Hi

I am thinking of outsourcing my support from the UK to india and I want to know if you would, and any horror/positive stories to outsourcing.

Thanks


Andrew

Through our limited experience with india outsourcing I would suggest avoiding it. They are sometimes beneficial, but they can irritate your customers by not being as experienced and knowledgable as they would like. Beneficial in that there is always someone there to speak to your customers if you aren't able to afford a support staff on site.

I would say do not do it. Most likely people wanting to go with you as a host are doing so because they want a personal experience. They probably would not want to speak to someone half way around the world.

I wouldn't outsource support, especially not from India if you want quality and professionalism. Some of them get annoying sometimes. The first thing you might notice is that they use polite words and phrases too often. Being polite is a good thing, but when every sentence starts with “thank you” and ends with “please”, it might get really annoying.

I've considered it, and would love to do it, because the savings is just great. However, the quality of responses are just ... awful. There's really no way to put it, other than that. Some issues which should only take 1 response to fix, takes 10. Likewise, it prohibits developing that "personal bond" with a customer, which I really believe in.

There is nothing wrong with outsourcing support as long as you go with a quality company, preferably one in your own country that speaks the same native language as you and the majority of your customers.

From there you have to realize outsourced support will take as long to adjust to your specific company as a normal new support rep.

Yeah nothing wrong in outsourcing as long as you choose the right company.

I will not recommend outsourcing to india for phone support, due to language problem, though support ticket or email support or live chat support should not be an problem and also consider the huge savings.

Greets

For outsourcing, I'd stick with the same country. Then, you will all be governed under the same laws, have the same primary language (in most cases) and be in the same time zone. Same continent would probably be safe too, (i.e. Canadian hosting company outsourcing to US or vice versa).

Honestly though, you are really considering outsourcing to India? Probably about 95% of the users here have dealt with foreign support, and we've all heard the horror stories. I'm not against outsourcing, but you have to go with a reputable company. Even then you need to check up on the support they are giving your clients.

If you can't handle support yourself, consider getting a reputable company to handle all of the overflow. This allows you to do some support, and build that relationship with clients, while still having someone there all the time.

I remember reading a little while ago of a support outsourcing company that did "night-shift" support. Can't remember the name, but basically, you handled support during the day, and they would handle it during the night so you can take a break.

I've had AWEFUL experiences with Indian outsourcing. Most can't type nor comprehend English, and end up frustrating customers. It's not worth the hassle.

There is nothing wrong with outsourcing support as long as you go with a quality company.
That’s they key!!

I feel sorry for all of those who had bad experience with outsourcing may it be with Indian company or any other country , But before coming to the conclusion and making an opening that “outsourcing is not good” one should think about the fallowing.

1) If you say I not happy with the technical expertise I would ask: Did you go through the resume of support people, taken a formal interview (chat or phone) before allowing them to provide you the support?

2) If you say they did not have good command in language : I would ask: Did you test that before you selected your resources?

3) If you say there where too many problems during the support I would ask: did you ever tried to find out what kind of “Support Process” company follow? What is kind of infrastructure company has? What is there track record? How long they have been in to outsourcing etc?

4) How much are you paying anyways? Compare it with how much you would have paid to someone in your country , one should look to save say 50%-60% on cost maximum , which mean you would not mind paying them more because you want quality. I always say “if you pay peanut you would get monkey” Even in India you would get resources that are very sound technically also who can write and speak very good English but you need to pay them for there knowledge and skills. Remember English is our Business Language and half of the country speaks English and NO OTHER LANGUAGE. Outsourcing Companies usually try to fit resources in once budget as a result if one is paying less one gets poor quality.

This list will go on and on and I will always have something that may explain the failure of once BPO activity. There is nothing wrong with outsourcing as a Concept . This is one of the best things that a business can do for itself to be competitive but one needs to understand the basic of outsourcing before you do it.

I have posted it before, I am doing it again.

1. Identifying companies Needs

The first step in the decision-making process is to identify the organizations' needs. These needs lay the framework for projects and activities. Address the strategic interests and goals of the company - The strategic plan, the information sources and the company's performance measures should all be taken into consideration while identifying the company's needs. The goals of the company serve as a basis for determining a project's success. Core competencies, by and large, should not be outsourced. However, this might change if it is found viable that resources or knowledge from an external source could supplement the available in-house resources. Specify the service to be provided and identify the rationale behind the outsourcing. The needs could include cutting costs, enhancing service levels, moving to a different technology platform, increasing technical know-how and skills within the organization.

2. Selecting the Vendor

Outsourcing skeptics believe that an outsider cannot provide the same attention as the in-house team. Therefore, a thorough vendor scrutiny becomes vital before assigning critical technical roadmaps and confidential information to him. Understanding the emphasis of a vendor's business, or what it is that drives the vendor, is essential while choosing the appropriate vendor to meet the specific needs. A vendor selection team should be developed that would recognize business areas for the project. The vendor selection team should comprise senior management, legal staff with contract expertise, technical staff, end users and financial staff.

Following is a vendor selection checklist. The parameters on which the vendor should be assessed have been carefully chosen, and it is advised that before entering into a relationship, the vendor selection checklist must be completed. Further, while taking a decision based on our vendor selection checklist, it is advisable to assign weights to the parameters mentioned. The three most important factors considered while choosing an outsourcing vendor included price, quality and flexibility.

3. Experiences and Expertise

As with any procurement process even in an outsourcing initiative the relevant past experience and skill-sets of the prospective vendor should be considered and given due weightage. This will not only ensure that best practices are adopted in the outsourced activity but also high efficiency is likely to be maintained. Besides selecting a vendor with relevant past experience is likely to give the company a further edge in terms of reduction of training time and costs.

A strong track record and a positive reputation of the vendor are other important criterion, which will ensure that the partnership has been struck with the correct match. This could further be ensured by undertaking a reference check.

4. In-house facilities to meet the agency’s needs

It is important that the prospective vendor already has their processes and infrastructure in place to handle the assignments to be outsourced to them. The vendor should be financially sound. Any investment made by the vendor should be towards improving the processes rather than towards architecting them.

5. HR Issues
It is imperative to take into account the HR issues that may arise in the vendors’ organization. The type of selection and hiring processes of the vendor can go a long way to ensure the quality of the assignment. Also retaining and training policies are important as these ensure that the quality of the resources improve with time rather than deteriorate. It is desirable that mature employees populate the vendor organization rather than immature ones.

6. Ability to ramp up

Most businesses are cyclic in nature and hence there will be slack seasons as well as peak seasons. Hence the vendor organization should have a flexible business model and be in a position to ramp up/reorganize its resources as well as ramp down its resources without any major problems – organizational, legal etc.

7. Security

The vendor organization should be able to instill a certain comfort level as far as maintenance of confidentiality regarding the business process, business standards, business data etc is concerned. Hence it is important that well-defined security policies are implementable in the vendor organization and there is a respect for intellectual property within the organization.

It is most desirable that the vendor organization has a sound and resilient business plan in place. This will ensure that the vendor does not collapse with the loss of a single client or with changes in the business environment.

All that talk doesn't do any good, because you're not able to visit the outsourced support company personally.

Plus, interviewing by IM won't work because chatting and writing are completely different things. All of the outsourced tech support companies I've used employed guys that wouldn't pass 4th grade english. They're so bad they make any company look bad, like it's run by some kids.

Then there's the inattention to details. I don't know if it's because they're being worked hard answering tickets for other companies and hiding it from me, or what, but none have been good. They will act well during the beginning. Once you fork over the money the quality takes a huge dive and suddenly they're like retards.

A big NO for outsourced tech support firms. If you want a staff, hire directly so you're the boss. They can be remote, but it's still better than using most of these outfits.

Hmmm, I guess you must not have used Touchsupport (U.S. based with College Educated support staff). Or maybe some of the other US Based support firms with locations and there staff in the US where they speak english natively.

There are probably firms in the UK and Canada also.

I would outsource support only to one non-native-english-speaking firm - Support4Sale.com (based in Pakistan). My old company was able to utilize their services before they launched fully, and they provided amazing service to our end-users. They're a division of Server4Sale.com, and use the same support staff that provide support & server management assitance to those dedicated server clients.

IMHO, no.

I will elaborate of course:

My thoughts on non-US support companies:

If most of your clients speak english, there will be fustration on both ends. As english is not their native language (normally), there's definitly errors in typing and generic responses. I can remeber a few times when mistakes were made that shouldn't have been (rm -rf being one of them).

My thoughts on US based support companies:

I would go this route to handle certain hours to minimize costs. Depending on the geographical location of your clients. They seem to be quick and generic with their responses, but provide a prompt and correct resoluton most of the time. A much better selection.

Another thought:

If you use a support level system, just give them basic support and let them do that. If they can't fix anything within a certain time frame, or can't provide the correct resolution. Perhaps they could bump it up to the highest level. They may make more issues for you than the original problem, but who knows..

Reasons:

I would rather pay a bit more to get someone who will work hard for ME, than someone getting paid less and most likley not happy with their job to give support to my customers. This way my workers care about resolving issues promptly and giving my customers the support and attention that they require.

I know whenever I need assistance with a company that has me call their support, and it gets bounced to India. I have the most fustrating time on the phone.

I've also worked with and around outsourced support groups with multiple companies.. I spent more time cleaning up after them than doing what I needed to do. I've also worked with people from India that did not work for an outsourced support group, all of them were amazing to work with.

However, that's just me..

All that talk doesn't do any good, because you're not able to visit the outsourced support company personally.

One need not to visit the company to know if they are good or not , unless contract size it really big , in that case company invite the client to visit the place and see the process , infrastructure etc.

Plus, interviewing by IM won't work because chatting and writing are completely different things.
One can use phone, this is the way BPO works, when we send my resources onsite or put them up offsite interviews are always done on phone or via video conference. And it works.

All of the outsourced tech support companies I've used employed guys that wouldn't pass 4th grade english. They're so bad they make any company look bad, like it's run by some kids.

Will it’s sad, but that doesn’t mean whole industry is bad. That ways many of webhosts are highly unprofessional school going kids or someone who is doing it as a part time business but this doesn’t mean there is no serious player.

I don't know if it's because they're being worked hard answering tickets for other companies and hiding it from me, or what, but none have been good. They will act well during the beginning. Once you fork over the money the quality takes a huge dive and suddenly they're like retards.

Agreed !! but one needs to look for transparency when you outsource , if you fail to do it or your service provider does not have something by which they can show 100% transparency in process , resource and management its already a wrong choice and more often or not it will fail.

Just my views !

Although Indian support is ok, I really hate their "kindly" expressions.

I would suggest an eastern european company. Most of those companies have good english speaking administrators.

The problem I have with outsourcing support is this:

Why would you take the only advantage you have over other companies out there, and lose your control over it?

Hosting is a SERVICE market.

The service you provide is the product you sell. The specs of the package are mere secondary measures.

If you are not going to leverage the support you can give to your clients, why are you even in the services market?

I don't mean to cut on anyone's terrortory and I don't mean to be offensive, but it just seems silly to me, that's all. :)