By Russ Reynolds, Manager, North American Customer Support Center Operations, Xerox Services
 Leading organizational change is one of the more difficult challenges in the world of contact center leaders.
Contact center leaders are asked to deliver productivity and cost savings, improve the quality and services delivered to customers, maintain employee morale, minimize turnover, keep investments to a minimum, deal with pressure to move toward outsourcing and off-shoring, and overcome the perceptions of “call centers” that has evolved over time.
A recent article in Call Center Magazine included the following quote:
"We have been shunned, outsourced, ignored, hit repeatedly by budget cuts, downsized and forbidden to invest in necessary technology and training. Somehow, we've come up with the ways to deliver the best service possible despite constraints. And now, seemingly out of nowhere, we are being told that we are important."
There are two possible views of this real or imagined set of circumstances. One, is to acknowledge the “as is” and accept our condition as something imposed upon us and beyond our ability to influence or control. The other is to respond with a “wow, what a great opportunity to think creatively and accomplish something meaningful despite real or imagined constraints.”
There are a multitude of alternatives available to contact center leaders to help take advantage of seemingly conflicting objectives and industry trends. This paper will only scratch the surface of this area. Experiences will be shared that have helped some organizations achieve a sense of the balance and still deliver the multiple – and seemingly conflicting – objectives.
This discourse will focus on ways to achieve balanced results, while moving the contact center toward an improved perception by customers and by internal associates, while taking advantage of creative use of 3rd party providers within the context of the strategies of the organization.
One enabler is to realize that the contact center must gain credibility inside the enterprise. Credibility leads to partners such as sales and services executive leaders to view the contact center in a way that there is a desire to take advantage of the operation in many ways perhaps not considered previously. Many large enterprises have multiple contact points for a variety of services provided for customers. Some very creative people, not aware of what a contact center can offer, create “one-off” operations in support of customers at a local or large account level. As contact centers gain credibility, associates become aware of what can be accomplished, and at a lower cost, will take advantage of the opportunities. This benefits the enterprise, the customer, and the contact center. Sounds simple enough – but how do we gain this credibility?
This is where a seeming paradox arrives on the scene. Even as more work is taken on in the center, expectations remain to reduce cost and increase productivity. How can both be accomplished?
For lack of a better term, let’s look at “strategic in-sourcing.”
Strategic in-sourcing means placing the right work in the right place for the right reasons at the right time. For global companies this presents a significant opportunity. This is especially true in, but not limited to, North America. Taking advantage of combining operations in Canada (some call this “near-shoring”) presents substantial opportunities for cost reduction while maintaining quality; maintaining key work processes and customer contacts deemed best accomplished when in direct control of the enterprise; and taking advantage of the power of creative leadership available through multiple operating companies working together toward a common goal.
The significant cost reduction opportunity presented through this kind of collaboration within the enterprise enables the contact center to respond to requests to provide additional support activities for customers, and doing so while reducing overall operations costs. The result is even more credibility for the contact centers as it adds value and reduces costs. From there, the paradox of growth in work while reducing costs accelerates and credibility is continually gained. Credibility growth leads to more activity, which leads to more pressure to constrain the growing cost that is driven by adding workload. This cycle can become a continuous challenge.
What happens to contact centers next is sort of a “what have you done for me lately” reaction. There is an obvious limit to work that can be migrated toward a contact center support environment. Only for so long can support activities be added that can drive up costs – even though at a reduced rate of growth achieved by the “insourcing action” – at some point leaders will be asked for even more.
Now let’s look at “strategic outsourcing.”
By taking the time to analyze the work being accomplished within the contact center to determine fit, leaders can begin to take an even closer look at “value added work” that strategically is a better fit supported within the enterprise; and “transactional” or “administrative“ or other types type of work that a partner company could perform at an even lower cost, off-shore or not.
This is not to imply partner companies are not capable of performing critical enterprise tasks. For some companies, full outsourcing can be the absolute best decision. For others, a more selective or strategic approach is a better fit. It all begins with the strategy. How do we best support a broad array of customers or products? How do we support large or major customers, versus smaller or commodity type customer bases? What work do customers expect to be accomplished by their provider? What work requires more significant training investments and what work is more transactional or administrative, or requires less training investments and less ongoing maintenance?
Answering these questions in the context of the overall business strategy is a critical step in determining the right work for the right reason in the right place at the right time.
Developing a relationship with a 3rd party provider to perform “right work in the right place for the right reason” is a viable option. An enterprise now has far more flexibility to move multiple types of work to various support places within or outside the company. This also presents opportunities for a 3rd party provider to demonstrate their capabilities more clearly in alignment with the enterprise strategy for support. Potential to be an active partner in a disaster recovery plan is another benefit.
We have discussed increasing our credibility within the enterprise and with our customers; we have discussed utilizing the power of a multi-national enterprise to move work to a lower cost environment within the enterprise; and we have discussed engaging a 3rd party provider to assume work for us that is a good fit for us strategically.
Let’s look more closely now at these two elements 1) migrating work to “near shore” locations such as Canada, and 2) determining what work strategically fits with a 3rd party partnership model.
Moving work to Canada, whether within a global enterprise or as an independent operation, has many benefits.
These benefits are derived from four primary enablers:
- The exchange rate enables a significant positive financial benefit. Although the rate does fluctuate, during the recent years there has been a favorable situation versus the US dollar.
- Government incentives help offset start up costs. Some Canadian provinces offer job creation incentives that that also help form a partnership that is mutually beneficial to the company and the local community.
- The quality of the work force in Canada is excellent. This does not suggest that other countries including our own do not have a high quality work force; it does mean that even a “tie” in quality and an improvement in cost makes the decision to utilize this concept attractive.
- There is not real or perceived language or cultural barrier with customers in North America.
As mentioned earlier, even though there are significant benefits to migration of work to Canada, over time the new cost model becomes the “norm” and the “what have you done for me lately” question arises. This new norm is now a new opportunity to go even further. What of all the work we do fits strategically? What work could be accomplished with quality at an even lower cost?
At this point the engagement of a 3rd party provider that fits with our operations both philosophically and operationally makes sense. We search for a partner company who is willing to perform strategically aligned tasks at a lower cost; who will behave as a partner willing to work within the strategy and perform increasing levels of responsibilities as additional work is deemed appropriate for assignment to a 3rd party; and who is able to become a true virtual member of the operational team.
There are many potential partner operations that offer high quality and low cost opportunities, and who are willing to form a strategic partnership. Ways to locate them, evaluate their abilities to align, negotiate contracts, and many other details and considerations, is a topic for future discussions, and of course much has already been published on the topic of outsourcing.
Many enterprises have had success with strategic models for their contact centers that included some, or all of these concepts. The key to making the right choices lies in having clarity on the overall business area strategy and how contact center operations fit within that strategy; having contact center strategies that enable flexibility in choosing what kind of support best fits the customer, the company, and the cost benefits resulting from effectively balancing all the available options and choices. We have found that leading the change effort in a balanced manner taking advantage of a variety of available options presents the enterprise with its most flexible solutions.
Contact center leaders can be in control of their destiny, or choose to leave their destiny to others. We can view the contact center through the traditional lenses of others, as referenced in the magazine article comment referenced above; or we can change those lenses through creative actions aligned with the enterprise strategies. We can constantly search for opportunities like “in-sourcing”, “near shoring” “strategic outsourcing” and other creative approaches. We can accept how contact centers are viewed or lead the effort to change perceptions of the value of contact centers. We can choose to increase our credibility so others look at us as an enabler to their goal achievement. The alternative is to allow others to determine our future.
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