Processing Calls On- And Offshore

BTN this summer interviewed CEO Jerry Johnson of UpStream, the online and offline customer service support company created by Rosenbluth International in North Dakota and now owned by India's Godrej Group. It supports such clients as Orbitz, Travelocity, United and US Airways.

BTN: Companies in other industries have decided to keep their business customer servicing in the United States, even as they move consumer service abroad. Is there a conventional wisdom on that across industries?

Johnson: I don't know if there's a knowledge base driving that, but I can tell you it really is not an issue of competence as much as it is experience. Offshore, you get highly educated agents on the phone, generally with college degrees and higher, but you don't find the same level of experience with the same knowledge of geography, etc., that is needed, for example, for the corporate traveler.

BTN: You don't want the traveler to feel they know more than the agent.

Johnson: For example, in New York City, a lot of corporate travelers use sedan services and need to be picked up in different places, so you need to have an understanding of how that works.

BTN: There is the Dell Computer example, where they brought the business servicing back into the U.S., and American Express has done so with individual corporate accounts that expressed dismay over offshore servicing. What are these companies learning?

Johnson: Here's what happens to some companies: They make the decision to outsource and then they make a cost decision because of the economics of offshore. What they don't pay enough attention to is the training in transition and the fall back. We have a call center in Mumbai, but if we have a customer who wants to do work in India, we bring the agents from India to the U.S. and train them. We have them sit next to our U.S. agents for up to three months before migrating the business over there. Then, we still have the expertise here as a backup. That's how we began the Orbitz e-mail servicing—we had agents in Fargo for three months. A lot of companies have all the right intentions and they hire good people, but they have not been able to transition the knowledge and processes the right way, hence they have problems once they are over there.

BTN: It's interesting that the term "offshore outsourcing" has become simply "outsourcing" in the mainstream. Are the misperceptions frustrating?

Johnson: It's more a perception that's being created in the market, potentially by the press and the politicians combined. Somehow there's this creation, but when it comes to dealing with the companies, they have a clear understanding of what offshore means versus outsourcing. Most companies look at offshoring as a good opportunity for cost advantage, but what they balance that against is a risk of control and a risk of poor service. Since we were acquired, we've actually grown our U.S. centers greater than the offshore side.

BTN: What are the tangible service benefits to staying onshore?

Johnson: We've developed some specialties, such as inbound selling in our Chesapeake center. That's not easily created in other places. Offshore or on, you may be able to save, let's say $2 or $3 an hour, with your agents in a call center. That's pretty significant cost savings, but if you give up anything in the way of quality and lose one sale, you may be losing much more in revenue. There is a balance of being able to find the right skills for the business you have.

BTN: Amex is surveying users of its offshore service. How do you make sure the provider's brand name holds up?

Johnson: We do feedback surveys on a regular basis. Because we answer the phone on behalf of our customers, they also do surveys. The way a user is handled has an impact on the loyalty they have for that business. It's one part of a complex customer interaction, but it's a very important part. We do the same survey for all of our four centers. We also do quality monitoring and assessment of each center, and we score them on a monthly basis. The monitoring and scoring are with people like myself listening in. We measure each of those and monitor it against the other centers. What we've found is the issues are the same in India as in Fargo a lot of times, relative to what drives quality—it comes down to training and coaching.

BTN: Which types of services should be handled by e-mail and which by phone, and how is corporate travel different in that vein from leisure?

Johnson: There are certain services that absolutely need to be done on a personal basis with telephonic contacts. In my mind, en-route service needs to be telephonic. But with technology today, many of the other things can be done online or by e-mail—even cancellations and exchanges. Corporate is different in the sense that you have a lot of regular pattern trips—point-to-point city pair trips. A lot of it comes down to really having the right profile for travelers. Also, corporate travelers have become very conscious of costs, but at the same time they have business needs that they have to match. They may be able to save money with a connection, but if it adds four hours to their trip, they may miss their meeting. The other difference in corporate relates to international travel, where you have much more sophisticated travelers, so you need a higher level of skill to handle them.

BTN: Is corporate travel a big portion of your overall business?

Johnson: Corporate is less than 20 percent of our business today. We only do corporate travel by supporting our clients, so we aren't directly participating. We support Orbitz For Business. The corporate travel business is a significant area of growth for us. We see positioning our company to be able to do en-route servicing and to help with things like reducing calls per ticket.

BTN: How is what's known as Business Process Outsourcing affecting the corporate travel industry?

Johnson: It's a matter of your perspective on the definition. I've heard BPO used as a term that is encompassing of all customer interfaces, as well as the back-office type work, but many people tend to think of it only as the back office work. The travel industry is particularly appealing for those who handle transaction processing or call centers. We have very rapid adoption of online reservations, whether it be hotels, airlines or any of the companies like Orbitz and Travelocity that are driving this. All the major call-center companies are interested in this and we're getting a lot of new entrants into travel.

The travel industry is in a state of transition, and it is looking for more cost-effective methods of handling different aspects of the business.