Call Centre Information Site.
WEBSITE REVIEW:SAYNOTOOVERSEASCALLCENTRES.COM
Today, we review a website
called
www.saynotooverseascallcentres.com. The site is run by a
particularly helpful gentleman called Dave Goodwin. Dave does not
have a vested interest in the call centre industry in the UK or abroad.
He is simply a consumer who was so fed up with offshore call centres
that he decided to set up a website with the aim of both providing
information to consumers and to put pressure on companies to review
their offshoring strategy.
Offshore call centres have been a pet peeve of Dave's for some time but
was prompted into action by a discussion in a consumer newsgroup when he
realised the strength of opinion that agreed with his concerns. While
there are many of our readers who are involved directly or indirectly
with offshoring, we felt it important to interview Dave to see the
reaction of public opinion to his campaign. We also wanted to see
whether the call centre industry home or abroad had anything to learn.
If you listen to the media, you would think that the whole world is opposed to offshoring. If you listen to the offshore industry, you would think that this is a media-friendly story fuelled by politicians to score points. In this article, we aim to provide our readers with a view rarely heard in the call centre media; that of the consumer. Some may say that this is the view of one consumer so we decided to discuss the issue with Dave and provide the facts as he and his website readers see them.
When viewing the site, the first thing which hit me is that it lists the names of companies involved in offshoring their customer interactions. The intention is to differentiate the companies which do offshore to those which don't. It also has a lively forum where people discuss the issues and mention their issues with offshore centres. There are some arguments in favour of offshoring but these seem limited to the fact that offshoring should lower costs for their customers.
Dave says that the feedback to his site has been almost entirely positive. The negative reactions have not been from people favouring offshore centres but instead from people who are opposed to call centres regardless of their geographical location. Dave believes that too many overseas call centre operators seem to think that any potential issues (specific to their location) can be overcome by sitting their staff down in front of a couple of episodes of Eastenders. Those involved heavily in the call centre industry would say that this is an over-simplification of the immense effort which has gone in to addressing cultural issues but it is interesting to see how the general public view it.
Dave is also passionate about making companies more aware of the strength of public opinion on this issue. He says that if these companies see that they are losing customers because of their overseas call centres, then hopefully they will see that outsourcing overseas is potentially a false economy.
Some may argue that this is simply the viewpoint of one man but if this was the case, why would the key marketing message of a number of major companies be that their centres are UK based. It's inconceivable to think that companies like Natwest and 02 have not researched the issue enough to justify making the issue such a key message.
Dave admits that the other side of the coin is that it is entirely possible to provide the same level of customer service regardless of location but feels that this is not what is happening in practice. Some of our readers will argue that it is in fact feasible to provide better customer service offshore. The debate is not new. We at call-centres.com are simply providing a different insight from someone not inside the industry. There is clearly an issue among the general public relating to offshore call centres and some have such a strong opinion that they do not differentiate between the professional centres and the not so professional ones. It is unlikely that Dave's website will halt the growth in offshoring but in a world where consumers can easily switch, companies need to ensure that their call centres are quality where at home or overseas.
If you would like to discuss the issues raised in this article and the website www.saynottooverseascallcentres.com, please feel free to contribute on our forum at www.callcentreforum.co.uk