How To Ensure Great Telesolutions

Off-Shoring Telesolutions Call Centers: A Huge Cost Savings or One of the Biggest Expenses Your Company Will Ever Face

Introduction
With today’s uncertain Telesolutions economic forecast and the constant pressure to reduce costs, many companies have outsourced their call center operations to off-shore or “near-shore” facilities. By off-shoring, these companies can save money and find a highly educated – and frequently, a highly technology-skilled – workforce. However, cultural differences, heavy accents, inadequate training and insufficient hiring practices can lead to poor customer satisfaction experiences, causing a loss of customer loyalty and ultimately, a loss in sales.

This best-practices article focuses on the issues faced by telesolutions companies who currently have international call center operations or are considering it in the near future – as well as what can be done to address those issues. It discusses how to improve the customer experience and thus customer loyalty through better hiring, management and especially, training practices.

When it comes to customer service, U.S.-based customers expect a certain level of customer experience. When they make a call to handle a denied credit card, dispute a discrepancy on a bill, solve a computer problem or make a change to an already-booked airline ticket, they are often frustrated before they even pick up the phone. So when they reach a customer service representative with an indecipherable accent who can’t even solve their problem — requiring them to speak to a supervisor or worse, call back a second, third or fourth time — these customers are justifiably angry at the entire corporation. And the next time they have to make a purchasing decision, it’s likely they won’t choose you.

If your organization has sent your telesolutions call centers abroad — or plan on doing so to contain costs — how can you ensure your call center operations maintain a level of service consistent with your brand and message?

Why Some International Call Centers Have Failed
To begin, it helps to understand why some off-shore call centers have failed. The most obvious issue is customer service reps with heavy accents and hard-to-understand names. Through accent neutralization training and by issuing easier-to-understand monikers, those challenges can be readily solved. Also, we’ve recently found that that customers are more forgiving of foreign accents when a rep is confident, competent and able to manage requests. Simply put, there is more to a successful Telesolutions international call center than just focusing on accents.

Frieda Barry, President and Chairman of the Board at the Call Center Industry Advisory Council (CIAC) concurs. “We’ve all heard complaints and remarks about the accents of offshore agents. Interestingly, it’s been our observation at the CIAC that when the agent creates a connection with a customer, the accent is irrelevant — it’s a total non-issue. Regardless of where they’re located in the world, most agents are smart and if properly trained and empowered, they can deliver a successful customer experience.”

The deeper challenge is cultural. Many of the behaviors that Americans intuitively expect from a customer service representative are literally and figuratively foreign to international reps. U.S.-based customers expect a rep to offer empathy, ask thoughtful questions, use strong word choices and take control of the situation. However, in other countries, some of those traits are deemed offensive, which means that you can’t expect an overseas rep to instinctively employ them.

In some countries, especially those in the Asia and Pacific regions, reps innately lean more towards sympathy, rather than empathy. While American customers want their situation to be acknowledged, they don’t want sympathy or an “I’m so sorry”, which is overused and can seem insincere. Instead, customers want to feel confident that the customer service rep understands their issues and is able to solve it. By giving your customer service reps different word choices and a roadmap of ways to move the conversation forward, they can continue to feel like they are providing sincere responses in a way that resonates with your customer base.

Barry added, “Customers want to interact with agents in a way that is consistent with their values and expectations — they want an interaction that goes according to what’s normal for them and having to deviate from their norm can be difficult and cause them to perceive quality issues. This means agents need to be able to empathize with customers and respond in a culture-appropriate manner. This is difficult to do if the agents don’t understand the customer’s culture and perspective; they may have the best of intentions but come across to the customer as inappropriate and disconnected — creating an instant negativity.”

At one International Telesolutions call center, a customer service rep was ending each call with “I love you.” When asked why he chose those words, he said that he wanted to show the customer that he cared — not realizing the inappropriateness of the phrase in a business setting. By showing this rep different ways to respond, he was able to provide empathetic service without shocking or putting-off the customers.

Or, you might find that the rep isn’t asking enough questions. Some cultures believe that asking questions is intrusive, which can lead to critical aspects of the customer’s problem remaining unsolved.

Also, the foreign representative might not understand why the caller has the problem in the first place. For example, in India, until recently only the poor bought items on credit — so representatives were baffled why an affluent American would be calling about a credit card issue in the first place. If reps lack a general understanding of the customer’s issue at hand, they are less likely to be able to solve it effectively.

“Near-Shoring” Alleviates Cultural and Telesolutions Management Hurdles
Some organizations have bridged the cultural divide by “near-shoring” — rather than off-shoring — call centers in locations such as Guatemala, Mexico and Canada. In general, countries that are in or closer to North America tend to be culturally more similar to us than those in Asia and the Pacific Rim, which means there is less of a cultural leap to overcome when training. Other advantages of “near-shoring” are shorter travel distances and smaller time zone differences, making it easier for U.S.-based executives to oversee and manage those call centers on a daily basis.