Why do Australians say call centres in India and the Philippines give bad service?
Let’s rewind 10-15 years, when Aussies got their first taste of a cold call from an Indian call centre. It was an unpleasant interruption to your day that 99 times out of 100 wasn’t something you wanted and the agent on the other end of the line wasn’t trained very well. Even today many companies have Outsourced Customer Service that provides a below par experience.
But can you get great Customer Service and an above average Customer Experience from a Filipino (Manila) Outsourced Call Centre? The short answer is, yes.
It all comes down to five key ingredients:
1. Picking the right partner (Outsource provider)
2. Hiring the right people (and paying them decent wages)
3. Having good managers/team leaders on the ground
4. Australian staff regularly visiting the Manila office and being available for escalations when they are back in Oz
5. Training and Coaching (you will need to measure Customer Satisfaction to do this)
Let’s go through each:
Picking the right partner. OK guys this is when you have to get off your bum and go to Manila for a week and visit eight difference call centres (Outsourcers). You need to get a feel for the office, the working environment, the staff amenities and staff satisfaction. If you wouldn’t want to go there every day, you’ve got the wrong centre; keep looking.
Hiring the right people (and paying them decent wages)
Once you’ve picked your Outsourcing Partner, you need to start hiring staff. Now they will have a Human Resources department which will do most of the leg work. But what you need to do, is to be involved in the hiring process. Do the second round interviews either face-to-face (if you are in Manila) or on Skype/FaceTime. If you are Sydney based, you wouldn’t hire someone for your Perth office without meeting them, would you? So the same rule applies. Be sure to include the Manila based Team Leader in the interviews.
Outsourcers can be a bit cagey on what the Agents are actually being paid but you should try to get a range. If it’s less than say 20,000 pesos a month for a Customer Service Agent, then you might be getting poorer quality candidates. See what other benefits they offer eg. Health Insurance, subsidised lunch programme, nurse on site with sick bay, sleeping quarters, nice bathrooms, good air conditioning etc.
Having good managers/team leaders on the ground
Having a good Team Leader/s and (if justified), an Operations Manager are the key parts of the puzzle. You need someone leading the team whose judgement you trust. You don’t want them ringing you every time there is a decision to be made. You want to empower them to please your customers and represent your brand with service levels you are proud of. They are going to help you build the team there.
Australian staff regularly visiting the Manila office and assisting with escalations
It’s important especially when you are first building the team in Manila, to regularly visit the office there. I’d say every 6-8 weeks. The same person from Australia doesn’t necessarily need to go each time. In fact it’s better if you share it around. Send your Customer Experience Manager (Customer Service Manager) a couple of times and then send some of your Teams Leaders and some of you senior Customer Service Agents. It will probably be a novelty for them to travel overseas for work. Don’t just leave it to the Outsourcer to manage your team. The Outsourcer doesn’t know your business, processes and how you like to treat customers; only you do. Also you need people in Australia that the Manila Team Leader/s can call to ask questions, bounce ideas off, and to escalate particularly bad problem or very angry customers. Flights from Australia to Manila aren’t that expensive; neither are hotels. It’s well worth the investment.
These people who visit Manila will also become your escalation points when they are back home and a Manila Agent needs help with an issue.
Training and Coaching (you will need to measure Customer Satisfaction to do this)
I’m a big believer in this one. Not only do you need to train the Customer Service Agents in the first instance. You need to regularly coach them. The best way to do this is to survey each customer after each customer contact and ask them if they were happy with the service they received today. You need to then look into all the “NOs” and coach the agents who could have done a better job. This is a big topic so perhaps I will write a whole article on this one in future. Measuring Customer Satisfaction will also help you report to Management on the level of service being provided by each team. Ultimately this statistic can prove the Manila team is on par with your teams in Adelaide, Melbourne or Sydney.
Outsourcing can provide all sorts of benefits like extended Customer Service hours. You can go from being open Monday to Friday 9am-5pm AEST to being open 363 days a year 7am-11pm AEST or even longer. You will no longer fall behind on customer emails over weekends (and public holidays), nor will you be confronted with a backlog of correspondence each Monday. You can offer services like Live Chat and a phone number (1300 number) if you don’t already have them.
There are so many benefits of Outsourcing if it’s done right. And ultimately your customers will get better service and be more loyal to your brand as a result. Javan Group can help you with your Outsourcing journey and get you the right result. We have already done this successfully with many Australian companies. Please contact us to discuss how we can help.