Off-shoring and the Invasion of the Computer Puppets
Posted 07/09/08 at 08:25:30 AM | by Chris Moody
It turns out that off-shoring tech support and customer service might not be such a great deal for companies after all. A paper titled, “Does Offshoring Impact Customer Satisfaction?” posted on ssrn.com for feedback, touches on the subject. There is plenty of evidence that off-shoring saves companies money on their bottom dollar, but what hasn’t been looked at until now is how it affects customer satisfaction and loyalty. What is surprising is not that the papers over all conclusions that in customer service off-shoring is bad but that back office functions like tech support can be a good thing for customer perception. I find that hard to believe from a tech’s aspect.
If you’re the tech Guru for your circle of friends and family you know that they all cringe at the thought of calling tech support. They will relate horror stories of speaking to someone claiming to be named “Bob”, who is reading text from a computer screen in a hard to understand, thick accent. This is why they call you with their technical woes. The paper however suggests that this alone isn’t what causes customer dissatisfaction, but rather the perceived lack of expertise.
I like to call these people reading from computer screens “Computer Puppets”. You say something, they hit a few keys and start reading a response. This is an attempt by companies to improve and homogenize their interaction with customers. Customers on the other hand find it frustrating. They want someone with quick concise answers to their questions. It’s like when you email a company and get boilerplate answers that someone doesn’t even take the time to personalize. Usually they go right around your question, give you a technically correct but completely useless answer. Why bother writing in the first place? People feel the same way about calling someone that is reading the same sort of boilerplate answers.
I’ve been hit up by several vendors pitching HP products based on that technical support (for the business side anyway) is based in the US. It can be a compelling argument. Most of the places I’ve worked for had been Dell shops, but the outsourced support argument held a lot of water. They became even more apparent when users wouldn’t call the manufacturer for support because they couldn’t understand their people and they had no faith that they knew what they were doing. Dell has gone from Golden Boy of computing to a more mediocre standing with techs, due in no small part to off-shoring part of their tech support. It created an image problem.
I don’t think that a paper needed to be written for companies to understand that users want competent help that they can understand. They just need to listen more to what their customers are telling them, but to do that they need to be able to talk to the company directly in the first place. How do you feel about off-shoring? Sound off below!
(Image Credit: flicker.com sheldonschwartz)
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Off Shore Tech Support
Submitted by mikeart03a on Thu, 2008-07-10 03:32
I'm gonna chime in here about off shore tech support. Personally, I think it's kinda hogwash to have some (heavily underpaid) guy that you can barely understand answer calls from a pre-written dialogue because his own english is functioning at a gradeschooler's level. I can't remember the last time I phoned my ISP about a service outage to be read the usual monotonous 'please check all connections, reset modem/router, etc.' when I already told him that I've done it twice to check and that the service light on my DSL modem is still out. I usually have to harass them to be transferred to 2nd level (local) 4 or 5 times.
- mike_art03a
IT Technician
Gov't of Canada
I don't care about accents
Submitted by horzo on Wed, 2008-07-09 11:42
I don't care about accents or the nationality of the techs - it's all
about competence. You can't take people off the street, give them a
couple hours worth of phone training, hand them a catalog of common
fixes, and call them tech support reps. "Customer service" would be a more accurate description.With the big hardware vendors, you don't usually run into actual qualified technicians until you convince the poor tool who answers the phone to transfer you to 2nd-level support. Companies assume, and possibly they have a point, that 90% of the calls they get are from totally ignorant consumers with trivial questions that would be a waste of time for real techs.
Sadly, it makes perfect sense to hire low-paid underqualified types to weed out the silly calls.
Standard Text...
Submitted by jwalch.hawk on Wed, 2008-07-09 09:59
Standard text responses (trade term for what you're referring to in that article) are just terrible for customer relations in general and *really* have no place in technical support. Not trying to be a fanboy, but the way you guys write the "Ask the Doctor" column is very close to what *I* would want in an e-mail from any tech support. I understand the purpose of those standardized responses; they are supposed to make it so that each customer gets the same experience every time. The thing is, that's not the way it should be. It's kind of like going out to eat (I promise this analogy will make sense). If I get really good service and great food at a place 90% of the time, I'm going to keep coming back even if I get burned with bad food and bad service 10% of the time. If there's another place that's just ho-hum 100% of the time, chances are I'll risk going to the first place rather than settling for the second. Also, the standard texts give the customer the impression that the company doesn't trust its own techs to their own devices - a MAJOR turn-off there.
Submitted by CadonMado on Wed, 2008-07-09 07:28
I'm Sorry but seeing as how I work on a "Service Desk" based in the US. I abhor the thought of losing my job to someone over seas claiming his name is Jeff.
On the flip side I see why it is a tempting avenue for companies that want to save mega bucks on Tech support.
That in mind, I really wish large companies (of all makes and models) would take the time to listen to their "user groups" or "target audiences" when it comes to something like this. It seems too often that companies are more worried about making the Stock holder happy than the end customer. I see that as a catch 22 so to speak, in that it would stand to reason that if the EC is happy then the Stock Holder would be happy as a happy EC tells friends and creates more business. More Business makes Stock Holders Happy.
Am I just way off base.
- Cadon Mado
Submitted by teh1583 on Wed, 2008-07-09 06:48
Today Many companies are beginning to realize just how big
of an impact "off shoring" tech support has had. As far as Dell is
concerned, The Business level, or Premium Support as it is now called, is all
US based tech support that touts industry certified technicians that DO NOT use
scripts. In my opinion, if you can get it, definitely side with the Premium
Support group over the "offshore" option. Hopefully Dell, HP, and
other companies will begin bringing a more regionalized tech support model to the
table. It appears that Dell has already started that proces by opening up a few
more call centers in the US in lower cost regions, surprising those customers
who get the "normal" tech support rep.
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