CCOs: Flipping BPO Quality Perceptions On Its Head

Transcript

[00:00:08] Steve MacDonald: Welcome to the Contact Center Perspectives podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host, and today, we have a very special guest: Steve Kaay. Now, Steve’s not only an expert. You’ve been in the business for over 30 years. You’ve actually led outsourcing partners all throughout the world.

You actually oversaw 3,600 outsourced partners or individual agents at a single time. You’re a former president of the Contact Center Association of Phoenix. You’ve got a lot to say, so maybe we should change our perspective a little bit here. 

We will talk about how we want to flip the BPO quality perceptions on its head because the typical perception is that 72% of companies outsource. So, it’s an important part of our business. However, the perception of quality is a big part of that. So, we’re gonna go through the process of debunking that today.

Is there anything else you’d like to add about your career and a little bit about you before we start? 

[00:01:10] Steve Kaay: I’m absolutely a believer in the quality of outsourcing done well, and I think that as we share some information here, they’re going to be some eyes open to discover some things that people aren’t aware of regarding the quality that they can experience outsourcing their company’s customer interface with PPOs. I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and we’ve learned some incredible lessons to pass along. 

[00:01:37] Steve MacDonald: Fantastic. Over those 30 years, there’s got to be some top lessons that you’ve learned along the way. Could you share the highlights with us?

[00:01:45] Steve Kaay: I think part of what I would address as we want to talk about best lessons learned is that BPOs, when chosen correctly, will still take your engagement to make sure that your culture gets embraced by those BPO partners that you select and they’ll still need your input to hone communication skills, language skills, and other competencies, probably a product specialization information that they’ll need to learn. 

All of those things are teachable, and you’ll find that virtually all of our BPO partners offshore are eager to learn and grow in their careers, unlike what you might find here in the U.S. 

[00:02:37] Steve MacDonald: I know one of the things we discussed before is that a lot of people have concerns. My industry is complex. There are a lot of nuances. I have to have somebody who has experience, and what you’ve proven over the years is that if your BPO partner and the agents are dedicated, you can actually train them to handle these consultative engagements, as you would call them.

With chatbots and AI and everything taking on more and more of the lower-level engagements, that means the agents have to take on more of the harder consultative engagements to address that. How can you take somebody who doesn’t even have any background in the industry that the contact center has to address and make them into somebody that you’d be very proud of to represent your business?

[00:03:26] Steve Kaay: Yeah. I’m happy to do that. So, I spent about nine years offshore leading an in-house offshore operation in the Philippines. I was in the auto parts space, and we sold aftermarket auto parts. We had a large contingent of employees in the Philippines, and I must tell you, the Philippines isn’t an automotive culture. What I mean by that is that employees don’t have cars in the Philippines. They don’t drive. When they go home, their mom and dad don’t drive. There’s not a car sitting in the driveway. That is to say, they can’t just go home, lift the hood, and find out, ‘Okay, where’s the alternator again?’

That’s not available to them. They’re not a car culture. They ride around in jeepneys. Few people have cars, but for the most part, they don’t drive. They rely on public transportation. So, it was incumbent upon us to teach them what they needed to do and what they needed to know to help our US-based customers in the auto parts space, and we were incredibly successful in doing that. Some of that took training with some of our vendors who provided parts. We also provided a local automotive school to others onsite. Overall, the tasks we undertook to equip them made it incredibly successful in serving our customers and doing a great job.

[00:04:54] Steve MacDonald: The first lesson from what you’re saying here is that quality can be taught. In other words, if you’ve got somebody on the other end willing, open, and genuine about being taught so they can do their job well, you can teach the necessary skills. You created a really good visual there for us.

If you don’t drive a car, how can you consult with people trying to find a part for a particular problem they’re having and a particular model? The complexity would get quite dramatic. 

Give us an idea: How would you rate the quality of the engagements, consultative engagements, and your agents’ responses in the Philippines compared to those in other areas or in-house, maybe in the US? 

[00:05:47] Steve Kaay: First of all, interactions with customers are either primarily transactional or consultative. All of us in this space hope that we can move our employees to facilitate more consultative interactions than transactional ones. We can get AI to step in over the coming years to do transactional interactions with our customers.

They can’t do consultative kinds of things. That comes from product expertise. Our outsource partners did incredibly well at learning our products. It didn’t matter that it was in the auto parts space. They could have been learning about washers, dryers, lawnmowers, or anything else. Their hunger and desire to learn set them up to be successful. 

Now, we were not only partnering with employees in the Philippines, but we had partners in other geographies as well. We were in the Dominican Republic and Tijuana in Mexico, so I did come to learn over time. Our BPO partners in Mexico tended to be more of a car culture, meaning they had a head start to understanding and learning about car parts. So, my Mexican employees drove to work. In fact, at lunchtime, they went out and lifted the hood on their own car with everybody else gathered around and wanted to show everybody what they’d done since yesterday to their vehicles.

It was much more of a car culture, so it was like a diving board. It was a springboard. They got a head start on everybody else because of what they already knew. But they both ended up in similar places because of their desire to learn and to be effective communicators and consultants to our customers, and that surprised me. Both were incredibly successful.

[00:07:53] Steve MacDonald: I want to start with the end and then figure out how you got there because it was incredibly intuitive when you explained it to me. What you’re saying here is these BPO partners, whether it was the car culture or not, we’re able to get to a level of excellence in addressing these consultative engagements in a very high-quality way, in a way that actually exceeded in-house teams, where the quality level was higher. 

Now, here’s my next question: Why is that the case? Obviously, if we can get people locally here who are English-language first speakers who drive cars or use lawnmowers or use our health care system or whatever it is, then we can get higher-quality agents and higher-quality engagements, scores, retention, and revenue for the company.

Why were you getting higher-quality, overall consultative engagements and scores on demo lines, KPIs, and revenue from your outsource partners? What is the difference? 

[00:08:56] Steve Kaay: I think it’s a couple of things. One is that our outsourced partners have a different view of work than our US employees do. For example, we spend $15 per hour on an employee’s work. In the US, that gets you a lot of indifference on the part of an employee. So, that person is just trading time for money. It’s low enough that they’re always looking for something else. So, what you get from that employee is a lack of caring, a lack of concern, a lack of effort, a lack of longevity, tenure, and care about their job. 

What we found in our outsourced partners was that their approach and view of work were very different. They have a desire to go to work and to make a difference. You and I think about that we work for a company, but many of our outsourced partners don’t work for the company. They work for their family. They would say, ‘I work for my wife and kids. I don’t work for just the company. So, I’m able to endure difficulty. I can endure hardship. I can endure things that are unexpected, such as turns of events that throw me a curveball. I stick with my job because I don’t work for the company. I work for my family.’

I think that’s about who we hire, who we interview for, and who we identify. There’s also a culture of finding and keeping a good job, and you find that in outsourcing in a way you don’t find in the US. 

For similar dollars spent, the longevity you get, the care you get, the interest, and the desire to learn are all significantly higher than in the US, and that makes a big difference in how we interact with the customer in the end. It’s a massive win for the company to invest in outsourcing and people like that. 

[00:11:12] Steve MacDonald: One of the things that just was like those lightning bolt to the head moments, where I got it, was that you pay somebody those kinds of wages or even more than that, going to the $20 range or $30 range, that is not a career, and we use agents. 

The role of an agent is looked upon as a stepping stone. What am I going to do before I figure out what I want to do in life? So many companies these days are trying to give career paths to agents and say, ‘Look, this is a stepping stone to an entire career. ‘’

The outsourcing partners you’re talking about already consider it a career. I take pride in what I do because it allows me to take care of my family. I’m not looking at this as a temporary gig. 

We’re all, ‘I’m going to go out and have beers with my buddies on Friday and not even think about it anymore.’ This is a very different mentality, and it means I’m going to work harder, make sure I’m better at what I do, and stay longer so I’m not going to have to be retrained repeatedly. 

It brings up another question: Agent turnover is a major issue in the industry because you’ve got to retrain constantly and keep the quality of your agents together, and they’re maintaining the culture and everything. On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is agent turnover to running a successful contact center, no matter where?

One is not important at all. Ten is vital to the company’s overall growth and sustainability. If you could answer that, I’ll have a follow-up question, too. 

[00:12:57] Steve Kaay: Sure. It’s in the 8-9 range. It’s at the top. Retaining your employees is absolutely critical.

[00:13:05] Steve MacDonald: My next question is, if it’s critical, what is the difference between agent turnover when you’re trying to do it in-house in your country, the US, versus the agent turnover in the outsourcing partners? When you’re treating them as long-term employees, career employees, and you’re investing heavily in training and all the things that you would typically do, what’s the difference in the turnover?

[00:13:33] Steve Kaay: Generally, retention with our outsource partners tends to be higher. We have better retention, hanging on to our employees, more extended longevity, and all things are equally provided. Here is a caveat: there isn’t another BPO a couple of miles down the road offering a dollar more in an hour because that can be a factor. Still, if you’re paying people fairly and treating them well, people stay with a leader and supervisor who takes good care of them and has their best interest in mind. They will remain in that job and won’t leave for another dollar an hour because they’re finding a fulfilling career, and the company has their best interest at heart. That’s what I typically have seen. People don’t jump if you’re hiring right and taking care of your employees. That puts all this together.

[00:14:26] Steve MacDonald: The quality of the international outsourcing partners you’ve worked with has been good. Do you have any stories to share on that front? 

[00:14:37] Steve Kaay: Sure. So recently, I worked with a healthcare company, and they are in the Healthcare imaging space. The nature of the work was to schedule health appointments and to do some back office work of transcribing doctors’ orders via fax into a database where it may have yet to come across clearly.

Doctors don’t write very clearly, and their signatures are certainly almost undiscernible, so work was being done in the US for X number of dollars per hour. We found them an outsource partner, and we found that the work that they did at our outsource partner was absolutely of higher quality, with fewer errors and longer employee stays.

Longevity was nearly twice as long as employees in the US. The care and follow-through were up significantly. That is to say, making sure all the T’s were crossed, eyes were dotted, and the follow-through was significantly better. That’s a quality commentary in the US-based company still employing that group and has grown that group from 50 to 100 individuals. They’re absolutely ecstatic and have given them a raise because of the effectiveness of that particular outsource partner on their business. I can probably tell you two or three more.

[00:16:12] Steve MacDonald: I feel like the motivations to outsource need to evolve just as all kinds of things are evolving in the industry. AI is one of them. What I mean by that is that we typically, as an industry, look to outsource partners. We must reduce costs because we’re often viewed as a cost center rather than a value center.

That’s a whole other podcast we could do. We need to save costs. We have hours of operation for the contact center that we want to extend into holidays, and there are very tactical reasons why we typically choose to outsource. I’m hearing from you: ‘ Yes, those are absolutely valid reasons why you want to outsource, but you’ve got to add another one to that reason to outsource, which is to upgrade the quality of your contact center.’

[00:17:04] Steve Kaay: That’s absolutely true. 

[00:17:06] Steve MacDonald: With that, tell me a bit about the things you’ve had this perspective on over your career, not just since you and I started talking for years now. Tell us a bit about your accomplishments. What are you most proud of that you’ve been able to accomplish?

[00:17:28] Steve Kaay: I think I’m most proud of being able to take a group of people on a journey. That is to say, casting a vision for where we need to go, leading, and developing people. People who know Steve Kaay would call me a people developer, so developing people and then seeing them launch and further their careers without you going on. As we’re recording this last week, one of my protegees has just launched into an executive role offshore somewhere after 19 years.

I couldn’t be prouder. Teaching the business, casting a vision, and bringing people together to accomplish a particular vision—that’s what’s satisfying. Reaching those corporate goals that have been set for us—that’s what’s rewarding. 

[00:18:17] Steve MacDonald: That’s a focus on people, and we’re in the people business, so investing in people is something you’ve been the most proud of. If you could translate that and anything else, what kind of advice would you give to folks watching or listening to this podcast right now when considering outsourcing?

[00:18:42] Steve Kaay: My advice is that you can increase the quality of the interactions and interfaces with your customers through outsourcing. No question. An unequivocal answer would be “absolutely.” This is the direction that I would recommend that you investigate. 

I’ve had tremendous success dollar for dollar spent. The quality is higher. Longevity is higher. My customers are more satisfied; you can’t miss it if you pick a great partner. And when I say pick a good partner, I mean pick a good partner and then cultivate the relationship to help them understand what you need to be successful. It’s a real win.

[00:19:23] Steve MacDonald: I said it before, it’s so intuitive. They’re in it for a career, not a stepping stone, not for beer money or Friday night. So, the motivation is just completely different. That’s what was the light bulb moment for me. You mentioned culture, and I wanted to ask you specifically about that. Why is culture so important? You’ve mentioned it several times today. 

[00:19:44] Steve Kaay: Certainly. Culture is made up of both skill and character. Sometimes, we interview primarily for skill and forget all about character. When I talk about character, that’s an ambiguous term. Character is embracing your company’s values: commitment,  hard work, truthfulness, ownership, and follow-through. I don’t know your values, but you certainly want to find people who are already embracing those values before you hire them. If they do, it’s easier to create a culture where skill is present, and you’re enhancing the skill.

Character is also present, and you’re enhancing it. What do I mean by that? We’re the kind of people that our customers like to deal with. For example, our list of values included truthfulness. Some people call that honesty and candidness. To some degree, we live in a culture with a default for distrust. We don’t trust our neighbors. We don’t trust our boss. We don’t trust our political leaders, et cetera. We start when we meet people with cautiousness and a default around distrust, but we want to create a culture of trust and truthfulness.

Here is one example, and we’ll go back to talking about context centers: We want to make sure that the way we conduct ourselves in business, embracing those values, is mirrored in our outsourced partner. So, you will have to find leaders who exemplify those values when you look for a partner. You can’t just teach it to the front line, and the leaders aren’t aligned with them. Your front line is going to follow leadership. 

Here’s a real-life example of this. It’s a little controversial, but I’ll share it anyway. So, sometimes, our outsource partners will tell our employees and outsourcers that you can’t tell the customer and can’t be truthful with them about your location. We don’t want you to tell them, or we just want you to say, ‘I can’t answer you.’ 

So, here’s what I’ve learned, and this is part of your values. Truthfulness isn’t just the absence of deception. It’s being completely forthright. That’s what honesty and truthfulness are. If your employees perceive that you aren’t allowing them to be truthful with the customer, they have to wonder what you’re not being truthful with them about. If this is part of the culture, sometimes we lie, deceive, or twist the truth.

Your employees probably don’t trust what you tell them, either. In many of our contact centers, we let our employees tell customers because it’s part of the value of being completely truthful. I’m in Honduras because, truthfully, my employee is proudly Honduran.

Now, my customers may not like that, but it aligns with our values. If I ask you, Steve, not to identify yourself as a Honduran or to feel guilty or bad because you exposed a customer to the truth, then you have this conflicted set of values. You want to find one that fully embraces your company values and then make sure that your partner embraces those same values. 

[00:23:19] Steve MacDonald: I’m so glad we’re ending on this note because there’s trust with a BPO partner. There’s also trust with leaders and their agents to go off script if they need to and do the things they know they’re on the front line.

They have intuition about how to address a customer, what that customer is asking, and what they really need. The trust issue runs through the whole gamut.

[00:23:42] Steve Kaay: It does. 

[00:23:43] Steve MacDonald: Is there anything that we’ve left a stone unturned here? We’ve talked about a lot. If there was anything additional that you wanted to say, you have an opportunity right now. 

[00:23:57] Steve Kaay: I think we’ll leave it there. We’ve covered a lot of good things, and hopefully, we’ve enlightened some individuals as to not only the reasons to consider BPO partners but also the value to the business of upgrading their quality by finding a terrific BPO partner. 

[00:24:17] Steve MacDonald: Fantastic, Steve. I would love to ask your permission to provide a link to your LinkedIn profile if people have follow-up questions. Would that be appropriate? 

[00:24:29] Steve Kaay: Absolutely. I love to help in that way. 

[00:24:32] Steve MacDonald: Fantastic. Thank you for coming on and sharing all these insights and helping us follow our perceptions of how we work with a BPO partner. We’re not giving up quality; we’re actually gaining quality. We’re gaining good quality.

People are very serious in their careers and want to be dedicated to what they’re doing. I just appreciate all of your insights. 

[00:24:51] Steve Kaay: This was a lot of fun, Steve. Thanks!