Go BackHow do you define a quality service offering?
Mike Purvis is UK Managing Director of Transcom, the largest customer relationship management (CRM) provider by geographical footprint in Europe. Transcom also provides credit management services, legal services, and consultancy services to its multinational client base.
Although quality is not an easy concept to define, it lies at the heart of what Transcom aims to deliver to our clients' customers. As a business, our goal is to incorporate as many measurable inputs into the services we provide and then monitor these services regularly to make sure that they are successfully producing satisfied customers. We work with each of our clients to tailor a strategy that answers their individual needs for the types of services they are being offered at a price that fits their financial bottom line.
When our clients outsource their call centre services, they should expect to find comparable services at more competitive rates. At all of our call centres, we actively measure quality from beginning to end, starting with the salutation that our operators give and their ability to assess customer requirements all the way to their speed and efficiency in resolving the situation. Our operators treat every client as a unique case and go the extra mile to make sure they are satisfied when hanging up the telephone receiver.
As the expectations of customers using outsourcing services increases, it is often the qualitative metrics that determine how satisfied they have been with the call. Are operators doing more than simply going through the motions of fielding their call? Are operators keeping them informed about the process and what is being done to help them? Can they relate to them on a human level?
Transcom has five key values at the core of its offerings to our clients: excellence, passion, innovation, honesty, and fun. These principles shape our 'transvision' for how our company intends to continue delivering a quality service at the foundation of everything we do.
How do you measure the quality of your outsourcing provider?
The deliverables which outsourcers are expected to provide have evolved in recent years from dealing with isolated tasks over the telephone to managing complex systems of information and technology.
At Transcom, we know that our clients are not only looking to outsource telephone calls but the consequences of those telephone calls as well. Part of the quality that we deliver to our clients is the reassurance that their customers will be treated as well by us as they would be by our clients themselves. Plus, we have the added benefit of being able to provide extended hours of operation, more affordable operational costs, and industry-specific technological capacity.
To measure the quality of our services, Transcom has developed a scorecard that is in use throughout our 55 European call centre facilities across 28 countries. This scorecard is developed jointly by Transcom along with our clients, and it addresses such concerns as the operators' technical and language skills, their problem-solving and logistical skills, as well as their ability to advise on the product and find a resolution for the customer.
At Transcom, we also understand that a quality service offering requires a sensibility on the part of our operators to understand and relate to our customers. That is why we have developed a nearshore strategy for outsourcing where our call centres are located closer to the end customer and staffed by people with similar cultural and language skills. Because accents and personalities are difficult (and costly) to teach, this nearshore strategy reduces that hard-to-explain, uneasy feeling that many customers feel when they call offshore call centres in faraway places like India. Many of our operators, for instance, grew up watching the same television programmes as in the UK, and as a group they speak more than 30 languages fluently.
How do you manage the relationships that are involved in delivering a quality offering?
Transcom managers listen in on a certain number of calls handled by each of its operators. Then, they rank them using the Quality Scorecard and compile these scores after a given period of time to monitor their overall performance. Our clients also listen in on the calls - either using dial-in access, listening to recordings, or being on-site - and we calibrate their evaluations with our own to make sure that we have similar perceptions and expectations.
At the operational level, our operators are then rewarded according to the results that they have produced. "A-level" operators are given various rewards such as extra holiday time, first choice for picking shifts, and special name badges for the office. By keeping the objectives clear, we create the proper incentives for operators and strive to recognise that effort and build a sense of teamwork and belonging for everyone at the call centre. These help with employee retention and increased efficiency, the value of which can be passed on as improved quality to our clients.
Transcom's commitment to nearshore outsourcing solutions allows us to work with clients - large and small - to offer our services in a way that is easier to monitor and understand. Because offshore companies in far-flung locales are so removed both geographically and culturally from the customers they serve, it can be difficult for Transcom's clients to interact with them regularly and trust that they are delivering on their promises.
At Transcom, most of our sites are less than two hours flight away from the UK. We also have the largest geographical footprint in Europe and are in the unique position of having all of our 13,100 employees connected through a fully integrated system so that companies with a pan-European reach can be confident our services will be consistent and transparent as well as comprehensive.
How do you think customers' perception of quality will change or evolve in the future and how will Transcom adapt?
The outsourcing industry is consolidating and client expectations are becoming more sophisticated. This challenges outsource companies to expand their offerings while keeping costs competitive. At the same time, outsourcing is one of the fastest growing vertical markets across the EMEA region, and we at Transcom welcome the opportunity to provide the highest level of quality service in a transparent and adaptable way to each of our clients.
As the market becomes more complex, new technological advances, such as interactive voice recognition (IVR), might be able to replace some of the basic outsourcing needs which exist today. Ultimately though, customers will increasingly expect that a human on the other end will be able and willing to guide them through a complex CRM enquiry. As a full-service provider, Transcom can take advantage of this fact as we continue to expand the range of services which we provide, including in areas such as debt collection in the UK.
