Offshoring backlash spreads

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Outsourcing not working for HP

In a recent series of customer service interactions with Hewlett-Packard (in what has now for me signified the last time in my life that I will ever buy a product from that company) I learned the pit-falls of outsourced customer support. I'm a Hindophile--someone who has often visited India for vacation. But when I have a technical problem with a piece of hardware, I expect qualified support from people who truly understand what I am dealing with. After three calls--the first resulting in them shipping me new software that didn't solve the problem; the second a new drive that did not solve it either--I was informed that the next step I must take to resolve my problem ("sir, this is a known problem") was to completely reinstall my Windows XP Operating system in order to get their drive to be recognized by my computer (a rather new Dell). I informed the gentleman in New Delhi that this was not an option. To his "But sir you MUST do this or we can not help you any further!" I replied, "You have no idea what it means to re-install Windows XP. Let me speak to a manager." The manager--after 10 minutes of hold time waiting for her to come to the line picked up saying "Sir if you do not do what he says we can not help you." I asked, "please give me someone in the US who I can call for support on this product" to be told "this product is only supported from this call center." So I was left speaking to people who had no idea what it means to "completely reinstall your Windows XP Operating System," and no other support channel to turn to. I was left no choice but to slam down the phone...frustrated, and a non-HP buyer for the rest of my days. HP has lost a good 40 more years of sales to a heavy technology buyer because they outsourced poorly.

Virtual Assistants offer companies a valuable resource to off-load customer service inquiries from call-centers, provide better service and reduce overall customer service costs. Virtual Assistants--aka Automated Service Agents(tm)--have proven to be able to handle a large percentage of customer service inquiries with no need for human intervention. Companies like Comcast (see "Ask Comcast" at Comcast.net) delivers rapid answers to their customers in a forum that mimics human-to-human interactions (with the greatest difference being the superior speed with which Ask Comcast replies). And Comcast is able to consistently deliver quality phone support with minimal hold times for customers who call for--largely because of their innovation in turning over a large piece of customer support to Ask Comcast.
So, before considering outsourcing to service reps who could have limited social connection--and potentially little real empathy--for customers, companies must evaluate the new breed of high-quality self-service tools like Ask Comcast, to take on the burden of customer support, leaving your human support personnel in your home market available to handle more thorny customer service cases.

The harsh reality is that hard-pressed managers can not manage to manage outsourced vendors efficiently. Software is getting better at doing service jobs in many cases better than outsourced staff. And well-designed self-support software provides support managers with higher degrees of visibility into performance that is unavailable via outsourced call centers (how can one listen to thousands of calls to find problem calls like my relationship-ending HP example above?).

Posted by: conversagent   Posted on: 07/07/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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