Does outsourcing customer service represent an admission by a company that customer service is simply not a priority? That’s the question that raises its head today.

The case against the outsourced customer service department:

Delegating the customer/company relationship to an external firm is viewed by many as shirking the responsibility for good customer service. Cultural and language differences mean that customers find it more difficult - indeed, frustrating - to communicate their issues to the third party. Customers find it frustrating to have to repeat themselves, or find it often impossible to communicate a particular query or concept to someone who really doesn’t know or understand the nature of the business. Outsourced agents frequently have no real understanding of the products or services of their partners’ businesses. The very fact that the person on the other end of the telephone might well be relying completely on an inflexible script, with inadequate training and infrastructure to really deal with the needs of the caller. Not good.

The case for:

This seems to boil down solely to one of money. Outsourcing can be both less expensive to an organisation, and more tax efficient.

Customer Service - if you can call it that…

Outsourcing is a difficult call, particularly in customer service. Creating a seamless transition between an organisation and it’s outsourced partners is a non-trivial matter, and one which frequently does not meet expectations. Whilst I accept that financial concerns are a very real part of organisation planning, and a compelling reason to take the outsourcing route, I am seeing an ever-increasing negative reaction from the customers of those organisations.

Heck, I’m in that boat myself: though I know better, I often feel my heart sink when I find myself speaking to someone in a different continent, who struggles to understand my Fife twang; quite often, my query is of a technical nature and the script that the agent is using is neither flexible nor detailed enough to help me; invariably, I find that it’s the communication aspect that lets the whole process down. I feel deflated, saddened. No closer to a resolution of my plight, and the cost of a phone call (of probably twenty minutes or more) poorer…

I thus get the impression that the company doesn’t really care too much about me or my plight. If they did, I think, they’d have someone efficient, well-trained and a real member of their organisation at the other end of the phone. Someone who speaks my language well, understands the context and the level of my query, and has enough knowledge of their company to be able to find an answer even if a script is found wanting.

Sadly, this is not the norm. I won’t name names, but we’ve all encountered the kind of organisations I’m talking about: quick to take your money, reluctant to provide you with the necessary level of customer service. Quite often it appears that they just don’t care, and outsourcing is the cheapest option for them.

More and more, I forsee customers rejecting such organisations in favour of the kinds of companies whose approach is much more tuned to the needs of their customers. I know I am increasingly feeling this way, and if it’s true of me it will be true of many people.