Wise Up!
JT Maloney
Hi –
Among the most egregious enterprise failures was the pathetic notion of wholesale outsourcing of call centers. That firms would trample on a key plank of the overall customer experience to theoretically save a few dollars is one of the most vulgar enterprise transgressions of all time.
Fortunately, over the last decade, many US firms have come to their senses, acknowledge abject defeat and failure, and recalled this faulty strategy and their support operations from overseas. Here is the latest in a long-line of total disasters...
April 17 (Bloomberg) -- Delta Air Lines Inc., the world’s largest carrier, stopped routing customer service calls to India and brought them “back in house” in the U.S. because customers were unhappy, Chief Executive Officer Richard Anderson said.
Delta started shifting the calls to employees in the U.S. over the past year, and “completely removed” Indian contractors in the first quarter, Anderson said yesterday in a recorded message to employees.
The move makes Delta the second big carrier to repatriate customer-service work from India in 2009, after UAL Corp.’s United Airlines did so in February. Companies including AT&T Inc. have taken similar steps, said Karl Keirstead, an outsourcing analyst at Kaufman Bros. LP in New York.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=a6SAmxhsisb8&refer=india
What makes this especially painful is that a brief value network analysis (VNA) would have avoided this monumental mess in the first place. A quick visualization and analysis of call center activity would have instantly shown –
· Call centers are a critical intelligence listening post;
· Customer service and support is a highly social activity;
· For optimal effectiveness call centers are best distributed according to served populations.
The list of benefits stemming from a value networks approach to support and service goes on and on. The roles/link/exchanges inhabiting the critical service and support interactions are by far the most valuable in the entire enterprise portfolio. They are central to driving productivity, innovation, growth and prosperity.
The crushing outsourcing farce was advanced for decades deliberately by US tax-cheat companies like Accenture, McKinsey and Booz. (They also furnished years and years of crap mgmt advice to US automakers.) If these charlatans are in your organizations you better hide under your desk or head for the exits – nothing good will come from their obsolete ideas, bloated, gratuitous fees and bogus MBA doublespeak.
All the dumb companies that lapped-up the service/support outsourcing pap, have only themselves and their dopey mgmt advisors to blame It’s a total sham. Gee, I wonder if Accenture partners could take a break from the golf course long enough to consider a refund for all the incredible damage they have done over the years with their asinine outsourcing advice for service, support and call centers?
-j
P.S. Dell Computer now allows you to PAY for access to a North American based support tech… or default to one in “New DELL-he” for free. Good grief!
tom abeles
From: jheur...@gmail.com
To: Value-N...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Wise Up!
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:00:54 -0700
Hi John
Before I came down, I ordered some stuff from a mail order/web based company which has call centers located throughout the US with operators who proved quite knowledgeable and supportive. Several others seem to have access to selected parts of company database systems including customers and product information.
I understand that there have been problems with India in particular, primarily with language comprehension.
It is not clear where Delta and UAL went "wrong" and why or whether their experiences are as universally adverse as that of others. Are there other issues that disappeared simultaneously with the shift? It would seem that one can't just see call centers as separate from a company's total operation. Move one piece and many others change also.
I would like to know, specifically how VNA would have identified the problems faced by Delta and why the call center business just won't seem to die
best
tom
tom abeles
JT Maloney
Hi Tom –
Guatemala? Wow, nice pyramids.
As mentioned, call centers are often distributed. There are a lot of excellent success stories of distributed, more specifically, networked call centers. The successful ones have been carefully planned to meet and exceed the mission of multiple constituencies simultaneously – customers, the firm, local resources, product support, research & development, the environment, etc.
On the contrary, it is crystal clear what goes badly wrong with outsourcing service and support. Most often it is because the call center is perceived as a cost center. The only concern is short-term financial savings. This ruinous financial “race to the bottom” by overweening mgmt and incompetent advisors, like at the Bahamian company Accenture, is clearly the root-cause of legions of enterprise outsourcing/offshoring disasters.
Cost centers deliberately create short-term incentives for managers to underfund their units in order to benefit and enrich themselves. This underfunding delivers severely adverse consequences. Remember, you can’t cost save you way to prosperity!
Again, very specifically, VNA will quickly, efficiently and thoroughly elaborated the main call-center constituencies and their key ecologies. With VNA, these roles are woven into the strategic fabric of the firm, optimizing the natural and dynamic network patterns that exist for service/support excellence, growth, favorable outcomes and overall well-being.
Rather than reflex outsourcing to a offshore sub-contractor for an ephemeral cost savings, VNA visualization carefully shows the benefits and advantages of the call center to top-line growth. It shows the call center as a central plank in the customer experience and the fit in overall enterprise strategy.
Finally, call centers, service and support present abundant opportunities for prosperous growth in developing nations. Again, by spanning, visualizing and optimizing the entire complex system with VNA, including regional civil societies, their economies and the environment, value networks transform call centers into thoughtful, robust, long-term and successful global strategies for all.
-j
tom abeles
thanks for your insightful response. BUT (the other shoe
)Yeah, nice pyramids- but then where did the ancients go and why? Someone once said that when God created humans, he took a chance. Intelligence is not necessarily a survival charcterisitic.
1) You specifically identify the rationale for outsourcing- basically bottom-line greed and self promotion/rewards) as a principle reason. Does this represent the interesting fact that individuals within an organization or relationship seek to meet their personal goals first and that these are not always congruent with the long term survival and prospering of the organization, or organism to use a biological metaphor- is this what we have seen on Wall Street and in major consulting firms which you cite (where senior exec's may palm off these decision on policy recommendations on junior staff- a practice in most professions such as law and accounting, also)?
Since you have mentioned that the problems that VNA tackles are systems in nature and that the issues of individuals at critical nodes in a network may fail due to the larger factors, are we in the middle of such a crisis in the organizational world, be it corporate, non-profit or governmental, but particularly in the world where the bottom line rewards appear to be economic in nature. Is the pull of such rewards sufficient for decision makers in an organization to be blinded to the problems of other individuals- the failure to whistle blow because the risk/rewards run counter to such actions. It seems that the financial crisis is a paradigmatic example here.
2) I am very interested in your suggestion that part of the rationale for outsourcing, particularly to developing countries (there are call centers in the US for US corps), is the net benefit it yields to the country in which the center is located. The idea is more than interesting because, within the post secondary institutions in the United States, there is a growing trend to outsource faculty, some within the communities, other within the US but virtually because of location and, even, internationally for 24X7 support and not just cost savings. It is a trend that follows the outsourcing of the production of goods. Knowledge is easier to transport virtually than real goods. Again, India has been a paradigmatic example, not just with call centers but all services intellectual from engineering to even US tax preparation. Is there an underlying bit of altruism here? or are we talking General Bull Moose from Lil Abner?
cheers
tom
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 06:53:39 -0700
Windows Live™: Life without walls. Check it out.
JT Maloney
Hi Tom –
I’m a bit lost. What is the specific value networks or VNA question? Your message inquiry is a bit too complex and nuanced for a cogent reply in textual form, IMHO.
-j
From:
Value-N...@googlegroups.com [mailto:Value-N...@googlegroups.com] On
Behalf Of tom abeles
Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2009 8:49 AM
To: value-n...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: Wise Up!
Hi John
John Bordeaux
it out.
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JT Maloney
Hi –
This is getting confusing and odd.
“but doesn't repeal human nature.”
Whoever made this wild claim?
Value networks ratify human nature… and behavior. That’s the point.
“business owners started asking better questions.”
Yup. VNA visualization and optimization develops a potent network narrative that is highly instrumental in telling ‘truth to power.’ The profound knowledge derived from VNA can be jarring at first, but always prevails in the long run.
Some of the comments reflect a rather thin comprehension of value networks, network analytics and VNA. May I suggest the Open VNA site for a brush up?
-j
David Meggitt
consideration.
As John strongly advocates, cost considerations can easily be
outweighed by a thorough analysis of value contribution and
relationships.
Two kinds of outsourcing are:
1) Outsourced from core enterprise, but same country
2) Outsourced from core enterprise, but foreign country
Then first kind has been scrutinised by discovering the value network
at work.
Look here http://davidmeggittlog.ning.com/forum/topics/discover-the-challenges-to
Why not build on this example for further outsourcing decisions?
Regards,
David Meggitt
On Apr 18, 12:00 am, "JT Maloney" <jheuris...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi -
> Among the most egregious enterprise failures was the pathetic notion of
> wholesale outsourcing of call centers. That firms would trample on a key
> plank of the overall customer experience to theoretically save a few dollars
> is one of the most vulgar enterprise transgressions of all time.
>
> Fortunately, over the last decade, many US firms have come to their senses,
> acknowledge abject defeat and failure, and recalled this faulty strategy and
> their support operations from overseas. Here is the latest in a long-line of
> total disasters...
>
> April 17 (Bloomberg) -- Delta Air Lines Inc.
> "back in house" in the U.S. because customers were unhappy, Chief Executive
> Officer Richard
> ws&proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfi e
> lds=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1> Anderson said.
> Delta started shifting the calls to employees in the U.S. over the past
> year, and "completely removed" Indian contractors in the first quarter,
> Anderson said yesterday in a recorded message to employees.
>
> The move makes Delta the second big carrier to repatriate customer-service
> work from India in 2009, after UAL Corp.
> similar steps, said Karl
> <http://search.bloomberg.com/search?q=Karl+Keirstead&site=wnews&client...
> &proxystylesheet=wnews&output=xml_no_dtd&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&filter=p&getfiel d
> s=wnnis&sort=date:D:S:d1> Keirstead, an outsourcing analyst at Kaufman
> <http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601091&sid=a6SAmxhsisb8&refe...
> a> &sid=a6SAmxhsisb8&refer=india
> What makes this especially painful is that a brief value network analysis
> (VNA) would have avoided this monumental mess in the first place. A quick
> visualization and analysis of call center activity would have instantly
>
> . Call centers are a critical intelligence listening post;
>
> . Customer service and support is a highly social activity;
>
> . For optimal effectiveness call centers are best distributed
>
> The list of benefits stemming from a value networks approach to support and
> service goes on and on. The roles/link/exchanges inhabiting the critical
> service and support interactions are by far the most valuable in the entire
> enterprise portfolio. They are central to driving productivity, innovation,
> growth and prosperity.
>
> The crushing outsourcing farce was advanced for decades deliberately by US
> tax-cheat companies like Accenture, McKinsey and Booz. (They also furnished
> years and years of crap mgmt advice to US automakers.) If these charlatans
> are in your organizations you better hide under your desk or head for the
>
> All the dumb companies that lapped-up the service/support outsourcing pap,
> have only themselves and their dopey mgmt advisors to blame It's a total
> sham. Gee, I wonder if Accenture partners could take a break from the golf
> course long enough to consider a refund for all the incredible damage they
> have done over the years with their asinine outsourcing advice for service,
> support and call centers?
>
> -j
>
> P.S. Dell Computer now allows you to PAY for access to a North American