“…but if the customer cannot “feel good and well serviced ” through the CRS’s wording then the agent might just as well not be there at all”. I think this is a good point and one that frankly we struggle with here in Asia. We can hire, train and measure technically competent agents, agents who are good problem solvers and agents who are good communicators but how do we develop and measure empathy? Generalising a bit here but I think culturally, westerners want someone who “feels our pain” when we call with a problem. This empathy is a challenge to convey on the first call of the day much less the 50th and I think it’s something that we have to figure out here in India.

“…Consumers must be able to understand what they are being told and must enjoy the experience. Until now Asian providers have not mastered that obstacle”. My own opinion here is that there have been some bad hiring decisions on the part of some of the Indian providers who have not got the whole accent and communications skills thing sorted. I haven’t spoken to every agent we have on our international projects but all the ones I have speak excellent English and it is a key hiring criteria (our UK Directory Enquiry reps actually speak with a slight Scottish accent). I think this is a very soluble problem that a good call centre should not experience.

“consumers are finally realising that companies just can’t deliver champagne service for beer money” I’m not sure I’m completely convinced of this. At the point of sale, how many people buying a wireless router or a washing machine or DSL service are concerned with the quality of the technical support they will get compared with the other factors like price, brand and features? At least here in the tech space, I think like good capitalists we’ve raced to the bottom and got there, people have come to expect rubbish tech support. That’s too bad. Perhaps to support your point there is scope for manufacturers and retailers to fill that gap, I don’t know.

As a CRS ( Customer Relationship Specialist ) it has been my experience that people have little or no interest “who” provides their customer care or “where” that person is located as long as the “providing” CRS is clear, concise and an effective communicator.

I feel your comment that (” What springs to my mind are things like trust, confidence, consistency, fit, culture, synergy, harmony, all very squishy, intangible right-brained criteria. I believe that if both we and our customers are looking for these things in our business relationships, we’ll have many more successful, more profitable programs.”), is spot on.

However, all of these attributes can be present but if the customer cannot “feel good and well serviced ” through the CRS’s wording then the agent might just as well not be there at all. This type of service generates poor customer experiences and the resulting lost business cost escalations with them.

Outsourcing businesses would do well to realize that North Americans are for the most part accepting of various language accents nowadays. I feel that bridge was crossed a long time ago due to modern tele-communications. Whether customer service is delivered at cut rate labor costs or from foreign nations is, in my opinion, for the most part irrelevant to N.A. consumers. At least those thousands I have had the pleasure of interacting with.

Consumers must be able to understand what they are being told and must enjoy the experience. Until now Asian providers have not mastered that obstacle enough and I would suggest to you that this is the underlying cause of undeveloped business growth opportunities in England and North America for those outsourcers.

I must also differ with Mark’s position in so far consumers “are finally realizing that companies just can’t deliver champagne service for beer money”. I believe they realized that long ago. Outsourcing companies on the other hand….have not.

Thanks for reading my blog, I see you found it interesting. It’s a strange phenomenon, off-shoring call-centres: most people in the UK confess entirely to detesting the idea without considering the reasons why. Clearly, it’s a cheaper option, but that doesn’t always mean that the customer feels that they get a better deal, they feel like they are paying the same price and getting worse service.

I know that the price comparison doesn’t stack up, most major corporations are off-shoring one service or another, but like I said what is felt and what is reality aren’t necessarily the same thing. Value is a perception, after all, not a fact – otherwise, why on earth would someone pay millions for one painting?

I agree with your observations about competing on price. I too agree that there’s an imminent revolution in consumer behaviour. It’s taken a while but consumers are finally realising that companies just can’t deliver champagne service for beer money: read my post back in 2006 on The Individual Revolution.