing the day-to-day. You don't want to be monitoring every moment of every minute of every day, you don't want to be rlooking at data analytics and trying to organize that and do all that yourself.

04:21You don't want to do all that. That's why you're outsourcing and somebody's going to do that for you. But there's certain things that you don't lose control about. Number one is for any organization, any BPO, any outsourcer that is worth their screen of salt at all, you're going to get live dashboards. going to be able to log in, look at your stats, look at the agents, look at service level in real time, anywhere you want from your cell phone from from a desktop, right? So looking at stats and having you know, before, like in the 90s, people were concerned because there were some call centers out there that would quote unquote fudge the numbers, right? That would just lie about service level that would, you know, lie about maybe sales or conversion or things like that. So when you got those reports the next day, you really couldn't trust them. Well, that's all gone now. And if any call center ever does that, or you caught them, I mean, they should be fired instantly. But you know, with a lot of the organizations and a lot of BPOs, just like us, you're gonna get live dashboards, live data, be able to live monitor your agents, right?

05:25That's another kind of piece. Anytime you wanna monitor, you just literally double click on an agent and you can hear that customer and hear that agent and how they're interacting. The other, I think, piece of this with losing control is making sure that you have a really good relationship with that client services manager or whatever title that organization gives it. But basically the person that you're gonna talk to, that's a really important relationship. And it's the number one reason really why BPO. a BPO or outsourcing, or outsourcing relationships fail is a lack of communication. So we really pride ourself here. And I know a lot of other organizations pride themselves of really have a really good client service management. so that you feel like if you get a phone, if you make a phone call, it's going and if it's not within five to 10 minutes it's coming back at you, you're not gonna feel like you're left out in the cold.

06:252. Everyone always feels that the way you do it internally is better and that This is for me the number one misnomer of all time and I will take on any internal contact center and a champion challenger, challenger, and will beat you. And the reason that will beat you is because this is what we do all day every day and we're really good at it. That's not just Expivia. That's a lot of, and I'm just going to kind of say the USA American outsourcers, right? We monitor. We have analytics. We have QM software. We have analytics software with our QM. We have managers that have been doing this for decades who have been listening, monitoring, coaching. The type of agent we know, the culture that we want to hire. We know the culture, that's going to fit your organization. We're going to hire specific aid, specific aid for that.

07:20So the quality aspect that you think is going to go down. Now, if you go offshore or nearshore, I'm not going to tell you that the quality is going to go down, but there could be some voice things that you need to deal with. there's going to be a probably a little bit of a longer learning curve. customer service, it's our primary. So, you know, you really I believe if you choose the right organization, your quality should always go up. And if your quality has gone down, since you've outsourced, then you have the wrong, you have the wrong provider. All right. Number three is everyone always thinks that they need to change their CRM, or they need to change their data, or they need to kind of evolve and change what they do, so that it's, easier, or it's what the the call center does, and that's not true at all, right, right? So we always say we have to understand the F word, right? And that's flexibility. So whatever, and this is pretty much standard for all of the outsourcers, again, not just an Expivia thing.

08:47We can integrate with anything, right? So whether you're using Salesforce, Zendesk, Zoho, Whether you have your own proprietary system, whether you have a home-grown system, You don't have to worry about any of that. We can a integrate, with our phone system. Number two is if there's just a data need, if it's in the cloud obviously we can log into it, we can set VPNs, we can secure things up from a connection standpoint so that we can access if you're not cloud facing. So don't think you need to change all that. It's up to the call center outsourcer to be flexible and to move into a position and where we can utilize what you already have, right? And if we wanna make additions to it and we wanna make improvements to it, that's one thing, but you will never have to, or you should never have to change your data source, change what CRM you use, or have it not be able to be integrated.

09:46That's another thing, too. It costs them, but yeah, we can use that, but they don't integrate them. They should all be able to be integrated through an on-the-channel platform. All right, number four, we hear this all the time, is that my program's just too complex to outsource. Right, it's just, it's so hard and difficult. And everybody thinks that because, right,- they're just kind of narrow-minded and focused on their world, right? And they think their world is difficult. Where, you know, we have, and again, I'm just, as an example here, were worked you know, based on what a customer says, you know, different integrations, different VPN setups, trainings of six to eight weeks, right? So program is not that difficult, right? So if you think it is, I'm telling you right now, you need to go talk to a really good outsourcer because I guarantee we have seen it, that company has seen something that is much more difficult.

10:49We're used to those things, right? If you're a high end call center, You're used to working with more difficult, more complex clients with different types of data sources, different screens, different ways to train agents, lots of different ways that calls could come in. And how they're handled. So again, I'm sure that you think that, but trust me, it's not too complex for a real high end outsour. I can tell you right now that if, let me just take 10, if we took. 10 of our clients, at least eight of them when they came to us have said that we don't think we can outsource because our program is so complex, and we end up having those guys for years. So again, please don't think that. Don't let that be a hurdle for you to say, you know what, we cannot outsource. Number five, you know what, I heard outsourcing the turnover is so high, There's going to be just constant changes of agents to our program.

11:46We don't want to pay for all that training. Let me just tell you this number one is If you're choosing the right outsourcer, you know, you should have less less turnover than you have in your internal call center number two You should never ever pay for attrition training, right? So again You should have at, rleast 80 to 90 percent of your reps year year over year right with a 10 to 15 maybe 20 percent turnover on your program And second of all, you should Second. Second of all, you should never pay for attrition training. So that's the cool thing about outsourcing, right? You pay for that initial train to get you to whatever that 50, 60, 70, 80, 10, 100, whatever the number is, reps, right? You pay for that. And then if the call center has 100 and they lose five in a year, 10 in a year, they need And, again, it's an incentive to get the right people on your program, which is something that sometimes you don't have to do internally.

12:48Now, don't think that through and again, it's going to – it is choosing the right call center because are there contact centers with extremely high turnover? Yep. So you need to ask specific questions like what are the reps on my program being paid? What is your overall turnover? Those are important questions but you're going to get a really good feel for the organization and talking to the people on what that culture is. If it's like us, I think we're very heavy on the rep, right, making the rep experience fun. And I think any of the podcasts, I'm giving you kind of my full playbook, right? So culture's important, having fun is important, employee engagement's important, important. So find out what the gist of what makes that contact center go. And I think that'll tell a lot with your turnover, but it should not be higher than what you're having in your internal center.

13:41Number six is security, which is legitimate legitimate. Because you need to make sure that even if you have a customer service program that doesn't deal with any credit card or financial information, let's just say you only want password rhesets and people to be able to check on the status of a package, right? I would still say that the call center that you want to work with needs to be PCI compliant. And it goes more to the overall culture of the contact center than it does your specific need for the program. So no matter what, security should be at the upmost, especially now with at-home. Ask the call centers how they're doing security at home. What are some of the things that they've kind of changed or taken into account now that people are at home. But I have a will tell you, most USA contact centers from a security standpoint, it's like Fort Knox.

14:37it's making sure that you have badges on, making sure that there's biometric locks on the doors, clean desk policies, all the computers are locked down, you're probably definitely more safe with a PCI compliant BPO than you are internally. Because again, we can't an make one mistake. Now nobody can make a mistake, but we will lose the entire business if we make one mistake. So I think it's a fallacy to say that security at an outsourcing is lower and if you're again if you're choosing a high-end BPO it's not it's gonna be more than what you have internally. Alright number seven and this is something that is it's kind of going away but it's still out there. Especially if we have you know kind of a more old-school client that the cloud is not dependable right that you know that all these BPOs and so many. of us are now and it's the vast majority are in the cloud, whether it's an, in contact or a talk desk or five, nine or a Genesys or, you know, whatever we're using, um, it is, that it's not reliable, that we're down all the time. And, again.

15:42That's not true. I mean, right, The 99.999 it's crazy how much uptime we have and you know it's it's if you would have said this to me five or six years ago we were on a stable platform. yeah I think it probably was a concern with with uptime and making sure that you know But again, you guys know I'm on inContact, we are really never down ever I'm, here that I'm knocking on, but I think that, you know, that's going away, but we still hear it, especially, you know, with clients that have dealt with the old school of IS a systems and, you know, those type of PBX, the Mitels and those that world where, you know, it was secure and it was up and everything was a direct connection. But, you, again, again as long as your internet's good and our internet's great and if you you're a BPO, your internet is fully redundant, you know, two or three different sources coming in.

16:39It's all fiber, it's pretty solid. So again, that's kind of what I got, guys. I think it's important to think through what's real and what's not if you're looking to outsource. Don't live in your fears, talk to the organizations that you think are important or that are a good fit for what you would like to outsource. Drill down on a them, ask them a ton a send out an RFP, you should feel comfortable with the decision that you're making. Come up with as many questions and things as you possibly can. If you ever need any help with this and you wanna send something out and you want me to look at it, I'm more than happy to do that. Anything I can help you guys with making good decisions with your contact center is kind of what I would love to be able to do and hopefully some of the value that I add.

17:26So again, thank you guys very much. I had my birthday last Friday So I'm kind of just kind of getting in the groove, kind of took the day off as well, hung out with the fam. we did some bowling, probably shouldn't up with COVID, but my kids wanted to kind of hang out a little bit. So it was a good, it was a good time over the weekend, but I will talk to you guys later this week. We're going to have an announcement on something that is Expivia and our, kind of our new website and some of the things that we're going to have available for listeners here that here that we're doing on the website that I'm kind of excited with. again. I'll have a probably a mini, like a mini podcast, maybe four or five minutes. It's more of an announcement later this week. But I'm excited for you guys to kind of check out what we've done with the new website and hopefully, you know, we're hoping next week Thanks guys and I will talk to you soon.