Outsourcing works, but evaluate who will provide the service

Outsourcing your telephone service needs is certainly a viable solution for your business, it lowers overhead substantially, allows your employees to return to their key roles and adds the expertise of a professional call centre to manage your call program with maximum efficiencies. You’ll benefit due to solutions that provide you the flexibility, reporting capabilities, and value of having our team providing dedicated service exactly when it is needed. With more than a decade of experience Miratel is fully equipped to manage your inbound or outbound campaign with the dedication, efficiency and creativity you’d expect from your own employees.

In light of this and our continued growth and investment in technology and people we’d welcome the opportunity to assess your call center needs and deliver a custom made proposal for your business needs. When you make the decision to outsource it’s important to know just what you will receive and if your customers will be interacting with dedicated customer service professionals. When news hit the online news blogs and feeds earlier in May that an overseas IT services company is planning to add the services of a 200-person business service unit to inmates of a prison the buzz around the industry was intense. There is outsourcing and then there is captive outsourcing, would you clients really benefit from working with ‘staff’ who had no choice but to take your calls?

Where is your call centre?

When the founder of an outsourcing analyst firm learned about the idea he reacted with incredulity saying “I thought it was a joke”. The idea of having inmates take on the role of call centre serving isn’t as far-fetched as it may seem however and I think some of the over reaction is that this news concerns offshoring at the same time; the prison in question is in Asia. However the same practive has been going on for many years in the United States so the issue is really whether you elect to have a professional call centre partner with you to provide services or saves costs by having the services provided by inmates. In the States over 1,000 inmates in a variety of federal prisons have  worked on help desks and managed business-to-business calls and directory assistance services.

Irrespective of in what country this service is being offered the components are the same; your customer are being assisted by individuals who have to work in this capacity for a very low wage.  Cost is most obviously the determining factor for some who elect this service as you can imagine no minimum wage laws apply for inmates.

Higher costs should result in higher levels of customer service, dedication, expertise, tangible results and commitment. Each of these we guarantee with our services, we’d prefer to focus on what we deliver than the stories that filter through the news wires but the reaction to this story was quite extreme. I’ll reserve judgment on these statements which were provided by UNICOR Public Information Officer Julie Rozier:

UNICOR says prison labour is a low-cost alternative to offshore outsourcing. Its customers either want to repatriate work previously done in ‘far off’ low-cost locales, or contract with UNICOR in lieu of an offshore provider. Callers are unaware that the person on the other end of the line is in jail. UNICOR bills its services business group, which also provides distribution and order fulfillment, document conversion, and printing and design services.

It is a tricky proposition, many have complained that inmate call centre servicing violates health and safety standards and various labour laws. In addition there is the economic concern that such services devalue the reputable skills provided by the many excellent call centre providers in the industry and create more harm than good. As ever the customer will decide what works best for them. The key lesson is whether you know exactly who will be providing your call centre services beyond the website and sales person you engage with?

To learn more about the call centre solutions we can offer please visit www.miratelinc.com