Outsourcing: Amit Shankardass And Andrew Kokes Of Sitel (Part 5)

By guest author Tony Scott

Tony: There obviously has to be a match between the skill sets of the people, [not just a match] with the cost. Clearly, the people who provide technical support for inbound calls have to have specialized skills.

Amit: Absolutely, and this comes in in the way we go to market. You have to talk about the evolution, I liked the way you put it – the evolution of companies in adapting to this global sourcing model. Five, seven, or nine years ago, for labor arbitrage our value proposition was, “Hey, Mr. Client, we can help you lower your costs and sustain those lower costs.” Now we are pitching India, the Philippines, and Nicaragua, and the conversation really is, “Listen, Mr. Client. We can help you look at it not from the perspective of cost per transaction but from the perspective of the cost for a satisfied customer.” That process of changing from cost per transaction to cost per satisfied customer allows us to find the right places to deliver the right kind of work. It also allows us to drive our economic model, thus lowering the cost of service. We can now say, “Here’s your cost per subscriber, here’s your cost per consumer, and here is your cost for a satisfied customer. Or, your price booked for a satisfied customer.”

Tony: To make use of a very simple example that most people have had experience with, let’s say you go to an inbound call center for technical support for your wireless phone, computer, television, or whatever, and at the first level support has been outsourced, and the quality of that service is very low. Every call had to be elevated to second-level support back in the United States, which is already at a higher rate. Companies haven’t saved anything; in fact, they’ve lost in terms of customer satisfaction. So, when you discuss this “total cost per satisfied customer” part of the model with your clients, do you have the ability to deliver that on a global basis?

Amit: Absolutely. The interesting thing is when you look at it from that perspective, you are no longer looking at a single location. You are not looking at just India or the Philippines, you are looking at your portfolio of service provisioning locations. I want to use the analogy of an investment portfolio. This is your customer care portfolio, and you look at the portfolio of service locations, you look at the portfolio of customers, and you make the right match. It is not one size fits all. The industry has really matured in this way over the past few years.

Tony: You have multiple locations around the world, so you probably have different skill sets for these locations. Have you started to use the model where you might have, for example, first-level support in the Philippines, second-level support that is elevated to India, and third-level support back in the United States? Are there cases like that in your organization with your customers?

Andrew: Absolutely, particularly as you begin to look at some of those clients that have several hundred or several thousand agents; they operate across a network of different sites. I think one of our top three or four customers is a fairly significant PC OEM provider. I think there are four different P&Ls across their business, and there are definitely different strategies we apply for that customer based on their different lines of business. There are different business groups within that company that we are servicing, and there are everything from language considerations to unique skill set requirements based on the types of service we provide, for example, whether we are providing technical support for a particular language or whether we are providing more of a service or sales call. For different product lines there are a variety of strategies in play, but all for the same customer, the same global account.

For that customer, we have sites in Morocco supporting French sales calls; we have sites in India and in the Philippines providing English-language support. We’re providing more technical types of calls from India and more calls on the service or customer account side from the Philippines. There are a variety of unique specialty skills that are available around the world.  Companies like ours that have a broad, diversified portfolio of options can bring the best of these skills together.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Outsourcing: Amit Shankardass And Andrew Kokes Of Sitel
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