Monthly Archives: June 2017

Some companies just want to take your money. Other companies have customer service, but you end up talking to a robot on the phone for twenty minutes before reaching a human. The holistic customer experience is all about giving the customer an all around good experience and meeting all of their needs.

Although meeting all of a customer’s needs is critical, you need to solve their problems in a particular order. Customers who use phone companies complain that they have to wait a long time to talk to a customer service representative. Then, they have to talk to an automated machine that keeps asking questions and claims they didn’t understand the answer. Finally, they can talk to a rep in some foreign country with awkward social graces who accidentally gets disconnected from them on a regular basis.

My question is, is it worth it to give the customer a better experience than this cost-conscious nightmare? The answer is, if the customer is willing to pay for it.

Giving the customer a great experience from their first click to whenever they end their service should be the goal of any holistic customer service approach. And if the service is great, the service might never be terminated in the first place!

My Complaints About Outsourcing Companies
My complaint calling outsourcing companies is similar to the complaints of phone company customers.

1. It is difficult to reach the desired person (or a competent person) by phone
2. If you call, you talk to a bunch of unpolished idiots who accidentally hang up on you.
3. The company has no answering machine and doesn’t answer after hours
4. The website is poorly designed and doesn’t give a clear idea of what the company does, how they do it and who works for them.
5. It is hard to get straight answers out of people.
6. The salespeople will tell you anything to get a sale
7. The rep given is usually low quality and with poor communication skills.
8. Higher quality reps are always working on some other “more important” contract
9. Work is generally sloppy
10. Work is normally delivered long after the due date without an apology.
11. Bills always seem padded
12. It is hard to get touchups to programming or design work without badgering

How helpful are you actually? It just seems like a low-class bunch of incompetent scam artists to me. Not someone I would trust with a critical job. But, I might use them if they offered a dirt-cheap price! And the person doing the effort to get work done is the client, not the company. The company only applies effort while the salesperson is trying to sell. Once the sale is made, effort goes on minimal and you get put on the back burner.

To give a holistic outsourcing experience, you need to work on:
1. An easy line of communication to knowledgeable people — and keep the idiots OFF the phone permanently!
2. Easy access to choosing quality employees with good communication skills to work on assignements even if that means paying a lot more.
3. Meet deadlines every single time or someone gets fired.
4. Salespeople who fact-check before they make promises
5. Honest billing
6. Quick touchups to work and quick answers to questions.

In short — make my life easy and do good work. I will be willing to pay a lot more if you do. Others are wealthier than I am and might reward you in a huge way if you do.

It is interesting, that the big companies that deliver joy have become some of the biggest names in the world. Apple, Facebook, Youtube, Starbucks are companies that deliver not only products, but an experience. When I hire a company, I always get an experience, but not always a good one!

People have developed entire lifestyles around these four brands and we can’t live without them. What about your company? Can customers live without you? Do you create an experience for them? Maybe you should. How would you design a customer experience with your service?

If you have a large pool of labor, and can segment your labor pool so that people can choose their rep, that might make life easier. When we engage in outsourcing whether it is programming, web design, call center or data entry, we are working with a particular individual.

What if your company decided to be a cross between Apple and Facebook in how they did their web design? You could have a screen filled with small icons that you could see on an iPhone or desktop. You could browse through reps just like people do when looking for a date online. You could read their description and even interact with them online. Cool! You might need to interface with a manager or salesperson at some point. However, information about their skill level, experience, and levels of availability could be on the app to eliminate any misconceptions.

The idea is that all of your employees would have a little slack in their schedule so that customers could choose them. The more popular ones could be more expensive based on market conditions. You keep adjusting their price so they are available a certain percent of the time if you book in advance.

This way of running your outsourcing house will create an entire experience that nobody else is offering. The interaction is also a huge part of the experience. If you add in inviting them to your parties, newsletter and other socially connecting mediums, that is the icing on the cake. It is hard to create joy and an experience when you are half a world away, but guys like Steve Jobs will be able to find a way. Tap into his type of thinking and you might just win the game, and create a bit of joy in the universe.