Imagine this situation, which is such a reality for so many contact center executives:
Ten years ago you lobbied to move the company call center services to India. Promises of hiring ten service agents for the price of one in the US were too compelling to pass up. Management accepted your proposal, cut your budget in half, raised the SLAs, and put your job on the line.
After years of flying to Mumbai, learning Hindi, dealing with your customers’ concerns about service quality, and handling issues that were not even on the HR roadmap, you are once again at a crossroads. Once the previously unseen costs of operating a service center on the other side of the world were factored in, a large portion of the anticipated savings evaporated. These experiences and a more complete consideration of outsourcing value are driving a variety of resourcing opportunities, many of which are much closer to home.
While there are many resourcing options to choose from, it is now financially feasible, and also in the hearts of many, to bring these contact center positions back to the US. Before you propose this move, make certain that your pitch to management addresses the following key questions:
- What is the right mix of part-time and full-time resources? Most US call centers are fueled by people who are unable to work a full week; however, management needs to be on-site 24/7. Are your ratios in keeping with best practices here in the US? Part of your discussion should focus on the ability of US call centers to operate with a smaller management staff. The ratios used in India are not necessarily the same in the US.
- How many products will each call center employee be trained to support? New, on-demand guided process tools make it possible for agents to be trained to support ten or more products at a time. Leveraging these tools can sharply reduce training time, which is the most costly component of training new hires.
- Where should the call center be located? If you originally moved call center operations out of the country because of cost, you may be surprised at the competitive labor rates that can be sustained within the rural US market. The explosion of reliable bandwidth services has allowed call centers to be located almost anywhere. In some cases, call centers are completely virtual, where employees are simply routed calls when they log on to the system. Another key factor is the rise of college education. In rural areas, many college graduates decide not to relocate to find employment. As a result, there are many highly skilled and motivated people that are underemployed in Northern Wisconsin, Idaho, Nevada, Kansas, Maine, and nearly every other state.
- What are your infrastructure needs? Your call center must have appropriate bandwidth, high availability power, and a web browser on every desk. There should not be a need for any infrastructure beyond these three essentials. There are excellent options to leverage cloud-based applications and systems to support your entire call center operation. It’s time to make the move the Cloud.
- Are you “closing the loop”? There are a host of tools available to help provide real-time management of nearly every call center metric. There are methods available to help management zero-in on key aspects of service center operations, such as labor utilization, dial counts, and costs, as well as many other focused metrics that can help drive efficiency, reduce costs, and boost customer experiences.
- How do you justify a higher cost per hour for US service center employees?
- Call time will be reduced because communication is crisper
- Problem ticket counts per month will be reduced
- Customer satisfaction will improve
What’s the big picture? We’re talking about your customer relationships, your future sales, your brand, your reputation and the very face and voice of your business. This isn’t just a function where you wring out all costs at the expense of your most important asset: your customers. Consider how your contact center functions in terms of your broader customer strategy.
Starting a new resourcing conversation
Today, getting the most out of call center operations isn’t just about finding the lowest labor rate per hour. Times have changed. The most cost-effective option that brings the most value to the business involves the right mix of talent, technology, and efficiency, a combination that is often best achieved closer to home. There is untapped talent in rural areas of the US market that have highly-educated residents. Innovative call center technologies such as guided processes can reduce costly training times, and detailed metrics can help improve operating efficiencies while allowing for smaller management staffs. Together, these factors can help create a compelling case to demonstrate the value of bringing call center operations back to the US.
