Versprochen ist versprochen. Experten-Talk Outsourcing Teil 2

Sichere dir wichtige Tipps aus dem Talk der beiden Profis. Wie oft sollten Auftraggeber nach Ansicht von Russ Sandlin ihre Nearshore-Outsourcing Service Provider besuchen?

Wie bereits im gestrigen Blog-Beitrag erwähnt, trifft Bernhard sich am vergangenen Freitag mit Russ Sandlin via Teams auf eine Tasse Tee. Im Talk über Outsourcing von Call und Contact Centern erhältst du wertvolle Einblicke. 

Hier ganz im Original in Englisch und bequem zum Lesen.

Nachlesen des Transkripts in Englisch und damit frei von Verzerrungen durchs Übersetzen -> schaue weiter unten.
Wenn du das Transkript auf Deutsch lesen möchtest, schaue in diesen Beitrag.

Außerdem: Unten findest du weitere Infos über Russ Beratung Benprise.

Welcome for a cup of tea – Experts for Outsourcing

Lausche einem spannenden Gespräch von Experten über Outsourcing und Vendor Management. Kurze 13:54 Minuten dauert das gesamte Video.

Russ steht bei eisq exklusiv 5 Mal Rede und Antwort.

Zum Nachlesen – Experten-Talk Outsourcing in Englisch

Bernhard Gandolf:

Hallo und herzlich willkommen auf einer Tasse Tee. Diesmal in englischer Sprache. Den Text und alles andere findest du nachher unten im Blog.

Welcome for a cup of tea. This is your Certified Management Consultant for Vendor Management. I’m managing director of european institute for service quality, Bernhard Gandolf. Today, I’m pleased to welcome the international expert on outsourcing, nearshoring, BPO: Russ Sandlin.

Russ is the co-founder and CEO of Benprise, currently is working on a project in Doha.

1^st Question: Russ, in your Experience, what are the 2 to 3 most important Critical Success Factors in Nearshore Outsourcing?

Russ Sandlin:

First off, thank you to you and your audience for welcoming me. Very excited to talk to your Deutschland fans and very happy to be talking to you. So the two or three success factors in my mind for nearshore or offshore would be making sure that you set the contract up the way you want it. From the start. How the contract articulates the customer promise, the customer service level agreements, the ways you interact with the customers, how fast you interact with them, how you measure it, such as net promoter score or customer satisfaction and the real time reporting that would be required.

How you understand and escalate matters. So a inspection process needs to be articulated in the contract portion of it and then a performance management system that really encapsulates all those things. So you can see how the bidders doing it make sure they’re reaching their targets.

Bernhard Gandolf:

So:

1. contract
2. performance management
3. measurement

Russ Sandlin

That’s right.

Bernhard Gandolf

That’s the success factor or are this the three?

Russ Sandlin:

I would say those three are nestled into one, but those three things are separate entities within one. So you’re going to need to set up a contract and you need to inspect the contract and you need to put a lot thought into your contract before you request for proposals from your prospective vendors. So setting it up right from the start is really the secret.

That’s all there is to it.

2^nd Question: Outsourcing Expert Russ recommends Regular Site Visits at Nearshore Outsourcing Service Providers

Bernhard Gandolf:

Well, we’ve been talking about contracts. How about relation? How often do principals visit their nearshore outsourcing provider in person – how regularly should they?

Russ Sandlin:

That’s a great question. And that has been a shifting sands answer, because before COVID, typically every quarter, Fortune 500 companies would send out people like me to go kick the tires and make sure their performance management was up to snuff. But then everything changed in COVID. I never used Teams before. I never used these things up until two and a half, three years ago.

Then all of a sudden, I’m on these calls for 10 hours a day. So a lot of that now is still being handled through daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly meetings online, which in many respects is much more well, it’s cost effective. But the problem with that is you lose relationship. You just described relationship. So having face to face meetings helps to garner relationship and trust and helps to avoid mistakes.

Covid changes – Teams

Because when we’re talking in a team meeting. It’s easy to get distracted and it’s easy to misconstrue what the other party is saying because you don’t see the body language and the inflections. So I think that that as we become more post-COVID, we’ll get back to more of it at least every half year, having on site visits. I don’t know if we’ll ever go back to quarterly, but but probably every half year would be more realistic, along with the the weekly and quarterly meetings that you have online.

Bernhard Gandolf:

Okay. So regularly online meetings, supposed at least half a year if possible. Quarterly.

Russ Sandlin:

That’s right. But it’s funny. My major client that I’m using on one of my contracts in Qatar for the last 11 years is a German based company. Well, they’re now in Luxembourg. But so we’ve had a lot of meetings via Teams. So I just realized they’re a German company, while talking to you. Usually it’s a French company for some reason or a US company.

But there is also a big company from Germany. That is very good.

Bernhard Gandolf:

Fantastic.

Russ Sandlin:

Can’t say who it is.

Bernhard Gandolf:

I have no idea. It’s maybe a public railway company?

Russ Sandlin:

Yeah, I’m sure your guest will know exactly who it is.

3^rd Question: What does Russ use Regional Newspapers for? Outsourcing Expert reveals …

Bernhard Gandolf:

Russ, when we talk about relation, we are also talking about the people, the staff, the agents. What’s your favorite recipe for turning Agents into ambassadors for a principals brand?

Russ Sandlin:

I tell you, I have some hacks that I use. One of them is it’s so important to engage with your customers, with your agents, with systems, things like gamification. Where they’re engaged, they’re trying to compete with themselves to get their personal best for net promoter score or customer satisfaction or customer sentiment. So I like deploying gamification. That’s a really, really good way to get them to enjoy coming to work.

The second thing that I really like is recognition. It’s important that you recognize the right people every month, whether it’s perfect attendance, which is so important in our business or best quality or best scorecard. So I think the must have discipline to do this every month. And I also reach out to the local newspapers. Yes, there are still newspapers.

… how he uses them in detail.

I asked them to come in and take pictures of the best agents, when we do these monthly meetings. And those agents think, what they’ll do is, they’ll get this this certificate from Microsoft that I produced. That I print out. And then, you know, they’ll take a picture, you know, go in the newspaper and they’ll always clip it out and take it and give it to their parents or whatever.

So I think deploying the local newspaper to enjoy the success of your agents, because success in your agents is easy to find. You just may be looking for the things that they’re doing right, and they need to recognize them. And by doing those little things, I think they feel a part of it. So employee satisfaction is so important, is measured, and you should also try to embrace it through those little hacks that I do.

4^th Question: What does a Well-Travelled Outsourcing Expert think about Cultural Differences, Economic Stability, Reduced Greenhouse Effects, etc.? How important are these Aspects for US Clients?

Bernhard Gandolf:

Right. Fantastic. I’m really fond of this idea with the local newspaper. If we talk about outsourcing nearshore offshore and according to your YouTube channel, strictly recommend you will find the link down there. You must have already been to every country in the world. So there are a lot of cultural differences. Economic stability, political situation, lower greenhouse effects, which I know is quite important to you too. Do these aspects play any role to your customers? Are they important for your customers?

Russ Sandlin:

That’s a trick question because I have so many different customers from so many different locations. So it depends. Customer. Right. Customer. But the most important thing is to understand your customer, know your customer and know what their needs and requirements are for each. So if you’re working for a high tech company that is looking into lower greenhouse emissions, then you’ll need to formulate an out-of-box experience for your customer, that reflects that value.

About teams, in person, quarterly – Expert Outsourcing recommends

And your company needs to reflect that. In terms of you talked about those quarterly meetings. Well, if you’re trying to lower greenhouse effects, then you’ll probably want to tell people, you know what, we no longer have annual meetings. We do it online so that we don’t have that airplane going across damaging the ozone layer. So my answer to you on that would be: You need to understand your customer first and foremost, no matter who you are or where you are.

And then you need to try to cater your product to match the expectations of your customer in every aspect of your service delivery and the customer journey.

Bernhard Gandolf:

The reason why I’m asking is because, according to my point of view, european companies tend to have a closer look at economic stability and political situation, lower greenhouse effect nowadays. Before, it was very much just about money.

Russ Sandlin:

Price, yeah. You’re right, you’re right. The labor arbitrage has always been a governing factor. And I think, to be honest with you, is still pretty important. But I think that, on the other hand, if you’re trying to articulate a service delivery model for your customers, you want to try to put your service delivery centers in places that aren’t going to be impacted by political unrest. Where they can’t get to work because something’s going on by climate change.

About the Choice of Location and Backup – Outsourcing Expert recommends

Too many hurricanes, typhoons, monsoons, volcanic activity, you name it. So you want to make sure that natural disasters aren’t going to affect the service delivery as well as the political concerns. And believe me, I’ve been all over the world and I’ve seen all of that. I’ve had to wade into work with water up to my waist and have a backpack to change.

I’ve had to go through political issues all over the planet. We’ll get into all those details. But I’ve seen a lot of riots in a lot of different countries. So so that weighs on the site selection criteria. You have different matrices you look at obviously, you look at the cost of doing business – you also look at the stability.

What’s the power grid like? What’s the the chance that the fiber optic cable is going to be taken out in the undersea in that location? And then what kinds of things in terms of weather could distracted. So you need to have a delivery mechanism to make sure that you have a primary location, a secondary, a tertiary, and you have backups.

You always have to have a backup solution because you’ll always have to deploy it sooner or later.

Conclusion: Americans are increasingly looking at security in addition to price. Backup solutions are in demand.
Bernhard Gandolf

5^th Question: What will be the Next Big Thing in Outsourcing? Are the Americans 2-3 years ahead of us?

Bernhard Gandolf:

Fantastic. Final question. Europeans tend to look at the United States saying, well, there are always 2 to 3 years ahead. So what will be the next big thing in outsourcing industry, according to your expert point of view?

Russ Sandlin:

Gosh, that’s a really good question. And I’ve been kind of that future ist for the last 30 years and we’re just realizing now, what I thought we’d be doing 30 years ago. But the the the metaverse companies like like Microsoft 365, what they’re doing is just fantastic in terms of deploying A.I.. I think that A.I. is just going to get better and better with the voice recognition.

Voice Bots, AI and the Role of Millenials

The voice bots, the chat bots. Now that’s actually starting to get deployed now, especially in the United States. They’re using voice recognition to authenticate their customers, which is it’s got some hiccups right now. But I think in the next two or three years, it’s going to get better and better and better. And I think that the ability for customers to self-serve, because millennials love to use their apps instead of talking, will start to take a bigger chunk of the delivery models.

Right now, you still have a lot of people my age who would like to use the phone, but in the future, I don’t know how much that’s going to happen. So I think you’re going to see more blunted offerings where someone can just go on to WhatsApp and talk to you about the product. And then you know what, I might tweet, so I’m going to tweet something out and then you know, your customer, you know, all those different components and all those different handles. So that you can formulate a unified response in an omnichannel environment.

Omnichannel and Bavarian

And everyone touts omnichannel for the last five or six years. But I have news for you. Most of those omnichannel delivery mechanisms that I saw in the last five or six years were really multichannel and they were separated. They weren’t really omnichannel. We’re just getting to real omnichannel now where the the software can recognize a bavarian accent versus a northern accent.

So I understand there’s like six or seven different really distinct dialects of German. So Variant, companies like that, I probably shouldn’t have said that word. But a lot of companies are going to be deploying very good software to really deploy either the best chat bot or voice bot or even the best agent with the same dialect, to cater to the needs of the customer.

So there’s no confusion. I think that’s kind of an exciting thing that I’m seeing right now.

Russ foresees AI as a big deal as the basis for true omnichannel communication!
Bernhard Gandolf

Bernhard Gandolf:

Okay, fantastic. Thank you very much. I really appreciate your insights. I really appreciate your time and see you for the next cup of tea. I’m Bernhard Gandolf.

Russ Sandlin:

That’s right. Danke!

Russ Sandlin ist Mit-Gründer und CEO von Benprise

Russ Sandlin arbeitet seit 2018 in einem Projekt für die Qatar Railways Company in Doha. Außerdem leitet er als CEO seine eigene Beratungsfirma. Seit 2001 führt er die Geschäfte von Benprise, LLC. LLC steht für Limited Liability Company was im Groben einer GmbH in Deutschland entspricht.

• Russ auf LinkedIn kennenlernen
• Homepage von Benprise besuchen

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