Future Outlook: Indian BPO Industry

The article “Outsourcing 2.0, the future”, that I wrote on 24th of Feb 2019, has been generating a lot of interest in the BPO industry as a result of which my inbox is full of requests for a write up addressing the specifics of the Indian BPO/BPM industry, so here I am! I’ll link the article towards the end of this one for those of you who would want to read it. Before we talk about the future of the BPO/BPM industry, I think it is vital to dwell upon its history a bit to understand, broadly, how it came into being and why it is important to a large section of the society, beyond the economic circuit. Outsourcing started as a cost-saving major, developed economies started shipping non-core, low-value jobs to destinations which had labor skilled for the job available in large numbers. India became a popular destination, thanks to its colonial past which indelibly impacted the creation of curriculum for primary education in the country, even post-independence. English is taught as one of the three languages that all Indian students study. We’re also a country with a good supply of human capital (one of the few benefits of out of control population bust). For a little over 3 decades, the business of outsourcing has been blossoming here.  A democratic, aspirational, developing economy that had just got liberalised, made a perfect breeding ground for the service industry to thrive. This business model brought with itself prosperity, it created billionaires, millions of jobs as direct benefits, indirectly too, this new phenomenon in the post industrialised world, gave an unforeseen boom to the real estate industry, among others. Cities like Gurgaon, Hyderabad & Bangalore owe all of its development to this single industry. The story has not been one with all positives though, it has seriously dented spread of higher education in India, a significant portion (68.32%) of those who started earning in this industry before completing their bachelors did not complete their higher education. As a result of which their long term growth prospects got stunted, but then it also boils down to personal choices that people make and it will be unfair to blame the industry for this entirely. Business standard says and I quote “The IT-BPO industry grew by 8 percent in 2017, leading to an aggregate revenue of $154 Billion. Further, in 2017, the BPO sector contributed 7.7 percent to India’s GDP”. I pull this stat up to familiarize you with the enormity of its economic spread.

The rationale behind sustaining large workforces emerged from the difference between wages in the US and in India; for a certain set and category of jobs, the delta was so huge that even if an inflation of 8% were to be applied on annual Indian wages it would’ve taken more than 3 decades for it to become comparable, in the days of early germination of the Industry. Right at the base of this rationale was the confidence that the wages will grow stronger in the US also, at least at the rate of 2 to 5% year on year. Reality did follow this plan but for a duration a lot shorter than what was expected at the beginning. Let’s just say progress happened rather swiftly. I know you are tired of hearing of ‘technology, the devil’, but I’m here to tell you that it is not the only contributor, it certainly holds most of the chips but there are other factors too which can’t be ignored if the goal is to understand it clearly and should I say comprehensively. Without getting into too much detail, let me quickly outline a few factors, which are noteworthy.

Global Recession: It taught corporate America cost-cutting, non-core tasks got axed first. Optimization becomes very core of running a business, post the meltdown.

Smartphone : Post Blackberry, both Apple and Android smartphones opened up the floodgates of application that ran comfortably on handheld small-screen, always-connected devices, people learned to do basic stuff themselves. Popularisation of self help as a cultural imperative in the west akin to modernisation propelled industry-wide restructuring of customer education/support organisation and cost.

Internet: Proliferation of internet reduced lag, empowered people to access information in massive quantity and mostly free of charge. It enabled the culture of comparison, making decisions informed, calculated and in many cases swifter than before and most importantly independent, in an unassisted manner. 

Automation: Robotic process automation, text to speech, AI-powered BOT, advance analytics, computer vision, OCR, virtual reality, mixed reality, augmented reality, internet of things: these changed the game completely. A structured task which does not require cognitive decision making or understanding of context can be automated at an astonishing speed and at a surprisingly thin investment.

Job crisis in the west: Economy in the developed world slumped, jobs that were being sent outside to developing countries to save cost suddenly started getting perceived and then projected as the reason for natives losing livelihood. Political movements around the world gained momentum which forced legislators to regulate offshoring.

Geopolitical shift: Politicians around the world submitted to ostensibly right-wing stance to solve job crisis that they were facing in their countries. Public opinion on imposing penalties for sending jobs outside gained ground. Crashing domestic consumer demands exerted additional pressure on the governments. 

Territorialism: Rise of protectionism, opened the world to Trump's America and Brexit in the UK.

All of these factors started stressing the growth of the outsourcing industry hugely. Voice-based businesses, the cash cow of Indian BPO majors started growing pale. Majority of high-value voice business in a matter of 4 years got converted into backend jobs; there too, whatever the tech at the moment couldn’t accomplish accurately comes to countries like ours. It won’t be wrong to say that the BPO industry of today is surviving on the breadcrumbs, quite literally. Large players because of their size they are able to aggregate more, and given the fact that the size of the western economy is still huge when compared to ours, the leftover is satisfactorily satiating the hunger of the big guns. But writings on the wall is unmistakably legible now which has forced progressive organizations to look for greener pastures elsewhere. We’re at the beginning of the end!

Organizations are not ideal, we do witness them facing up the challenges in ways that they think is best. Let’s try and briefly touch upon how the industry is preparing to answer the question that is questioning its very existence.

Large corporations: They have the luxury of wealth, geographical presence and size, intellect and prominence, they are smartly diversifying into newer arenas; Data, digitalization, process re-engineering & consulting being a few of them. They are making a significant investment of time, effort and money in upskilling their manpower in technologies of the future. Some of them have even shown the courage to shed low margin business and focus only on high-value contracts. It is all about operating cash and PAT now.

Mid Sized Organisations: This is a rather volatile segment in which some still see light at the end of the tunnel. The game of valuation at the moment seems lucrative in pockets. Consolidation is in progress in this segment, all the work that the large ones are not interested in doing for they either being low value or thin on margin is effortlessly flowing to organizations of this segment. Much like water flows from higher to lower planes, they are happily grabbing new businesses at the cost of margin, sometimes ignorant of the fact that what is flowing to them is not work that requires the real application of mind, most of it is basically two to five-step process. It with a small investment can be automated. Let me give you an example here, many companies have invested in the large establishment for the digitization of physical forms: jobs. The ubiquitous smartphone is digitizing the data at the very source, eliminating the need for forms to travel to the digitalization centers. This has wiped an entire industry away, in a blink. Love of fading times is not lost on them as yet. 

Small Player: The least said about them the better, they are running modern-day cruel body shops, disgusted with their business they are in it because they do not know any better and are willing to give an arm to anyone who can promise them a way out of the rut. Things have become so strange that even the champions of efficiency have lost their way quite literally. They are urging to be bailed out. 

So is it all grim and sad? Not exactly It is yet another cusp playing itself out. Outsourcing as a concept is not going to end, there will always be, ‘core and non-core’ jobs and there will always be a need for people to do things. But it is certainly the end of the road for those who are unwilling to move up the value chain, romantics of the past will soon become history, the forgettable part of it. The future belongs to those who are willing to experiment and wish to disrupt. 

Domestic players are in graver danger because they do not even have the cushion of exchange rates, extinction is staring at them in the eye. Single-digit PAT, which gets even weaker and uninteresting when depreciation is applied on it. It just does not make financial sense, to keep all your eggs in the basket of voice. It is bound to end, in less than a couple of years.

Please understand, you can’t make an omelet without breaking the egg!

The future in the outsourcing/service industry belongs to those who know to deliver intelligent end to end solutions and for those who have the wherewithal to make existing systems aware of context, efficient, accurate, reliable, secure and sustainable. Let me say again, the ‘old’ is progressing towards a demise at a dangerous pace. So what does the future look like? Simply put one of the two things.

1. Product ( tech or otherwise)
2. Data 

Tech products will get the job done and not humans in the days to come, the kind of work that does not require imagination and complex context-based cognitive decision making, as the first input. So, what should you do? Take a good hard look at what is it that you understand really well? Or simply which part of the entire business that you have existed thus far it should be automated, not as a work unit or set of tasks but a complete role. Let’s take the example of what Google, Apple, Amazon, and Samsung are doing with their voice assistants. They are trying to replace that person, whose sole job role was to hear the needs of the master and then go search for information and then come back with relevant details. What do these digital assistants do? You give them the same instructions that you would give to your human assistant but the output is so much better in areas that it has its command over; you get the results without discernible lag, so you prefer it. Not only does it make things simpler, quicker but also accurate - you get the point. 

Apply your mind, invite intellect to study what should you build to solve and then go for it. Due diligence that you would apply before making any important decision must be conducted here as well. Try to be objective about the whole thing, always remember that you have to accept change and that even when you do not accept it, it still happens, so no point, not accepting it. Remember, if you do not build it someone else will and you will be left to survive in the shrunken ground. First-mover advantages those who know how to pull off a great show, though. 

A for Analytics; yes this is the world that we are headed towards. Data is the new gold, new oil and everything else that makes sense. Data makes decision richer and those who know to model data in ways that make decision making better will see acceptability and will rule the next upturn. The science around statistics-based prediction is invaluable. Data is being used along with understanding from behavioral psychology and neural sciences to predict customer buying and consumption behavior. The ecosystem is currently not completely ready but is coming together at a great pace. The future belongs to those who can work with data & understand human behavior. 

In the same breath, we must also acknowledge that this change is not going to be a cakewalk or easily comprehensible to all but then we know from history that old makes way for the new. Unless some lose, others can’t win, so in that spirit it is ok! The bigger picture will still be just as heterogeneous, vibrant and happy as always; with or without people and business models and practices from the past. 

Towards the end, we must also spend a little bit of time in understanding what causes delusion, indecision & inaction? Why are these dying sectors not reacting with the sense of urgency that is warranted? Let me take you to that old frog experiment in which the psychologist turned the temperature higher at a rate slower than frogs ability to adapt as a result the frog died of heat but did not feel the need to jump out. Businesses also become comfortable with the status quo, they block their own sensors sometimes with over-confidence, comfort, or plain incompetence that surrounds them dressed as top executives ( brainless leadership team). Conduct a small experiment: for the last 30 years, pull top 100 organisations in any segment and then compare the list you will see only 8% survive beyond 1^st decade in the leadership position, the story at the end of the 2^nd decade is less than 5% and after the 3^rd decade the number comes down to 2%! 

Why? 

Because they did not change and thus perished!

I hope you, do!

Till we meet again, goodbye!

Link to: Outsourcing 2.0, the future!

http://www.lavkush.co.in/2019/02/outsourcing-2-0-the-future/

Decluttering ​:​ WorkPlace of the future!

I have to admit this, I was tempted to begin this write up with dictionary definition of ‘modern workplace’, a cup of tea and a few biscuits later, I did overcome the juvenile urge. And decided to define it the way I understand it. There isn’t a scientific definition to tell the accurate comprehension from otherwise descripts of this subject, so in that sense, it is lucid and open to interpretation. No one definition is absolutely right, so if you happen to disagree with my views on it, I wouldn’t count that against you, nor will you be wrong.



Back to the definition, a modern workplace, in my view is an intelligent, intuitive and integrated ‘set up’, one that lives by the principle of liberalisation, democratisation, collaboration and creative imagination of the future and that of the current time. Let me borrow from a great CEO and modify it by adding a few of my own words (trivia, find out who said this) here to say that, “work is no longer a place that you go to but a thing that you do, at a time, place and platform of your choice”, choice has to accommodate business realities, economic sense, and mandates of the stakeholders. We have every right to choose to live in the past and in sharp denial of present realities but ‘change’ as a constant doesn’t really need consent of the people involved; it will on its own keep transforming itself relentlessly and if you choose to not run with it, you will witness it run ahead of you for some time and then it will go past your sight. Let’s do a little study, pick up top 100 corporations of 1900 and then see how many of them exist today? And then see of those that exist today, how many continue to hold the same prominence in the marketplace?  A quick 15 minutes research will tell you that no more than 8% of the organizations have survived and effectively transformed themselves in keeping with time. Let’s ask ourselves, what did they not have? Were their balance sheets not swell enough? Were they not men and women of great character and grit? Did they not dream big and build an organisation, a brand that was admired? Answer to all of these questions is a resounding YES. They were all successful companies with all the money and the might that one could wish for but yet they did not succeed the test of time and finally succumbed owing to their unapparent inability of welcoming change.



Why? With a lot of ease and in an almost unthinkable way one can, secure in the knowledge that they won’t be wrong, say that the conglomerates that went down did not innovate. But isn't that the eventual output that one desires, sadly, in most cases, without providing for enablers that create the ground for innovation, we bake it, consider that it will happen anyway. Desire to create a plush and green garden, quality seeds, best fertilisers and state of the art irrigation supplies are all useless without the company of adequate sunlight and fertile soil. No amount of dreaming will ever sprout a flower out of a concrete marble floor. And there I say, what has been said in many books and case studies, one such book is “Rebuild by Ramya Ramamurthy’ that I would recommend you read, that before you target to innovate, you’ll need to create grounds that will foster such outcomes. Therefore the two top hindrances that I gather are below.

Lack of imagination.

Resistance to change.

Modern workplace is one such essential ingredient that makes way for free and fearless thinking, creative problem solving and solidifying sustained urge to keep transforming the ways of doing business. It is important to constantly re-imagine the tangibles of business to reinvent ways of doing it better.



The advent of technology and the ecosystem powered by ubiquitous internet has at a maddening pace changed the face of commerce. Back in the day, linear thought process prevailed, in which designated spaces and set designs ruled the way people conceived and conducted business, but that is no longer true. Physical boundaries are disappearing, templates are no longer relevant and precedents are being challenged like never before.  We’re at a classic cusp of time, what was once considered a shining knight in the armour is now a heavy and ineffective piece of metal that is best not carried. A great man once said that there is a reason why we look ahead when we walk, because what is behind is going to fade, look for what is ahead of you and prepare to get there, if you want your journey to be a long and rewarding one.



We’ve tried defining a modern workplace and also established how it is an important and effective enabler. It is time to look at some the principles that we must take into account when creating the sketch for a modern workplace.



Before we get into the specifics of some of those principles, I must say these examples are a  few of many tools available for deployment, you can choose whichever one you like. What is important here is to be accepting of the progressive principles of creating an obstruction free environment in which no time is wasted in waiting or finding the ‘spot’ or the ‘condition’ needed to create (deliveries/solutions/outputs/work). It is about creating an ecosystem that frees people and gets them to a state where they have everything that they need to work at all times within their comfortable reach so that they use it seamlessly to create spectacular results. It is also about eliminating all practical frictions that come in the way of productivity, making use of the best and most secure of the technology/infra that is available today.



Liberalisation: There can’t be a dispute on the fact that people make organisations and for people to deliver their best, they must be allowed to concentrate on the most important business problem by eliminating distractions of conformities. In a tier one city, an average person spends 3 hours on the road commuting ‘from and to’ work. 3 hours is 12.5% of your day! Preparations to get to work takes another 40 minutes on an average day: you dress in a certain way, get your tanks full, car cleaned, fix food to a deadline and then get onto the road. Nearly 4 hours of the day devoted to an exercise that generates no value for anyone. I’m not even counting the carbon emission and the irreversible environmental damage that we unknowingly invoke upon mother nature. 73% of all vehicular traffic is generated by work routine related commute. Imagine what would a world be like if these cars were not on the road? Better air to breathe and faster commute on events of travel. We’ve spoken about time, let us look at the cost burden on organisations to maintain and create offices? You pay for spaces which are vacant 16 hours a day. Is that an efficient system? I know some of you are saying that design of some business is such that people have to gather at a place, sure, they have to, but have you looked at ways to minimise it as much as possible? If no, then you have work to do. Studies say, that only 30% of the spaces that orgs occupy are actually needed. So if you have an org of 100 people, your real estate should have not more than 30 seats, people can in a planned manner come and meet each other in person, work together and yet have a great sense of space. 70% of your org can be on a work from home on any given day, on a rotation basis. It is a win-win situation for all stakeholders: Employee save on travel, work from comforts of their home, no one is ever getting late to work, better work-life balance, less friction among colleagues and benefits of disintegrated centre of deliveries and companies save on cost erecting and running the infra, lesser housekeeping and upkeep needs, lighter electricity load. Do not worry, there are tools available to measure which employee spent how much time on work. Apart from measuring core output, you can should you wish to even measure cursor movement even keystrokes, with ease, while passing the flexi hour benefit to employees. Surveys suggest that 87% of employees will happily elect to work an hour extra if they had to not travel.



Collaboration ( Digital and otherwise) : Wisdom of the crowd must not be lost, modern day organisations are a truly heterogeneous group, people from all kinds of socio-economic backgrounds, academic disciplines, social skills and personal beliefs come together to create solutions for customers. In 2019 a well-coloured wall comes second to stronger and snappier data connections, there is a need to smartly move investment into digital infrastructure. Hardware agnostic platforms should win your attention, you need to be able to eliminate barriers of space, formfactor, time and group to enable your staff to work, from wherever they are. To conduct a meeting, there is no need for people to look for the meeting room, they can use their excellent phones/computers/tablets to connect with you digitally, anytime anywhere, thereby bringing the lag to a virtual zero. Appearance for long has been a hindrance to productivity, practices of compensating for poor delivery with great rapport has been prevalent for a long time. People sometimes just want to be seen with the right people and at the right time and to make sure of that, waste a lot of time. In a digital workplace, all of that is eliminated, people are always connected so they reach out to one another in need and not just because they don't have anything better to do. Because employees are not physically crossing path, they would make up for it with their superior delivery, because, remember, all of us want to come out as the best. Who wins in the process? The organization and the staff: both. Organisations spend crazy amount of money in securing hardware, to create computer surpluses. Imagine having to spend 1K dollars in getting decent computer for your staff as option one and another in which you give 500 dollars and the employee and let him put whatever extra he would like to and own a hardware of his choice to conduct your business? Your cost has gone down by half, you’ve given the employee the choice that he will love and the hardware is anyway going to become obsolete in 3 years, so why not? If the staff already has a set, give him 200 dollars and onboard him. A case for cloud is not even required to be made if data is on the cloud, it is secure and at the same time always available on a data connection. The point being, that you wrap your organisation in software and not essentially hardware or physical dimensions. Deploy real time collaboration tools ( cloud based office suits), have project management tool implemented so that governance on the work is as real time as the work itself. For every lag,wait and re-do  that an inefficient infra creates the burden of additional unwelcomed and indirect cost piles up on the organisation, which you can and must avoid.

Transition from output to outcome : For aeons measurement method deployed to gauge efficiency has been largely output based, it is time that we graduate to an outcome-based system. Let me share a simple illustration, the judgement should not be based on how complex or comprehensive the backend is but on how simple and intuitive the user experience is. In the context of an MIS or a developer, length of code or syntax of formula is not a measure of hard work, but the flawless output is. We must move as far as practically possible from measuring clock hours and start considering, how the final outcome has been impacted. For instance, for a customer service agent the metric should not be how many customers did an executive handle but how many did he satisfy. I hope you get the Idea.



Well Being: Clinical researchers have proven beyond doubt that poor lifestyle practices substantially reduce cognitive capabilities, therefore it is imperative that designs are well thought of to nudge people to live better and healthier lives. Before I give you a few cases to ponder on, let me share with you that, India loses 21 billion dollars to absence from work on temporary health issues, every year, that is a lot of money!

Here are the options.

Come to office on time, work for 8 hours and get marked present.

Meet your objectives and get marked present.

Meet your objectives get marked present and walk 10K steps each day to earn coins needed for better than average appraisal?

A PMS that considers health goals around weight, waist sizes, too with KRA outputs?

When you engage with your staff on well being you create a bond far more personal than just professing how your organisation has to offer better professional future. When you encourage, your people, in a structured manner, to adopt a healthier lifestyle, you are helping them as much as you are helping yourself. There will be fewer sick leaves and even attrition will get impacted positively because employee value everything other than salary more than they are worth in the real world when handed in good faith. Quality health and accidental insurance and saving schemes not only give the employee a sense of protection but goes on to create the brand as a prefered employer. Remember you’ve only created 30% workstation, in the rest of the spaces you can create collaboration spaces, reading corner, exhibition centre, gyms and wellness spot. That infra will any day be appreciated more. The basic principle is to create hooks by offering meaningful engagement opportunities to the employees so that they see a lot of value in sticking around for long. I do not think that there is a need for me to make a case for how the cost of hiring and leakage of attrition impacts overall revenue objectives. So it makes perfect business sense to care for your employees.



I hope that with this article, I’ve given you reasons to believe in modern workspaces.



Many May day wishes to you.



Till we meet again bye bye.

You need Omni-channel & More!

The relationship between a customer and a brand revolves around a multitude of interactions that happens between them in the course of their journey together.

Customers expect to get all that they have signed up for and more without having to pay extra and the brands wish to make use of every possible opportunity to serve to the best of their abilities and resources, they create products, services, and related loops for the customers to keep coming back to them when in need & even otherwise. These objectives may appear conflicting from a distance but they actually are complimenting in nature. Companies spend a lot of time and money in preparing the foundation, as it were, for them to give prospects and customers a tour of their capabilities, educating them on the entire range of products and services is vital to gaining a larger share of the customer wallet. Investments are made in creating soothing, easy-on-the-eye, and nearly omnipresent digital footprint, from good looking, responsive &  intuitive websites to active social media participation. More traditional, brick and mortar establishments are also brought into the play, from choosing the right real estate to designing and erecting swanky showrooms: companies do it all. Not to mention that maintenance of both digital and physical assets come at a cost.

The question then is, is it enough to deliver an excellent customer experience? Do customers care about better or smarter solutions? These questions are important, no matter how complete a solution might appear to its creator if the customer/ end users do not see the considerable value and/or cozy comfort or both in it, it is not of good use and often will deliver less than ideal outcomes.

To understand this better, let’s take two examples.

Scenario #1

Customer: Payal Singh.

Need: Booking a holiday.

Chain of events :

1. Payal goes to the website, logs in with her credentials.
2. Provides her search criteria.
3. Makes to the relevant selection of the airline.
4. Provides passengers details.
5. Comes to the payment page.
6. Keys in the banking details.
7. Is greeted by transaction failure.
8. She tries one more time only to face a repeat of the error.
9. She goes back to the home page and starts her search for the ‘contact us’ page.
10. She finds the customer support number and calls up.
11. She is greeted by the IVR and a never-ending list of irrelevant options.
12. After spending, longer than she had expected to, she reaches the agent.
13. The agent greets her and waits for the customer to share her reason for calling.
14. The customer by then is already frustrated but keeps her cool and explains the entire story to the agent.
15. The agent places the call on hold, checks the information.
16. Comes back from hold and tries to authenticate the customer one more time because, in his book, it is customer account-specific information and must only be divulged to the right party.
17. Post +ve verification, says that the payment gateway is down and she must try another time.

The customer bangs the phone feeling absolutely frustrated, infuriated & disheartened. Despite putting in much effort and time she is still without a definitive resolution, she doubts if she should give the brand another chance. She tweets about the horrible experience before the agent finishes his shift her entire followers have read about it: some have liked and retweeted the incident too, causing the brand a lost sale and tarnished online reputation.

Net-net nothing has been achieved so far, neither by the customer nor by the organization. Both have had to face negative experiences and are displeased with the way things have turned out.

Let’s look at another example.

Scenario #2

Customer: Iqbal Ahmed.

Need: Booking a holiday.

Chain of events: Identical till step number 7.

8) Is greeted by transaction failure alert.

9) Right after the failure message, the pop up saying “ Allow us to help you” appears.

10) Iqbal clicks on the pop-up and reads,

1. Would you like us to call you back?
2. You can chat with us too.

11) Customer clicks on the chat option.

12) Agent “Ram” greets the customer and says, apologies for the error, allow me to check it and get back to you.

13) Iqbal feeling exasperated scrolls up and hits on the “Would you like us to call you back?” button.

14) Chat window gets updated, Ram will call you on your registered number “9835098350” in 2 minutes.

15) Before the customer could pour himself a cup of coffee, his phone rings.

16) The caller, the same agent he had initiated his chat with, greets him with a solution.

1. The agent from his integrated CRM was able to see the stage in which the customer had invoked the chat.
2. He had studied customer history and was aware of the complete profile.
3. There wasn’t a need for the customer to repeat the issue.
4. The customer had the option to choose between chat and voice support.
5. Both channels were instant.

17) He offered the customer an alternative and guided him through the steps.

18) Flight tickets were done.

19) The agent from the customer history could find out that he was looking for his wedding anniversary and then suggested, below options and offered additional & special anniversary discount to him.

1. Airport pick up
2. Options for beach facing hotel room.
3. Candlelight dinner in perfect settings.
4. Private musical show.
5. Florist Options.
6. Tour of the city
7. Photographer on call.
8. Suggested a variety of cakes to choose from.
9. He also presented to the customer with the option to visit the famous state museum in the city on the day of his return.

20) The customer was delighted and took a few options suggested.

1. The agent had access to his past bookings and the profile of the customer.
2. His integrated CRM suggested smart related bundles.
3. Given the size of the booking, he could provide the customer with a pre-authorized, on the spot discount.
4. Planned the entire holiday and not just flight tickets.

21- The agent also took permission from the customer and blocked his calendar and provisioned for auto call reminders for key activities.

22- The call ended with a happy customer and a happier business.

Which is going to be the most likely seen in your organization?

Scenario 1 or 2?

If it is 1, you most certainly need to urgently deploy an Omnichannel support layer integrated smartly with the CRM/order management system. It will not only prepare you to provide customers with instant resolution but will also make you present at whichever mode that the customer would like you to assist him on? Intelligent integration with the order management/CRM tool as depicted in example 2 will also enable the service agent to help the customer make logical choices related to their need, resulting in bounty upsell/upgrade opportunity for the business and desirable convenience for the customer: resulting in a stronger relationship between the two.

When presented options of upgrade/upsell are contextual in nature those options appear meaningful to the customers and they are more likely to buy from you again. In the entire process, we saw how a potential deal-breaker “transaction failed” turned into a delightful customer experience in scenario 2; and it achieved a great experience without making the customer toil, like in the first undesirable case that we looked at. Customers love being spoilt with pleasant options but at the same time, they hate having to work for it. It is therefore important that when you design your systems, you keep the customer effort index in mind.

If you do all the work for your consumer, your consumer will love you more. Most organizations have all the tech, people, and other infrastructure that is needed to create scenario 2 like a rich experience. What they lack is omnichannel and supported intelligent integrations. They do not use customer profile/ purchase history data intelligently to create circumstantial product bouquet, which makes them incapable of churning out products that can be upsold at that right instance quickly and they most certainly do not have a single screen for their support agent, which makes responses appear fragmented, ill-informed and mostly random to the customer, causing poor memory of the brand.

Integrate your CRM/order management system with a capable Omni Channel solution, keep all options open for your customers to choose from, restricting your customers either to only voice or only data ( ChatBOT, email, form-based interaction, etc) is not a wise choice to make. Use data analytics to create a meaningful product/ service bundles and most importantly have a single screen set up, so that the support agent without sweating is able to give the most accurate and the most relevant information to the customer, thereby reducing customer effort.

Omnichannel is a good choice to make, invest in your systems to elevate the quality of customer interactions.

Happy serving!

Outsourcing 2.0, the future!

It is impossible to attempt predicting the future without taking history into account; the posterior view of linear time. The history of outsourcing is intensely integrated into the history of the growth of the modern business enterprise, many believe that it rose in the second half of the 19th Century. Historians and economists in the past fifty years have helped us to understand this sudden and prominent phenomenon of growth, one such legend is Mr. Alfred D. Chandler, do read his work. Much has been said regarding outsourcing in the past couple of years. This business practice has suddenly grabbed center stage attention and is now the focus of politicians, the press, companies, and workers alike. Organizations in the outsourcing space are also constantly applying thought to understand how should they reinvent themselves to remain relevant, as they face their toughest challenge in the present era. A business that found its existing space between the value difference of a rupee and a dollar (speaking strictly in the Indian context) initially and in not too much time became a darling even on a transaction that was between the same currency, faces an existential challenge now. The rationale for the rupee to rupee transaction came from the differentiation of core and non-core tasks for an organization. Offshoring, mainly from stronger currencies to the weaker ones flourished for the first decade, almost fanatically. India gained immensely from this fad that was catching up. IT and ITES provided employment to over 3 hundred thousand people, major businesses,  houses came into being: Wipro, Infosys, Concentrix, HCL, Tech Mahindra, and many others. Companies in the western world saw value in saving money and at the same time dealing with a race that was hardworking, ambitious, hungry for growth, and also particularly skilled for doing the job just right.

The growth and meaning of outsourcing are increasingly getting flatlined; cost pressures are driving the value down, from the perspective of the service providers. The political scene around the world is not helping either, mass protests in favor of keeping the jobs onshore have become common. Major political events in the recent past have revolved around it, the rise of President Trump, the ill effects of Brexit; the mounting of obscurantists and protectionists ideologies around the world have hurt the prospects of the thriving outsourcing industry in our country. Both IT and ITES have suffered immensely, we do not see too many new players making a move. But thankfully, all is not lost. India is growing, one could argue that it could have grown faster had a few things not happened, but then those are hypothetical arguments; we remain among the fastest-growing economies in the world. A new breed of entrepreneurs have come into the fray and are solving real issues interestingly applying technologies that are now available at a much cheaper cost, than it would have been let's say a decade ago. The eco-system is ready. Would Ola or Flipkart have become such spectacular successes in 1980ties in India? The answer to that question is a clear no. Now is the time for it and it is a great thing to happen to us as a country, society, and also the economy.

If the political climate was unfavorable and stunting the growth of outsourcing agencies vigorously, the advent of technology: penetration of internet, the rise of automation, AI and ML are together making it almost impossible for small players to exist. Jobs that required humans back then are being done in a few taps a lot more satisfyingly and swiftly. ITES providers are dying a slow death, many are bleeding profusely with no real sight of a breakeven, let alone profit and prosperity. Many renowned businesses have done away with their domestic business or are in the process of walking out, Sutherland &  Mphasis are classic examples. More than 40% of small and medium domestic BPOs had to shut shop, in the last 6 yrs. The scene is not all that good for those who aren’t comfortable with being on their toes all the time, either. There are organizations like Aegis, Karvy DigiKonnect, connectQ, 1point1, Megus, etc who are trying to walk in the opposite direction of the wind and have created for themselves results that are not bad, if not all that encouraging, in all the quarters of the year. But there is hope. And that is exactly what we are trying to discuss here.

A workforce that began with handling transactions on prescribed SOPs have in these years become rich in experience and now have valuable insight into how various businesses are conducted, not only have they mastered their game of efficiency but have also educated and trained themselves on the craft to a degree that they now carry invaluable perspicacity into the world of the consumers and deep understanding of the technology that makes the customer experience come about. Cross-pollination of talent has graduated the industry into a formidable group, one that is capable of rewriting the rules of the game. This development is part evolutionary and part forced and therefore, not easy for everyone to get to.



The time has come for the outsourcing industry to shed its dead weight of unskilled manpower, onboard forward thinkers, and retain only high performers; the average and the below-average must go. This industry has to prepare itself to walk out of the shadow of the transaction and shine in the light of experience. It is apt for the service providers to fight for increasing their share of influence, the only way for them to exist is if they muster the courage to secure a seat at the thought leadership table. A transition from a low value, labor-based output to a high-value intellect based outcome will have to be made. Service providers will have to become providers of knowledge and acumen and not just efficiency.



Doing the job, quicker, better, and at low cost is no longer lucrative, there is a need to invent ways to do them differently, trying different business solutions. The construct of the ‘different’ is in making the delivery consultative, one in which the providers do not only bring manpower but also industry acumen, knowledge of framing service philosophies, the capability of defining experience, designing its machinery, and then delivering results which are second to none. Technology is here to stay, providers will have to befriend the trend, work towards creating the capabilities of automation in-house, start offering a data first, and voice second service offering. The conventional mode of isolated support on voice, data, and chat channels will have to be united into an omnichannel environment, flexible enough to extend the customers the choice to choose: voice or text, self-help or assisted guidance, with solid CRM integration, one that is capable of building context and providing for predictive customer behavior. Service providers will have to become solution architects. The change will have to be welcomed into the organization and the way of its inner working. If I may borrow from Robin Sharma;



All change is tough at the beginning, messy in the middle, and gorgeous at the end.



Here are a few things that service providers should do to transform.



De-age your leadership team - All of those 25 to 30 yrs + experience folks are good, they bring a lot of value but if they are made in charge of driving transformation, it wouldn't come about just as swiftly or effectively. You need to bring in a fresh perspective, bright and young people with the required skillset to populate your leadership team. Studies have shown that after a certain age and getting certain success in life the fire in the belly goes off for 98% of the people and that alone is a reason for you to look at your leadership team to see if you have such satisfied people around? If so, it's time for you to get people who relate to the change and have a better handle on contemporary settings and above all are willing to walk that extra mile and have the desire and the determination to make their mark.

Alter your service offering - Your service offering has to be a happy marriage between technology, business acumen, skilled manpower, and growth infrastructure. You’ll need to modify your solutions for them to make sense to the market and the customers that you wish to service. You need to be able to partner with the organization with which you are doing business with offerings, creating service strategy, forming the budget, laying the logical and physical service infrastructure, sourcing, training, execution - all of it. You need to take a leap from business process outsourcing into the realm of experience outsourcing.

Responsible billing model: Try to slowly move away from transaction billing to outcome-based invoicing. It is not going to be easy. Today you bill for transactions (calls/email/chat) you handle tomorrow you’ll charge on outcomes, let’s say a threshold of customer satisfaction, first, call resolution, churn %, repeat purchase, etc,  keeping the service cost below a certain limit for the exchange of x% of profit. I’m just saying. Commercial viability will have to be worked out but if service providers have to grow in the value chain they will need to value outcomes more than a transaction. And in the process will come into effect a high-performance culture because then the substandard outcome will mean substandard billing. Focus on performance will be much higher. And because it is a high-value job .. service providers will get to command much better prices.

Driving innovation as a core product: Organizations will have to increasingly invest in a thinking workforce, currently, the focus is only on doing (executing) which is why you have a mob of the unintelligent and the uninspiring, who are satisfied doing what they have always done, without thinking of finding different and better ways of solving the issue. Service providers will need to get creative, run of the mill thought processes will have to be now killed, deliberately. For the culture of ideation to thrive within the organization, leaders will have to reward thinkers, demonstrate a willingness to accept the nonnormal and above all, they will need to give the message that they value thinking as much as they value doing, if not more. Take up a few high-value high impact ambitious projects and run them so that the workforce has something to relate to.

Decentralize work (WFH): Cluttering the real state in today’s world is not only ineffective but also inefficient - the outsourcing industry will have to learn to ‘work from home’. A model that is a mixture of on-premise + Work from home has the capability of bringing the billing cost down with leaving larger room for service providers to expand profits, alongside creating a more independent, flexible, and happier workforce. I’m not even counting the environmental benefits of reduced vehicular traffic or saving of travel time, here. For far too long leaders have seen the outsourcing industry set up to be like manufacturing, that must change NOW!

Diversify into Tech Products: Voice can and should not be your only stream of revenue. You’ll need to create a 1st party tech platform/solution to survive.

Gartner says that by 2020 85% of the transaction will move to the unassisted category, the machine will take over man, we already see that reality manifesting itself in our day to day interaction with the world. If service providers do not invest in this critical adaptation now, they will soon be extinct.



On that note, I end this .. until we meet again.

 

Service & Churn!

Agreement on the need to retain customer is easily arrived at, not too many views against this motion is voiced because it is no longer a closely guarded secret that mighty aren’t those who acquire customers at the rate hurricane destroys whatever comes in its way alone but also those who retain a great majority of those who choose to stop by, more like what a humble piece of sponge does to water when they get to date. Companies that become formidable brand force .. do so not solely by their aggressive acquisition drives but by building a solid foundation of loyal customers. Customer who are willing to come back for more!!

Enough has been said and written already to establish that cost of keeping a customer engaged in the long term is almost always lesser than acquiring a new one. I do not mean to paint customer acquisition effort as anything any less important, you need the denominator to gain weight by every passing day to survive, what is truly, an unforgiving and unapologetically so, market. New customer acquisition is key to success because your investors and other stakeholders will beat you to death if you do not beat your projections. A humble product becomes a brand when it has by its side a sea of customers who keep returning to them; take top ten companies in any sector and you will realize that all of them have done a phenomenal job in retaining their bases. You always get to choose which segment you wanna target .. thing here to remember is that same choice is also available with the customer .. in the same price range whom does he or she want to do business with, is up to them.

The real question then is;  what is it that gets the customer to keep making a brand a provider of their choice? If 100 people were asked the reason, at least 95 of them will list below 5 in their top 10 reasons in different order of priority. Here is how I see the sequence.

1. Price 
2. Usefulness/Relevance 
3. Reliability
4. Ease of use 
5. Experience.

If you try to club these further .. you’ll be left with just two broad components.

1. Product construct ( Price and features) 
2. Customer Experience  (Service, value and everything else in between)

Proof of price and validity of usefulness gets answered conclusively by the rate of acquisition. If people are buying you; you have certainly got some bit of it right! Keep looking for ways to optimize and get better but the fact that you’re selling gives you a reason to remain in the business. But always remember what got you here .. won’t get your there ( there being a higher place, in this argument)

Then comes the complex question; how many are you really retaining in the long run? Or simply put why customers who saw value in pursuing you initially, have pushed you out of their lives, eventually? What went wrong? With price there is only so much elbow space for you to do things, because you are constrained by viability and innovations, powerful ones, do not spring like mushrooms after rain, every day, sadly, if it did you could broaden the horizon. The other part, however, which is ‘customer experience’ is limitless - You get to play the part you choose in the theatre of service. This mind you, is not as much about throwing money at the problem as much as it is about applying thought and building solutions. Here you can get as creative as efficient and as smart as you perhaps would want to be. Money makes the world go around and service quality is not an exception to that rule; budget may limit you to remain minimal. Which is why in my view you can pick these three elements to make a difference. (I'm no expert at this .. I'm learning the trick of the trade)  

Education - You need to understand that what is simple and intuitive in your assessment may appear complex and limiting in your customer’s worldview. Users will always think differently about your product and services simply because they have not partnered in designing, development, or roll out of your services. There are other things that they do all day long, unlike you. To take your message across you will have to create a map of understanding, one in which the customers has to make little or no effort in getting ahead. Every communication that you make with your customer is an opportunity for you to make your customer more knowledgeable about your product and services. We love what is easy and customers are no different, the day your customer learns your services well enough it will become the reason for them to stick. Let’s take an example .. why do most windows users willingly stick to it despite knowing that a Mac is a better operating system? Familiarity ( price also is) is the reason.. you have to make your users as familiar and friendly with your product as possible.

Service - Moment of truth is when the rubber meets the road. No matter what you conceive how well you think you have executed it .. it will break down every once in a while and when it does you will need people to fix it swiftly on one side and on the other you will need to work with those who are impacted - service recovery! Customer service is not only about sorries or thank you(s) it, as a matter of fact, is also everything else in between. I’ll link two more articles that I have written on customer service here for you to go thru - write-ups clearly defines the design and their significance - DO MAKE TIME FOT IT.

#1 Customer Experience - It matters!

https://lkstates.blogspot.com/2017/10/customer-experience-it-matters_28.html

#2 Customer Feedback, should you care? 

https://lkstates.blogspot.com/2017/12/customer-feedback-should-you-care-enough.html 

Close looping - People and organization do not fail in constructing a comprehensive coherent design, what gets missed, more often than not is the fact that different pieces of the puzzle do not come together in time for the storyboard to get complete - for the customer to read effortlessly. Creating a list of sweet adjectives is one thing, calling them ‘values’ is another and upholding them in every task that is undertaken is a different ball game, altogether. If even one activity in your organization places your own interest over your customers .. you aren’t as customer-centric as you claim to be - truth be told. Simplest examples could be: 

1. Lucrative deals that conceal conditions.
2. Keeping revisions from your customers.
3. Benefits that are promised but not processed in time.
4. Choosing to design systems that require ‘lesser effort’ despite every logical argument pointing towards the alternative approach.
5. Counting coins… going back on stated commitments.

Orgs ignore to value their commitments after that coveted purchase has been made by the customer. Litmus test - “Benefits not received” if this thing makes even a portion of your customer feedback - you clearly haven’t done a good job in getting everyone in your organization to understand ‘customer centricity’. People have creative ways of explaining such slippage, they blame it on systems or lack of it, some even have the audacity of pushing ‘was busy’ argument in for such mayhem etc but for all you and I know, it is never about excuses. At the very core it is about that individual or department or organization caring little - just that, nothing more .. nothing less! This is not a situation however that can’t be corrected but it will certainly take the investment of ‘giving up greed ’, not getting 'seduced or sucked into mindless urgency' and building a 'culture that values customers more than everything else' .. even profits in the short term. You will have to learn to wait till you are ready, make arrangements for your workforce to abide by those principles. Play by the rules .. win but always remember that winning fairly is more important. Ends do not justify the means. 

Basically, close looping, in this context, means that you will have zero difference between your thoughts, words, and actions - not an easy thing to attain but whoever has ever got there has remained a darling to their customers. 

On that note... I leave you to think and correct whatever is broken because there is never a better time than NOW to reboot…