Really Not Happy With Your Outsourced Customer Service?

Try Losing That Client Attitude!

When I “pitched” this blog post idea “Try Losing That Client Attitude” to my coach, she hesitated to reply. But ultimately she honestly told me, that it made her cringe a little. You are hiring a contractor or Customer Service BPO for a reason, right?

And that reaction of hers made me smile. Because I had been in her place a year ago. That was when I thought about changing my approach to managing our Servicing Partner. I hesitated at first. And then I just went for my idea to not only talk about a “Servicing Partnership” but also walk that walk. All the way.

And without any spoilers, my journey took me even a little further and led to a very successful collaboration, that has all involved parties satisfied. I am going to share my thoughts about the “client” attitude and my experience with having skipped it in a series of blog posts. My focus will be on Customer Service outsourcing. I am sure my approach can be applied to other industries as well, but definitely not universally.

In today’s part I I will talk about the foundation and how that came about. In the upcoming posts I will share some real life examples, outcomes and benefits. I hope you came here with an open mind and if you have a different opinion, please share it! Because nothing is better than a controversial (respectful) discussion that everyone can learn from.

So losing that client attitude sounds fancy. But what does that actually mean? There are many reasons to work with a Customer Service (CS) BPO. The one reason I seemed to hear more often than others is “they are the experts”. And the one reality I have seen more often than others is “they are cheap(er)”. And of course there is things like scalability, the hope that as a CS BPO they invest in the newest technology and so on.

No matter which of these reasons apply, the cost difference between outsourced and inhouse servicing is significant. So I think it’s fair to say, it’s always somewhat part of it all. And it also often times becomes one of the drivers of dissatisfaction.

So a little over a year ago, I was tasked to ramp-up and ultimately lead an outsourced Servicing project with a quite significant scale. And as every project (or journey), this one started small and with the first step. Check-out more about the power of taking first steps here.

I had the opportunity to start something from scratch, even though I joined the project, after SLT had chosen the BPO partner. Usually that would have mattered to me. Not having been part of the selection process. But I decided it did not really matter and went with that instead.

When faced with this opportunity, I thought about my strategy and plan. And I used my previous outsourcing experience in another project as my learning opportunity. While I had built a good report with that partner, I never managed to turn results around. And even though there were many factors driving this, it made me think about my approach to that partnership in particular. And in all honesty, it was not really a partnership. I was the client. A collaborative client, but still a client. And they were a vendor to me after all.

So what’s the difference between partner vs. vendor thinking? Expectations to begin with. In a vendor relationship my investment is more or less limited to the financial part. I might (hopefully at least) provide the information the partner needs to establish the processes and to run the project but that’s about it. And once that is done, I will focus on controlling their results and complain, when they are not meeting my expectations. They are the experts after all. I might feel entitled to a certain treatment and have a top down kind of style in communicating with them.

The problem with that approach is, the only expert in how you want your Customer Service to be done is you.

So when we talk about a true partnership, instead of demanding, you would be supporting. And instead of giving them goals and controlling their results, you would be considering them common goals and co-own the results. Why should you do this? Well the goals you are giving them, are your goals after all, aren’t they? And their results are what you are going to have to present as your results internally, too.

So if you do not co-own them and keep your client attitude instead, you are leaving the achievement of your internal goals to a third party, that does not have any experience in doing it your (your company’s) way. Does that sound smart? It did not to me.

So as a partner you will be transparent, share knowledge and information, align goals and needs, provide support and guidance and built a strong relationship. And you are doing all of this while seeing eye to eye. It’s a partnership, remember?

In order to be able to be a good partner in a Customer Servicing outsourcing project, you will have to build and maintain a strong knowledge base yourself. Be an expert as well.

A strong customer service experience is critical. And experience in managing outsourcing partners does definitely not hurt. If you are hiring for that position, make sure you are probing for the difference between vendor management and partner management experience.

We will talk a little bit more about the areas you should keep yourself up to date on in one of my upcoming posts.

Customer Service is a people business. When you are “ramping up a Servicing Partner” you are actually onboarding your servicing team. Because these are the Customer Care Professionals, that are going to be the “face” or rather the voice to your customers. And your eyes and ears, too. Getting the right team in place, might be at least as important as hiring the right internal colleagues. Maybe even more, since you are likely paying them (through their employer) less, than you would pay internal folks.

So before I started my ramp-up project, I asked myself “how would this onboarding look like, if the partner employees were actually new internal colleagues”. For starters, I would transition from being their “partner or worse vendor manager” to being their “leader”. And this approach became the guiding principle for the onboarding process and has been my relationship management approach ever since.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not their employer and I am not naïve about it. However, that does not mean I can’t be a leader to the partner’s employees. I have to make sure I am not overstepping, of course. It’s a fine line between acting like a leader and acting like an employer. The common ground is “care”. You have to genuinely care for the people before your results in order for the leadership approach to work.

The difference between vendor management and leader is very similar to the difference in the vendor vs. partner approach. A vendor manager is managing “a third party” towards contract fulfillment by controlling KPIs, providing feedback and complaining / escalating.

A leader is sharing joint goals, aligning on solutions and approaches and provides the framework for performance. A leader guides, monitors and coaches towards joint goal achievement. As a leader you own the results and are accountable – the basis to hold the partner accountable, too.

Instead of just doing a train the trainer and then let the partner run with it, I started with relationship building. I organized a summit to introduce the partner to critical peer teams I would introduce a new colleague too as well. I organized best practice sharing between our recruitment team and theirs, had a meet & greet with their and our trainings team etc.. To make sure everything was clear and there were no hidden concerns I asked a lot of questions and I invested a lot in building trust.

I have worked in the BPO environment myself. Usually a client throws their requirements over the fence and expects you to deliver. They of course have a clear expectation, how the results should look and even how the BPO should get there. But they usually do not make these details very clear and so assumptions is all that people can work off. And don’t they say, never assume? I guess they do for a reason. When things go wrong, escalations are common.

So how to build trust, when this is the past experience of your main stakeholders? It’s not easy at all. My approach? Whenever things went wrong and I felt like complaining or even escalating, I paused. And then I asked myself if I would send this complaint email or make that escalation, if this mistake had happened to one of my Direct Reports. If the answer was no, I didn’t do it. Instead I offered my guidance and support. And so far the answer has been “no” a lot more often than not.

The thing with escalations is, they are the opposite of a trust building measure. And they are not doing yourself any favor either. Escalations are often made as a measure of protection, when things are going wrong. To highlight how that is not someone’s fault, but rather the vendor is just not performing. Here’s the problem with that – your leadership team might step in to help. But they will not like it. While they offer their support, Senior Leader really want you to be in control and in charge and only escalate if really necessary. Or not at all.

It does not let you look good and I have not seen any Senior Leader say “well the results are not great, but at least you gave us a heads up about the vendor’s poor performance, great job!”. Have you?

But the damage to the relationship is so much more grave. Who will trust and support a “leader” that escalates about their performance whenever things are getting a little bit more difficult. No one does.

When I prioritized relationship building and being a leader in my project, I started to see great results. First I saw a lot more transparency in areas, where “cover-ups” are usually more common. The team came to me with issues instead of me finding them out myself. And with my support or sometimes just my guidance, roadblocks were removed and the onboarding went smoothly.

To my own surprise, this approach has been so successful, I would consider this partner relationship and the results the best in my BPO management career yet. The partner is achieving and exceeding joint goals.

So no problems or issues? Of course there are. Especially since we are all living in a “now normal” of a crazy pandemic. The relationship and foundation we have built has carried us through these and results have been even stronger. Most importantly, there is a lot of engagement and loyalty on both sides.

I will not lie. This is hard work. It requires the investment of time and efforts. Every day. As every great relationship does. If you think you are not outsourcing to “the experts” to then put in that work yourself, ask yourself one question. Would I invest that time and effort into a new team member I would like to see succeed? I bet you would.

If you are making that investment, paying less than for inhouse servicing will suddenly not make a difference in results anymore. No liability but an opportunity.

Give it a try?

In my next episode of “Try Losing That Client Attitude” I will share the main focus areas you should develop and maintain knowledge in. And share some real life examples of relationship building, monitoring and coaching measures in a partner relationship.

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