Friends,
Since many of you will be looking at outsourcing for the first time, I’d like to re-introduce you to a couple of cliches: “You get what you pay for,” and “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” I discovered both to be true in my first experience with outsourcing, which exposed a significant gap between U.S. expectations and Philippine call centers and led me to found a company to bridge that gap once and for all.
When I was first was assigned to augment a telemarketing group for a wireless networking company in San Jose, CA, I knew the Philippines to boast many well educated, English-speaking agents with sales experience. I had witnessed this first-hand when I would call for support from companies like five9, a hosted auto-dialer solution, and web.com, where our website is currently hosted.
I evaluated about 9 different companies, and I was amazed how inexpensive many of them were. The range in rates was $6 to $15 per hour; the range in results was much more obvious, especially at the lowest end of the pay scale.I ended up picking a company who charged me $9.50 per hour. In the beginning it was great: I started interviewing the agents and reviewing their resumes, which includes the agents’ pictures, ages, religions and other things unheard-of in the U.S.
I ended up picking 3 agents who had slight accents. During training, which I led, we had to reschedule many of the sessions when the agents arrived late or not at all — a pattern that was reinforced by managers who were slow to adjust their calendars to accommodate the time differential between offices. Once the training was completed, the campaign was launched and we started calling. Within a week, an agent left the company. I asked the manger why the agent left and was told, simply, the agent had probably gone to another company. Later I found that the agent was making an extremely low salary.
I had subsequent feedback sessions in which I would coach the agents on taking a different approach with the calls. There were some things they simply could not change; they were low-wage employees without the experience needed to articulate and think out of the box. A couple of years’ experience would have helped, but no employees with experience were in that particular pay range.
At the end of a frustrating month, I decided to look for another center. From the get-go I could spot a similar pattern, and I quickly decided the only way to find the right agents at the right price was to do it on my own.
At OAM, we have used my experiences to shape a company whose sole focus is creating the best outsourcing partner for clients. We have developed and streamlined every part of the process: finding the right agents, training, coaching, reporting, and simply delivering consistent results.
Thank you for your time and I hope to talk to you soon
Sincerely,
Ben Davidowitz