Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Is Insourcing the New Outsourcing?
byFortune Magazine recently highlighted a foreign owned call-center that opened in Reno, Ohio. The magazine reports that this is becoming a trend and more companies are insourcing jobs in today’s market. As a customer service professional, I am interested in how insourcing brings value to these organizations. I believe the benefit lies in our ability to more closely empathize with each other.
It’s clearly more cost effective for foreign companies to open their doors overseas than it is for them to establish business in the US, but the company from Fortune’s article must realize some advantage of insourcing that other companies cannot see. The Fortune article lists multiple reasons why overseas companies might open a call-center in the US, but I contend that the greatest advantage and reason for this success is the ability of US staff to identify with and empathize with US customers. It is critical for any company to establish a connection with customers and it seems logical that it is easier for people of similar cultural backgrounds to connect more easily.
A customer service representative’s ability to empathize with the customer leads to greater customer satisfaction, quicker resolution times, and a better bottom line. The ability for someone to instantly understand what sport football is and relate to a shopping experience at Wal-Mart collectively helps us to relate to each other. This kind of understanding and connection can help me understand what my customer is looking for and hopefully create a happier client base.
The ability to understand and empathize is key to customer satisfaction. These are skills that are difficult to teach and cannot be programmed into an automated system. Insourcing demonstrates that US customers want to be understood and that it is critical for the Customer Service Representative to be able to identify and relate with customers.
