For Service Delivery Managers providing your service or product to customer’s expectations is a skill that needs constant tweeking. Add to that a constant pressure to reduce your operational costs and you may start investigating what can be outsourced. The high cost of answering calls in house, especially outside of normal business hours, means that outsourcing them to a trusted partner for financial reasons is a bit of a ‘no brainer’ and is something you should consider.
But a question many Service Delivery Managers ponder is “how painful is this going to be?”
Let’s try to calm your nerves:
“I’ll lose control of service levels” – No you won’t. Make sure your outsource partner provides these as standard and you will keep control:
- Accurate and timely Reporting and Management Information.
- Credible recruitment, training, coaching and quality procedures.
- Scheduled reviews of call scripts / call handling guides.
- Procedures that measure service quality and deliver continuous improvement.
“They’ll never be able to do it as good as we can” – Talk with your outsourcer about what standards you expect from the start and what to work towards. Remember most outsourcers spend all their time managing other people’s procedures and technology so they will have a good idea of what you are trying to achieve. As long as you can provide all the information that a call handler will need to manage the caller’s expectations, and agreed procedures so they can then act upon that information, you will be surprised how well they can represent your business. You might even end up duplicating your outsourcer’s processes within your own business.
“The handover will be a nightmare!” – With all the project management experience in the world there could be something you may have overlooked. A good outsourcer will look for teething problems in the early days and sort them out quickly. Talk with your outsourcer to share best practises and discuss any concerns you may have. Again, remember that they will have managed many migrations from customers systems and procedures to their own and should have lots of hands on experience to share with you. In short, they can probably help you more than you think.
By Steve West
Marketing & Business Development Manager
in my view clients know you are ringing an answering service because they are all hopeless. They dont understand the culture of a company, are like robots and quite frankly are not worth a penny. Prove me wrong but my experience is they are a disaster and could help ruin your business.
Martin,
Your comment is not the most positive we’ve ever received but I’ll try and answer your points and I’ll take the time to call you later this week.
I agree that outsourcing calls is not suitable for all businesses in all situations. It seems like you’ve had experience of using a telephone answering service and I wonder if you’ve gone into the relationship with unrealistic expectations? This could be as a result of poor salesmanship from your chosen supplier or (dare I suggest) insufficient prepurchase research on your part.
You suggest they “dont understand the culture of a company, are like robots..”, this is another strong point that could be viewed as a sweeping generalisation. If you are in a situation of outsourcing a small number of calls, say 50 to 200 a month, then it is to be expected that the people answering the calls must follow standard processes and their influencing culture will be that of the company who employs them rather than the client’s.
However for larger volumes of calls it is possible to introduce call answering staff to a client company’s products and culture to a much greater extent. If we are using a dedicated team on a project then it is vital that as part of the training that they have in depth training covering all parts of the client’s company.
Could a telephone answering service be a disaster and ruin your business? I suppose it could if it is not the correct solution to your business objective. But talk to a professional company, take the time to let them understand your needs, let them suggest a strategy to achieve your goals and then the relationship has a chance to be a great success.
Fortunately we have client relationships going back to 1999 that support our view that we are “not all hopeless” as you suggest.