Phone Support & Outsourcing

People have started using Internet for anything and everything and compete for online content. Like our televisions, electricity etc the WEB as its best known is becoming part and parcel of our life right from blogging to the oldest application, email.



Web Hosting companies make this wide usage possible and also play a very important role in this spread. the business has grown big and lot of web hosting companies have come of age, reducing prices and encouraging outsourcing through competitive pricing , excellent customer support via tickets and chat. Today we have reached a stage where web hosting has been made effective enough for any layman to host his site with cheap and sturdy servers, together with feature rich control panels and helpdesk systems to handle customer issues.



As all webhosts provide cheap support, customer loyalty is only relevant to the point where the next cheapest but reliable hosting company brings out a plan! So from here to where is the next question that boggles everyone.



Customers trade their loyalty to:



• Low prices –almost all hosts provide cheap plans, good support and reliable servers. They all either sell off or compromise on quality of servers in the rush to compete for increased customer base.



• There are no offices existing. They have no one to respond to them or handle them and Servers are co-located or got from NOC. All or most support is outsourced to some other country specially India.



• They have realised as a response they would get, accented English with no idea of the cultural differences or understanding of the US culture fully and hence get frustrated trying to explain beyond technical aspects if they try to chat or call. Though it’s improving, tech support is one area that has yet to reach the standards.



• Even other nationalities are brought to handle phone support, their English will never be similar to the US English Customers may never touch base with the company that does this.



American Phone Support!



In terms of academics and infrastructure American Universities is one of the most advanced universities in the world. Within their own lives, everyone has witnessed economies, of individuals or nations globally go through cycles of up and down. As it’s cheaper to outsource to India, The cost of living and the rate of development may rise over they’re too and a stage may come where the trend may reverse. Coming back to US and utilize the American skills. Is preferred by more and more countries.



Going for a Phone service staffed by Americans along with Indian engineering skill definitely makes some sense.



Customer gets the confidence, knowing he can talk via phone to anyone anytime during the day or night to get solutions and stop feeling frustrated that the tech support guy cannot understand his English. This way he gets a placebo effect that his support company has American staff.



Call Cost would be High



On the basis of the package of minutes bought, Calls costs for implementing a phone support setup in US would vary anywhere between 35 cents per minute to 2.5 dollars a minute.



This fact cannot be discounted that US economies have one of the highest cost of livings and at the same time taxations. Except for few Americans do not prefer to live outside their country; a feeling of patriotism has developed US to this present stage of strength, which is very highly respected. Therefore whenever an American is being employed for phone support one can expect that they need to be paid by the hour they sit to work whether they get a call every minute of their shift or just one call the whole day. Hence pricing will be slightly higher than outsourced to India or China or a South American country but still competitive than employing internal.



If one has decided to start ones own phone support, one needs to think of the following: -



• Cost that would be incurred in terms of salary, loss of employee due to resignations, necessity to move to bigger office space to handle the increased personnel, expected hikes, etc.



• Cost that would be incurred in recruiting, setting up infrastructure, training, & managing the employees.



"Global Delivery Model” is the new business model where one uses a mix of onsite and offsite teams to handle ones work having the better of two worlds. Thus it would be the best solution to follow the new Business Model. Clients get American phone support and Indian tech support through the backend. This way one would have a quality mix at the most cost effective pricings.



There is between 30% reduction in ones overall expenses if one decides to outsource ones work to third parties within the country and about 50% outside the country to say places like India.



Many people ask this question whereas many don't, as they do not have the ROI (Return Over Investment) to do it. Such companies must spend some more time to reach that level.



"Profits = Revenue - Cost"



Outsourcing can reduce cost. Revenue is earned with increased customer base. Phone support brings it in when people know they can talk to somebody at the other end.



So when phone support services are started one should prefer to look to outsource it as it reduces the overhead. An excellent combination to average ones outsourcing costs would be to:



a) Outsource one's email support where English is spoken by a lot of English speaking graduates and also to a cheaper source like India.



b) Outsourcing the Phone Support to companies, which brings in the placebo effect and makes the clients feel comfortable calling up and it should be within US.



To conclude with, one need to plan this for his/her future or else he/she will get left behind.