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The Hidden Cost of Outsourcing

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the good-customer-service-trumps-all dept.

Alien54 writes to tell us CNNMoney is reporting that outsourcing may not be as big of a bargain as some might think. From the article: "With consumers enjoying more choice than ever before, evidence is growing that great service is essential for long-term customer retention. To cite just one example, a recent survey of pension policyholders in the United Kingdom found that 75 percent would leave their current provider if they experienced bad customer service."

2 of 275 comments (clear)

  1. Price isn't always important... by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Interesting
    "...when people switch providers, they will switch to the lowest-cost (or greatest price-feature) provider, not the one with the best quality of service."

    Often this is not the case. As a part-time marketeer, I can tell you that often what I do to lure customers away from my competition is:
    1) "educate" my target segment to expect a higher level of service (change their expectations)
    2) tell my competitor's customers that my competitor does not offer that higher level of service (given the new expectations, make them feel unhappy with their current provider)
    3) make damn sure my own company offers the higher level of service when my competitor's now-unhappy customers go looking
    4) don't compete on price; higher service can demand equal or higher price
    5) repeat as necessary

    Believe me - I'm not the only out there doing this either.

  2. Just a thought by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Okay first the disclaimer:
    I'm currently working as a Customer Support in a local company in Malaysia where we help our client's client (mostly from the US and UK) troubleshooting their generic computing problems over the telephone.

    Anyway, I've been working for a almost a year now and from what I've seen, the company I worked for has been recruting really skillful/talented people (most of them have CS degrees from Australia) to do the support.

    However as you may know, most of these people speaks really poor, non-standard English. To make the matter worse, most of them (including me) have problems with our clients' American/English accent. Personally I'm sad that I've had clients that hanged up on me because they couldn't understand me in some occasions.

    Okay so now, I would like some opinions from my fellow /.ers on this (maybe I should be submitting this to Ask /.) Is the quality of the outsourced job really terrible?