How to Overcome the Challenge of Cultural Differences with Your BPO Partners

Transcript

[00:00:01] Steve MacDonald: Welcome to the Contact Center Perspectives Podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host, and we have a very interesting guest today, Karla Kannan. Karla, you are currently a Senior Vice President of Customer Experience. You’ve worked with huge brands like the Four Seasons, and you’ve partnered with BPO providers all over the world. That lends a lot of credibility to what we’re going to be talking about today: how to overcome the challenge of cultural differences with your BPO partners.

[00:00:30] Steve MacDonald: Before we do that, I’d love to turn it over to you to explain a little bit more about your background. I’ll say one thing I thought was interesting—you box a couple of times a week, just to release stress and explore. But we’d love to learn a little bit more about you before we get started.

[00:00:48] Karla Kannan: Yes. Well, you know, it’s once in the morning—you get to hit someone, and someone hits you back. You get all the frustrations out.

[00:00:56] Steve MacDonald: Oh, I love that. Well, I want to start off and talk about teaching empathy across different industries. What does that mean, and why is that important?

[00:01:08] Karla Kannan: Well, particularly when you have a service provider that might not be as familiar with how your customers leverage your products or services to begin with, it’s very easy to misunderstand or undervalue the reason why they’re contacting you.

[00:01:25] Karla Kannan: So, one thing that was very important when I was working with our BPO providing support desk services was understanding what urgency meant for a customer at a specific time of the month. I was working with a company that handled financial processes for hospitality.

[00:01:44] Karla Kannan: A ticket that comes to you mid-month about something not working might not be as urgent as one during the end of the month, when they’re trying to close. That changes the impact significantly. Teaching your BPO partners about those critical moments or moments of impact in your customer journey is very important.

[00:02:02] Karla Kannan: So then, in return, when they receive communication or engagement—or they have to get on a call with the client—they understand why a particular ticket or service desk item might be more critical at that time. That can only happen if they develop empathy or learn how to empathize with your clients.

[00:02:23] Steve MacDonald: That makes perfect sense. It’s not just another ticket. It’s not just another number. That ticket versus another ticket might represent someone in a very different state, and it might be critical to them at that moment. That makes a lot of sense.

[00:02:38] Steve MacDonald: So, how do you empower agents now that you’re teaching this empathy? A lot of this is emotional, right? People are emotional when they’re calling in. Most times, they’re calling because they have a big problem. So, how do you empower the agents to be situational and trust them to determine what they need to do at the moment?

[00:02:59] Karla Kannan: Well, the key is also having empathy for those team members. What I mean is that we have to understand that when these teams get someone reaching out, it’s never from a place of, “Oh, everything is great, and I just called to say hi, and I love your service.”

[00:03:15] Karla Kannan: They’re calling because there’s a problem they’re facing. When they’re facing this problem, your client is not typically going to be in a good mood. So, you also have to empathize with what the agents are going through. Then, you talk to them about seeing the issue through the eyes of the client and understanding how it might particularly affect them.

[00:03:49] Karla Kannan: It’s a lot of role-playing. I enjoy role-playing quite a bit. One exercise I like is called “dropping the ball.” You grab a tennis ball, and you’re the client. You say, “I’m the client, you’re support, and I’m going to send you a question.” Then you send it, and you see how many times the ball goes back and forth.

[00:04:06] Karla Kannan: As the client in this role play, when the ball comes to you and you don’t get the answer you need, you just don’t catch it. That shows the agent that they didn’t provide what was needed. I find those exercises very effective because they show in real time how many exchanges it takes for a customer to get the answer they need.

[00:04:24] Steve MacDonald: That’s part of empathizing, right? Not putting the client through that. These ideas of cultural differences—training agents to empathize with the client and their situation in the customer journey—become even more complex when working with partners who operate very differently. If you’re in the Philippines or somewhere else in the world, how does that play a factor, and how do you handle it?

[00:04:52] Karla Kannan: Culture is a huge factor in the way that teams collaborate within themselves and then with you as a client. One is because there might be a culture of more teamwork, for example, in Asia. With our team members that were in China, I experienced that quite a bit, and in Malaysia. It was a lot about “we work as a team,” and we sold things as a team.

[00:05:12] Karla Kannan: There might be other cultures where it’s more like, “No, I own it, and it’s for me to take it through.” So, understanding the cultural differences in how they approach teamwork is very important. But the other part of that is learning how to communicate with them.

[00:05:25] Karla Kannan: I told my team that the biggest learning I had in working globally was not necessarily saying, “Oh, I work here, I work there.” It was really having to adapt my management approach to the different cultures so that my communication style would resonate with them.

[00:05:39] Karla Kannan: So, it takes you understanding, how do they learn? What approach does it take? Is it more effective for you to do role plays? Is it more effective for you to show them what good looks like, what challenges look like, and how we resolve them together—maybe bring them to a brainstorming session?

[00:05:53] Karla Kannan: So, you rally have to understand what resonates more with them culturally. In return, when you train them and equip them with knowledge, you’re more effective.

[00:06:03] Steve MacDonald: So, what that sounds like to me is you’ve got different customer service strategies based on these cultural nuances, and that puts more onus on you. The way that you’re training is different here than it is over there. That’s a whole new level of responsibility you need to take on. How do you manage that?

[00:06:23] Karla Kannan: Well, it is, but at the end of the day, the way I see it is the success of this support desk is the success of my customers. So, I have to be able to influence the change that might be needed or the strategy that might be needed. Of course, you have to have a very good BPO partner with you to go along with the change. You also have to have that openness from the team members managing those departments to go along with the strategy.

[00:06:51] Karla Kannan: And lastly, the commitment from them that once you invest the time to give them the knowledge and the tools, they will reinforce it, and they will keep implementing it. It’s not a one-time thing. The biggest mistake that people make—and I think this applies not only to BPOs but to everyone—is thinking that training is a one-time event.

[00:07:12] Karla Kannan: You come into the company, I teach you things, and then you’re gone. It’s constant. Every week, you have to show what good looks like, what success looks like, and how it is attainable. So, for me, that commitment from the managers of those teams and from the BPO partner is so important because if I’m going to invest myself in that process, they have to go along with me.

[00:07:33] Steve MacDonald: So, how is this different than training your in-house team? Because it’s ultimately about client success, and it can be the exact same client—just being addressed by different teams. So, tell us a little bit about the difference between managing these BPOs and your internal team and what you watch out for.

[00:07:51] Karla Kannan: The difference when you’re managing directly is that you can have a much more rapid impact and can measure them directly. So, it makes it easier. You know, there’s a chain of command that is established.

[00:08:04] Karla Kannan: When you have a BPO partner, you have to influence change. You have to create a lot of cross-collaboration. You don’t want them to feel like they’re not part of your team because they should be at least as invested as you are in the success of those clients. The partnership is only going to be effective that way.

[00:08:20] Karla Kannan: So, you want to feel like one team, but what makes it harder, of course, is that the BPO might have different practices or a different way of measuring performance. So, you have to align. Let’s make sure that how you measure them individually as a team is not so different from how I view it. Otherwise, we are not going to connect the dots, and the customer is going to perceive it.

[00:08:43] Karla Kannan: The other part of that is having effective handoffs and mechanisms to communicate between teams. So, in my case, the customer success team needed to communicate with the BPO that owns the support desk. That relationship could only happen if there is an actual relationship built between the teams. If they see themselves as separate entities, they start working in silos. At times, I had to take more of a training role with the support team, but it was in the spirit of the success of my customer success team and, in return, the success of the clients.

[00:09:18] Steve MacDonald: So, if we could just kind of take a step or two back. We’re talking about a lot of these relationships with BPO partners. Working with BPO partners in a contact center and creating customer experience is wildly popular—we know all the reasons why. But how is it of value to you? How does it add to your business by working with outside partners versus just keeping everything 100% in-house?

[00:09:47] Karla Kannan: Two things. One is the ability to scale. Financial reasons might not allow you to scale at your given location—it may be cost-prohibitive. But then the other part of that is localization. At some point, I was able to open a physical office in Mexico City, and that allows us to service customers in Latin America. That made a big difference in how the tickets were resolved because the connection with clients was not only the language but also cultural. The way they approach conversations, the way they talk to each other—it made the process simpler. So, it’s not only the financial gains that you have or the scale, but customers also can connect and, of course, to service them in the hours of their operations.

[00:10:29] Karla Kannan: So, for me, that use case of looking at doing business in Latin America and then realizing, well, we can continue to service them out of the US or India—we’re not going to get the same gaze if we have someone locally that can connect with them in language, culturally, same time zone, and following the processes that we have defined.

[00:10:48] Steve MacDonald: I love that. Scaling from a cost perspective—it could be the least expensive, covering off time. So, those are traditional reasons, but what you just talked about is there’s a role for a BPO partner in a lot of different situations where an outside partner might be a higher quality solution to addressing your customer needs.

[00:11:09] Karla Kannan: Yes, you can use it, and of course, AI is making great and bad advancements in you being able to translate, but there are nuances to the relationship when you deal with other countries. How they perceive communication one way or another. So, for me, that was very critical. I wanted the clients to feel supported locally, but also in a way that resonated with them.

[00:11:31] Steve MacDonald: Makes perfect sense. There was a chief experience officer who was on the podcast a few months back, and she said, you know, you as a BPO partner have a lot of interactions with my customers. So, here’s one of the most important things that I want—not only to make me smarter. I want to learn. When working with your BPO partners, is that a big opportunity for learning as well?

[00:11:55] Karla Kannan: Huge. Each of those tickets that they receive are nugget of gold, and I think it’s very easy to think that because it’s a transactional relationship—you need something, I give it to you, and you go away.

[00:12:06] Karla Kannan: But in reality, a great example of that with customer success is you can have your calls with the project champion or the super user that is leveraging your products or services, and then they forgot to tell you that their executive sponsor or their power user is leaving. But that comes through a ticket because they need to enable someone else or deactivate or give credentials, whatever it might be.

[00:12:29] Karla Kannan: That information is so critical. There’s a huge risk for the account to churn, and you would have never found out because it just didn’t come up. Of course, your customer success teams could ask these questions periodically, but sometimes it just escapes the customer’s mind. So, in those tickets, there are opportunities for support to aggregate.

[00:12:46] Karla Kannan: I call it support desk to aggregate data and say, we’re getting very frequent tickets about X feature, and then bring product and bring the customer success or experience teams and say, this is where we’re encountering a lot of challenges. Could we do something about it? And then that becomes part of your roadmap.

[00:13:03] Karla Kannan: It could be changed in an organization. It could be opportunities like somebody’s constantly saying, why can’t you guys do this? Why can’t you guys do this? And now that can become an idea for your roadmap to enhance your product or service.

[00:13:17] Steve MacDonald: Now, as a BPO partner, is that something that you feel is innate in the relationship—that they’re sharing all this information? Or is that something that you’re saying, no, this is what I want? Part of the training is it’s not just the handling of the individual tickets, but it’s the aggregated learning that comes out of that. Is that a natural part of that BPO relationship, or is that something that you have to work at getting?

[00:13:39] Karla Kannan: I don’t think it’s natural. I think it’s part of the conversation. It’s also ensuring that the ticketing system that you have allows for it because if it’s just email-based and it’s like, hello, and then the person replies, it will be very difficult to aggregate that data. Then you will need the agents to be very intuitive to tell you that and aggregate it manually.

[00:14:00] Karla Kannan: So, first is having the right ticketing system that could allow you to categorize that data. Then, because data is so important today, having a team that can learn from it, like a user education team that can take that and say, this is where we see trends, or maybe it’s part of your CSAT survey.

[00:14:17] Karla Kannan: This is coming up a lot, and you’re able to use keywords to categorize those tickets and say, hey, these product tickets keep coming up, and this is the commonality between them. So, it does take you having a strategy that you can implement with the partner that the ticketing system allows for it, because sometimes it’s their ticketing system, sometimes it’s yours, so you have to be able to respond to that.

[00:14:36] Karla Kannan: But you, as their customer, have to be able to do the analytics on that data. I think the responsibility we can put in the BPO partner is more of, hey, this is what I need from you for me to do X. When they understand why you’re trying to do this, that’s where the relationship becomes tighter because now they know the why.

[00:14:58] Steve MacDonald: So, when you’re evaluating a BPO partner relationship, what are the top three or four things that you’re looking for, that are the most important criteria?

[00:15:09] Karla Kannan: I want to ensure that they have processes that they have navigated with other customers. I am not in the business of trying to create them because when I look for a BPO partner, I’m looking for a solution to an existing problem. So, I want somebody who has already solved it for someone else and can show me that framework.

[00:15:27] Karla Kannan: Second, they are invested in training their resources. That’s so critical. I want to make sure that they have a culture of learning and training because that’s the same culture I’m going to bring. So, we have to be compatible in that sense.

[00:15:39] Karla Kannan: And then, of course, I need them to be responsive. I’m going to be looking at past examples, testimonials, or references that show me they’re responsive. When I say responsive, I mean that they’re open to feedback and that they respond to it as well.

[00:15:54] Karla Kannan: I would think those three are very much core. That is fundamentally the pillar of your support practice. You want to make sure that, to support you, there’s openness, there’s training, and that they have an established framework.

[00:16:06] Steve MacDonald: Tell me a story about working with a BPO partner where they added value—where they were producing high quality, they were responsive. Where you’re like, wow, that made a difference. I learned something there. Is there a story—you don’t have to name names or anything—that could kind of bring this to life? What’s the best of the best of working with a BPO partner?

[00:16:29] Karla Kannan: I think one of the best experiences I had was when I opened that office in Mexico, working with the BPO.

[00:16:36] Karla Kannan: I’m Mexican, but I have never actually opened a business in Mexico. So, coming and doing it later, having that BPO was critical. I think where they played the biggest role was in helping me navigate some of these cultural nuances. Sometimes the resources will ask for things, and you don’t know if that is probably what you should do because it’s more of an expectation in the region, or if it’s something you should do because it will improve the way you work together.

[00:17:06] Karla Kannan: So, someone who can help you navigate those conversations—not just like, hey, we do payroll, and we do support, and that’s as far as we take it. You want a partner who helps you navigate those uncharted waters and who is willing to pick up the phone when you have a question and say, “No, let me walk you through what will happen if you do this and what will not happen if you do this.” That, for me, was valuable.

[00:17:27] Karla Kannan: I’m looking for that partnership that extends beyond the simple, “These are the tasks, and then we don’t talk to each other again.” I want you to help me grow as a business because we grow together.

[00:17:38] Steve MacDonald: Yeah. That was insightful on how to navigate this market and learn. What haven’t we talked about that we should cover? What haven’t I asked that you want to make sure gets mentioned on the podcast?

[00:17:53] Karla Kannan: Well, one of the key takeaways I had when working with BPOs is that we tend to think about just the specific service they’re providing. But you’re working with another organization that probably runs in a very different way than you do, mostly under HR practices. You have to understand what that means.

[00:18:15] Karla Kannan: You have to be able to have conversations with them and for them to be open to those questions, like I mentioned. But a lot of that is also understanding where our boundaries are and where we can, not necessarily eliminate them, but soften them so we can work better together.

[00:18:31] Karla Kannan: From my experience, having those conversations with the right people on the BPO side is very important. One thing I liked to do when I traveled and met them was meet them for coffee because I felt that we had to work together. It wasn’t just like, “Hey, I work with the resources.”

[00:18:48] Karla Kannan: I wanted to keep in touch, almost like a business review with them—informal, if you may—but I want them to know that I was very close to how we were operating. In those meetings, we would meet for coffee. I would bring feedback and say, “Hey, here are some areas of opportunity,” or “Here is where we’re going next year. How can you support me? I’m going to grow or go into this other region—can you support me from there? This is the other country. What can you do for me?”

[00:19:16] Karla Kannan: So, I encourage people who work with BPOs to not be afraid to have those informal business reviews with them. This is a strategic opportunity for them to tell you how they’re growing, changing, or what they’re adding. At the same time, it’s an opportunity to share how you’re growing, how you’re going to lean on them more, or if you’re going to need more resourcing.

[00:19:34] Steve MacDonald: So, the next one is going to be a fun question. What are you most proud of? You’ve done a lot of work in customer experience and with contact centers and BPO partners. What would you say, as you look back, is something you’re most proud of?

[00:19:49] Karla Kannan: Actually, partnering with them on the training programs. Seeing how the resources perceive you investing yourself in their growth is priceless. It usually starts with you going there and asking them to learn and do something different. The first reaction that any human being has to change is a resounding “No.” Why? “We’ve always done it this way.”

[00:20:13] Karla Kannan: Walking out of those workshops knowing that you were impactful and that what you delivered or achieved together is going to help your clients is incredibly rewarding. I think my most proud moment was a workshop I did in India in March of this year. It was a comprehensive workshop with role-play exercises, and just seeing the supervisors’ faces light up, realizing, “Look, they’re investing in my professional growth so I can also service customers differently,” was amazing.

[00:20:44] Steve MacDonald: Makes perfect sense. So, I have one last question. We’ve just covered a lot of ground, but when working with a BPO partner, if there was one takeaway you’d want people to have from this episode, what would it be?

[00:21:01] Karla Kannan: To create partnerships with them. Make sure it’s a partnership and not just a service-provider relationship. If it’s just a service provider, it will only take you so far. But if the relationship grows and they’re more invested in it, seeing success through your eyes and your customers’ eyes, is going to transform the way you work together.

[00:21:24] Karla Kannan: You need to get their buy-in. You need to work together. It’s not going to be easy—you’re likely working with someone on the other side of the world or in a different time zone. It takes patience, effort, and cultural adaptation. But it’s worth it because you build a true partnership.

[00:21:40] Steve MacDonald: All right, you gave me an idea for one last question. We’ve talked about the wonderful aspects of working with a BPO partner, but there are challenges in working with any partner, right? What’s one of the top challenges of working with a BPO partner, and how do you work through that challenge to reach the good partnership you’ve described?

[00:22:03] Karla Kannan: The resistance to change is the hardest. Sometimes what you’re trying to achieve might not align with how they approach things, and that can lead to some friction. But it should be good friction that fosters collaboration.

[00:22:18] Karla Kannan: At some point, though, you may need to evaluate the relationship, and if it’s not working, you must consider finding a different partner. I’ve had to do that before. It’s painful—I’m not going to say it’s easy. It’s also a change. Many times, you want to keep the resources they’ve brought because they’re excellent.

[00:22:36] Karla Kannan: So, before you commit to that relationship, I encourage everyone to consider what will happen to those resources. Is it something you can negotiate? You’re bound to find great people, but the relationship with the BPO might not work out. There may be other ways to address this, but before signing that dotted line, make sure you understand the restrictions in case the relationship doesn’t work out.

[00:22:59] Steve MacDonald: Thank you for all the insights you’ve shared. Here’s what I know—people are going to have questions. Would it be appropriate to share a link to your LinkedIn profile so they can reach out to you?

[00:23:14] Karla Kannan: I’m always happy to answer questions, so yes, for sure—reach out.

[00:23:17] Steve MacDonald: Fantastic. Well, Karla, thank you so much for coming on and sharing just a world of information—literally, all over the world you’ve traveled and worked with BPO partners.

[00:23:29] Steve MacDonald: If there was a message for BPO partners themselves, what would you say? What would you like to see from their side of the fence?

[00:23:41] Karla Kannan: Don’t be afraid to suggest. Don’t be afraid to bring ideas to the table. It shouldn’t always be the client coming to you to ask for something, suggest something, or improve something. You hold a lot of the data and intelligence. You interact with their customers daily. Don’t be afraid to propose strategies, innovations, or frameworks.

[00:24:05] Karla Kannan: Don’t hesitate because we might not be thinking about it. We could be so wrapped up in the day-to-day that we overlook certain opportunities. Your suggestions are valuable. So, don’t just take—also give.

[00:24:18] Steve MacDonald: I love it. You’ve got me thinking so much that I keep coming up with more questions, but that’s it for now.

[00:24:25] Steve MacDonald: Thank you for all these insights. You’re sharing knowledge that benefits the entire community. When we all share what we’ve learned, it lifts everyone. I appreciate you doing that for us today.

[00:24:41] Karla Kannan: Steve, thank you so much for the invitation.