Not only do they provide accent training for their call center employees, they also train them on cultural aspects. One of the speakers gave an example of a customer on the phone who said that the payment was late because the mail was late, and the mail was late because he lived in the boonies. So, for two days, several of the employees gathered around a conference table, looking at maps and books to figure out where the town of Boonies was located. :-)
They use a rollover system, where, if all the representatives in India are busy, the call is automatically rolled over to the Philippines. If all representatives in the Philippines are busy, the call is automatically rolled over to the US.
Even their phones are configured to have US phone numbers so that the client has easy access to them.
They’re also trying to sell more services to their clients by getting them to outsource more processes to them. One slide showed all the different departments in a typical company. And then, in the next click, the ones that could be outsourced are grayed out. What remains in-house are: marketing strategy, financial planning, and strategy and architecture of information systems. It doesn’t take much to start a new company since pretty much everything can be outsourced.
A snake charmer with both a cobra and a boa. more pics
Observations, insights, and lessons learned
I’m thinking of Porter’s Five Forces. If outsourcing lowers the cost of entry for new businesses in a specific industry, what would the effects be? Could it topple the existing monopoly or oligopoly, if any? Would it make competition fiercer, since each new entrant would find it more difficult to differentiate itself from the other new entrants? Will it make every product and every service a commodity so that the prices go down? And then what?
Adventure of the day
It was about a five-hour drive from Delhi to Agra in the afternoon. Our driver exhibited his great skill at avoiding busses, cars, bikes, rickshaws, pedestrians, cows, camels, and various small animals, even in the most crowded of streets. Thankfully there was a partition between the cockpit and the cabin of the bus; otherwise, he would have heard the gasps and exclamations from his passengers at every near-miss, which was very frequent. If there was an atheist in the group, there isn’t anymore. We were praying for our lives. When we finally arrived at our destination, we all gave a big sigh of relief.
Our hotel was a Hilton and so much better than our hotel in Delhi. This one is most definitely a five-star hotel.
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