Category: Product and Service Reviews

Have you ever called for support to find out that it was offshored to the lowest bidder?

How does that make you feel?

The company that’s offshoring thinks their saving money on good enough service. It’s a short minded and short sighted approach that doesn’t work long term as it alienates customers that want better support and are willing to take their business elsewhere. Soon, customers will get fed up, find another provider, tell everyone they know about their bad customer support and the exit picks up.

The dominoes are falling.

Some companies will recognize  their mistakes and bring back their call center in country or in-house. Some will blame their own people claiming sales or marketing are not doing enough. Some will arrogantly blame their customers. Some will do nothing and continue to atrophy. Some of the leaders who instituted the service failures will leave and recreate the horrible service elsewhere. They may even fail upwards and get a promotion because they saved money in the short term but not everyone can connect the dots to declining sales revenue and profitability to the offshoring disaster. It’s easy to shift the blame around.

Sometimes the bad support is internal to your own company. There’s not a lot you can do in this case. The CEO and executive team saved money by moving critical services for it’s employees offshore such as payroll, commissions, travel, HR, operations, benefits and medical.

Have you ever tried to get even a simple medical procedure or service and it was denied? Maybe it’s for your children. How does that make you feel? I bet you would be pretty ticked off. Maybe you fight it, it takes hours on the phone trying to explain your case and your told someone will get back to you but they don’t. You follow up, get someone new and start all over again and again to find out after hours, days, weeks or months of painful debates over the telephone or worse by email or chat that the medical director declining your requested test, scan or procedure isn’t even from your country. They are on the opposite side of the planet. Maybe you have the most expensive PPO or best medical plan available but you were denied. You fight it. You appeal it. But you lose. If you want the test or treatment, it’s on you. It’s out of pocket.

How does that make you feel?

What can be done about?

Is it that hard for an organization to deliver “Heroic” support?

Share your comments below.