HP sets up India call center

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Support should not be outsourced

As long as the support people are knowledgeable and understandable, I do not care if they are in the US or elsewhere. If an accent hurts the communication, then there is an issue, but that can happen with someone in the US almost as often as someone in India.

The big issue should be that HP has stated that their US support is handled by "partner companies". If these partners are not fully integrated with HP, then they will not produce the feedback necessary to improve the products. I did support for Compaq (now part of HP) while working for another company. It was extremely difficult for the support center to pass information back to Compaq. We were penalized for even contacting them.

Support is the main face most companies show their customers. Selling is handled by retailers or the web site. Support is where companies learn how to improve their products. What questions are being asked? Do we need to improve the product? Would better documentation help? Which documentation needs to be improved? Maybe we should simplify the controls? But if you do not know every question, there is no feedback.

Many companies spend money on "market research". This usually involves cold-calling possible customers to ask what they want. But you have this business function that has contact with actual customers every day. Simply by calling, these customers have volunteered to provide feedback. Call centers could easily add questions like "What is the feature you like least about this product?" Or even "Any Suggestions?" Imagine using your entire customer base as a brain-storming group for new products.

The priority for outsourced call centers is usually how many calls are processed. Not how much information can be gained. Not whether the problem was solved. Just how many calls were taken, and the easiest way to take many calls is to reduce the time spent per call.
- I solved every customer's issue; I was typically in trouble because my volume was low because I would take the time to solve every issue. My customers never called back for the same issue, but I received very low scores. (This is for front-line work. I spent most of my support career as third level support where fixing the issue was more important than keeping the time down. But a customer had to yell or call many times to be referred to third level support. And the reason third-level support needed to fix the issues was so that we would not be penalized for contacting Compaq.)

Support is one of the basic functions of any company. It is an area that can have incredible impact on how a company operates and improves. Companies should outsource management before outsourcing support. (Managers usually do not interact with customers.) Support is the face of the company, and needs to be filled by people who are loyal to the company.

Posted by: solprovider   Posted on: 02/11/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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