Our new products are very technical in nature. My boss thinks that hiring an outsourced call center will only make our customer service terrible because we have to educate the agents extensively to handle inquiries. To make the matter worse, we only have a month to set up a customer support for these new products. Can someone help us?
Thank you..
Cassey
Business Manager from Newark
Hi Cassey
One way to justify if a contact center can handle a technical project is to verify currently if that same call center is handling technical projects. Solid client references in the technical support or help desk processes would be an ideal justification to determine if that contact center can handle technical support programs. The contact center can provide you a detailed gantt chart of the overlapping independent processes, so that all tasks that needs to be handled, from train the trainer sessions, to report customization, Voice integration, to recruitment/selection, until the actual deployment, is handled with key points of contact for each deliverable. Lastly, assuming that the contact center already has the pool of technical agents present, then an implementation period of 1 month is realistic. The selection and recruitment usually takes the longest to complete due to the required agent profile that the client is expecting due to the type of work needed to be accomplished.
Fred Chua
CEO - www.magellan-solutions.com
Hi:
I once worked at a software company where I spent almost two days trying to understand a new feature added to our system. The developer told we "Well it rolls out the servo modulator which interfaces with the circular polarization determiniator, which drives the muffler bearings." After two days of going through such discussions, I finally was able to figure out what the feature did FROM A BUSINESS perspective. It converted British pounds to US dollars - not dollars to pounds, but just pounds to dollars. That's all it did from the customer's perspective!
My point: In many organizations, the devlopers - and yes, even the SAs and BAs - are so fearfull that they all insist on being grounded in the safety of the implementation details. Why are they so fearfull? Well that is beyond what I am going to go into here. Lets just say that in software development, such fear is often cronic. Just be aware of the organizational pshycology, and be strong enough to rise above it.
How? One simple technique: When ever you create a process flow diagram or a data flow diagram, etc., always review the label of the process box and ask yourself "Is this something the customer is willing to pay for?" Example: "Reverse Servo the Hemulator into the X.14 database". No customer wants to pay for that. But "Calculate Sales Tax" is something that a retail establishment is willing to pay for.
Granted, at the very detailed level, you may have to get into the implementation, but always have a higher level understanding of essentially - from the customer's perspective - what does it does.
Tony
Hey Cassey! Your boss is probably cosidering the cost of having your own in house call centre as opposed to outsourcing the work. So if it is absolutely imperative that you outsource, then you can set up a three day forum with some of the outsourcing staff and go through what they must know. Do not give much detail as not even your clients need to know about what code was involved in building your software product. Just tell them the bare minimum and ensure they undastand the product completely. Then go back to the office and set up a desk or two to handle the more technical clients. After a while of monitoring what technical questions reach the desk, go back and train the outsourced staff on these repeatative questions. After a while you shall not require the inhouse support centre. All the best in all you may decide to pursue. Felix, Business analysis'
This is really a very smart question but I am quite confuse about answering you. As i am a fresher to this organization , so quite less knowledge about it.
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