Why Outsourcing Customer Support Sucks?

I’ve wrote a word or two on outsourcing customer support in my previous entry. Since I’ve been involved in that type of business (call centers, to be precise), I’ve got some strong feelings on the issue.

To me, it boils down to one sentence:

“Your customer is 1) why you exist and 2) what makes your existence possible.”

Your customer is your asset. The question is – do you really believe passing your customer over to some other company is the best way to go?

That’s part of the story.

Let’s say, that for some unknown reason, you decide to get rid of that “problem” (i.e. supporting your customer), and call center or contact center XYZ is now doing customer service for you.

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Practice:
You get a bunch of poorly payed students with < 2 years remaining work span, zero experience and no idea about who your customer is and why he or she is… important? Why should he/she be important in the first place? “Hey, I’m just working here!” And it’s a tough job. They ask you to “paint grass” on a daily basis, they shift you from one location to the other, because there’s “yet another >>inspection<<.”

Hopefully, standards have changed during the years and you could expect more. To me, however, the philosophy is just not right.

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