Business leaders and CEOs always held the customer as the king. Peter Drucker, the ultimate guru of management, emphatically stated that ‘The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer’. Interestingly, Mahatama Gandhi, who espoused spiritual wealth over material wealth, is supposed to have stated that, “A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”
Corporations the world over spend billions of dollars in promoting/branding/marketing their product or service. They invest time and resources in understanding what the customer wants, what has been their experience of using the product or service that is on offer and how delighted they are in using it. Even in best of the companies, that is those companies that understand it and are conscious that this is important, the practice hardly inspires confidence.
Recently, I received a new debit card from a well-known private bank where I have been banking for the last one decade. In order to use it, I needed a new ATM PIN. I followed their instructions to get it at a local ATM, but no dice. So I called their call centre and was told to try the same process at a different ATM. Again, futile. After some more attempts and wasting precious time I was finally told by the call centre person to simply wait for a new set to be delivered to me in seven business days. After 10 days and several more rounds of back and forth mails, I received new password that worked. Believe me, this is a very successful private bank. And sad as it sounds, at the end of the day, instead of being upset at this delay, I was just happy to have actually received the PIN instead of a “Our courier found the door locked” SMS from the bank (without even a ‘We missed you!” chit from the courier company).
In another recent instance an airline that took my booking cancelled my Hyderabad to Chennai flight a mere four days before my departure date. Upon speaking with good old “John” at the call centre, who asked me questions from my grandmother’s maiden name to my pet dog’s birthdate, I was told that a refund will be posted to my account “within a few business days”. After three more weeks and a dozen more phone calls, the refund was finally posted. Again, much to my relief that at least the job was done.
One final quick example is of the time when I ordered shoes online and found them to be at least four sizes too short. I ran into all sorts of issues getting this sorted out – speaking with their call centres and every link on their supply chain from the suppliers to the manufacturers of the product – all to no avail. Finally, I wrote directly to the Founder CEO of the company explaining the pathetic experience I was having. And voila, within 24 hours, the issue was all sorted out.
Perhaps while businesses have taken to heart the first part of what Drucker stated about ‘Creating’ customers somehow somewhere they lost track of the ‘Keeping’ part.
The point I am trying to make is that if the customer is truly king, why is it that such a significant aspect of customer interface as customer service and interaction (some of my marketing colleagues call it ‘Moments of Truth”) is being completely outsourced to call centres that are only semi-prepared to deal with some thing as important as the customer? Having been in management education for the last 25 years, it still beats me.
Personally, I have nothing against outsourcing. But I have been taught that one should never outsource what is ‘critical and core’ to an organisation’s value creation. Doing that is like outsourcing interface time with the family. Would you? That’s what companies do, when they outsource customer interaction to call centres. Efficient? Yes. Effective? No. (I ask for the forgiveness of Indian IT majors for this blasphemy)
I am for ruthless outsourcing of non-core even if the cost is more than doing it within. The logic being, it is not just the internal cost vs purchase price, but the opportunity of the top management time (in choosing to spend time on non-core activity just because you can do it cheaper than purchasing), which in my view is the scarcest commodity in any organisation (of course, my colleagues from management accounting continue to teach that if the outside price is more than your internal variable cost, do not outsource, while I preach that even if your outside price is more than internal total cost, still outsource ‘non-core’). I guess I am digressing.
Well, what the companies in the above examples have done is to outsource customer interface and interaction as a necessary nuisance to be dealt with. Companies agonize over their NPS (Net Promoter Score) and pontificate over Moments of Truth, but at the end of the day, they hand it off as someone else’s problem. And, ultimately, as it gets passed through the ranks, it becomes the customer’s problem. Mostly call centers are the easiest way to displease customers.
Call centres also represent a huge missed opportunity in gaining insights into customer wants and needs. In a business world where ‘Content is King’, customer data is becoming more and more important. Outsourcing them? It’s like asking my EA to attend a parent-teachers day at my daughter’s school!