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Off-shoring? On-shoring? Right-shoring™

Posted on : May 16th, 2011

It wasn’t long ago that companies were scrambling to move their contact centers off shore. The lure of reduced costs attracted, and continues to attract, many organizations who want to trim what is often their largest expense.

But that’s changed. What these companies found was that despite the lower agent cost-per-hour, the additional costs of management, and training, and supervision soon outpaced any benefits of a favorable market exchange rate or lower labor cost. Also, customers with complex questions or issues often found it annoying to have to communicate their situation with someone they found difficult to understand. The result was that high value customers simply abandoned the company in favor of competition that advertised call center agents “right here at home.” The old adage, “You get what you pay for” comes to mind.

Recently, though, the pendulum is swinging back. Phrases like, “service as a differentiator,” combined with the ease by which customers can share their experience through social media, have made companies much more wary of risking a negative experience. They know that customers who have a negative experience on the phone will not only take their business elsewhere, but they will encourage their 200 Facebook friends, and their 1,200 followers on Twitter to do the same. As a result, more and
more companies opting to have all their calls answered by service agents either in the same country, or one nearby (such as Canada, and the United States). What was once a rush to save money on agent costs, has shifted into an investment in improved service for all calls.

But what about those calls that were fine going offshore? The address update calls, or calls to report a payment on an overdue bill? Do these relatively simple calls also need to be onshore as well? Certainly not all calls are created equal.

We advise our clients that off-shoring is a tool like any other tool within the contact center, and can provide savings if off-shoring is used appropriately. In today’s sophisticated environment, low value/ low risk/low complexity calls can easily be routed to an off-shore agent, while the on-shore agents can remain available to handle the higher risk, higher complexity, and higher value calls.

The question isn’t whether to send your calls off-shore, or to bring them back on-shore. The question is what calls should go off-shore and what calls should be handled locally. We like to call it Right-Shoring™. It’s about finding that perfect mix of reduced costs, and improved customer experience, and this is one of the many value adds we provide to our clients.

For more information on how you can leverage the power of right-shoring through Simpro’s network of international and domestic contact centers, give us a call or click here :info@simprosolutions.com