January 29, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item It's Almost Always the Humans
January 29, 2011 at 12:43 pm
but there is no way customer service is not a core part of your business.
Before purchasing any expensive item .. such as a desktop computer, complete with monitor, keyboard and mouse .. I always use the web to locate the company customer service phone number, which I then call. I ask the individual answering where they are physically located, if not in the U.S.A .. where of course I am located then bingo .... no sale will look for another seller of the same equipment....
January 31, 2011 at 4:09 am
I do not mind which parts of a business are outsourced. The key item is if they perform the function that is needed, both for the business and the customer.
If a business function only performs for one of the two key players, then it is harming the business. Poor in-house customer service (or IT or Procurement, etc) can limit what the business does far more than a good job done by an outsourcer.
Original author: https://github.com/SQL-FineBuild/Common/wiki/ 1-click install and best practice configuration of SQL Server 2019, 2017 2016, 2014, 2012, 2008 R2, 2008 and 2005.
When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor they call me a communist - Archbishop Hélder Câmara
January 31, 2011 at 4:41 am
I ask the individual answering where they are physically located, if not in the U.S.A .. where of course I am
This sort of assumes that if CS is done in the country of purchase then everybody is employed by the vendor. Even in a small country like UK there are many outsourcers who run the CS function in the UK for UK businesses.
There are so many ways for an organisation to have CS staff - in-house staff working who care about service at a in-house location in the country of purchase, all the way through to external staff who don't know what service is working in an external location in a different country. That is 8 options and there are probably examples of each permutation of these 8 being used somewhere.
I get really good service from my bank's call centres, both of which are located in the UK (I use Co-op bank). I have also got good service in the UK from Microsoft CS staff located in India. I have had really poor service in the UK from Amazon (the accent sounded US but I did not ask where they were) and as a result have not used them for over 2 years.
For me they key item is if I get what I as a customer think is good service when I need to use customer service, not where it is located or who runs it. Of course, business should not assume that CS will work well automatically. Good CS needs planning and good management, and although the issues get harder if the service is overseas or outsourced they can all be overcome.
For me
Original author: https://github.com/SQL-FineBuild/Common/wiki/ 1-click install and best practice configuration of SQL Server 2019, 2017 2016, 2014, 2012, 2008 R2, 2008 and 2005.
When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor they call me a communist - Archbishop Hélder Câmara
January 31, 2011 at 5:32 am
IBM was outsourcing their customer service desk long before IT started the big outsource. There are several companies who outsourced their phone reps, both in and out of the country of origin. Where do you think inbound telemarketing firms get all their contracts from?
But outsourced work should be covered and guaranteed by the same privacy restrictions (legal or otherwise) that the main company has in place.
Some companies are so fanatical about the privacy issue, even janitorial services have to get background checks on its employees, and sign a contract about the whole privacy issue on the off chance they might accidentally see or overhear something. And that company could get fired if one of its employees "invited" a friend or family member to chat with while they were cleaning-something that happens more often than you might think.
I think the issue is the outsourcing company impressing on employees the seriousness of this issue. Too many employees sign the NDA thinking "Yeah, okay. But I can still do X, Y, and Z." without realizing that it's X, Y, and Z that will cause the breach. I've read a lot of stories lately where it was a friend / family member who was invited to assist with projects, people who'd never signed an NDA, that caused the theft or data leak.
January 31, 2011 at 6:56 am
Although I agree wholeheartedly with the point of your editorial, it beckons the question that seems to be more and more prevalent the deeper we get into a technology driven society. Who is the customer?
Recently you wrote about a problem with the Cloud and pointed out that you are just one person and if the Cloud goes down and its a choice between you, one of a million or more single-user customers, and some multi-million dollar corporation - be assured you will be very low on the priority list.
I am still engaged in a massive "customer service" battle with McAfee where they continue to promise me "world class support" when what I am really getting is a consistent brush off. The issue is their exclusion list - no longer local to anyone's McAfee software - it is now controlled on their servers. I now have four older programs that I still love and use, which will not run because McAfee says they have Trojan Viruses and I have had to submit each EXE to be "approved" by McAfee. That was two months ago and I am still waiting. In short, its their ill-thought-out software design, and how important are my needs? Not very much. My only option is becoming more and more clear - dump McAfee.
Customer service should be the cornerstone of any business - but lets be honest - its not. Money is. And the more and more we entrust data to the web and remote servers, the less and less control we have, and we can be assured that no one individual will ever be as important as corporate customers.
Its a sad and sorry state we're in - individuals, humans, are now the lowest form of life. Corporations have long since superseded them. It almost makes you want to respect the hackers and well, criminals who at least, get some corporate attention. A lot more than any one individual. Yeah, thats "world-class" support.
January 31, 2011 at 7:19 am
I couldn't agree more with Steve's point. When push comes to shove in the business world, loyalty is everything and that's something you can't outsource.
The three biggest mistakes in life...thinking that power = freedom, sex = love, and data = information.
January 31, 2011 at 7:37 am
Regarding the issue of data breaches, I'm not much concerned about outsourcing customer service as I would be oursourcing the hosting of applications or databases. If a customer service rep is stealing information from accounts from he/she manages, then the scope of the theft is more limited, perhaps a few hundred individuals at most, and the chance that the theft will be noticed and traced back to the source is higher. However, if your database administrator is contracted from outside your company, or even worse when they are outside the legal jurisdiction of the US, then you are really flirting with disaster.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
February 8, 2011 at 2:07 pm
Eric M Russell (1/31/2011)
Regarding the issue of data breaches, I'm not much concerned about outsourcing customer service as I would be oursourcing the hosting of applications or databases.
This is wherein lies my primary concern. I don't care where the outsource is - even if they are just across the street. I don't much like people breaching data.
Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
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