Eric: Welcome to the contact center cactus chat podcast. I’m your host Eric Mulvin coming to you from sunny Phoenix, Arizona.
Jake: And I’m your co-host Jake Cayang from Dumaguete City, Philippines.
Eric: I’m a serial enterpreneur, started my business 10yrs ago and 6 LLC’s later, I started Pac Biz Contact Center Outsourcing in 2015, today we have over 200 employees and growing.
Jake: And I’m the Operations Manager here in Pac Biz and I have been working with Eric since 2014 and I grew as the company grew.
Eric: So whether you’re looking to outsource for the first time, whether you manage a Contact Center or you’re just looking to improve your customer experience, we’ll be covering topics for you.
Jake: So Business Managers, Operations Managers, Business Owners, this is for you so make sure to subscribe.
Eric: Alright, welcome back to episode eight. We’re just going to pick up right where we left off. And I’m joined still by my co-host, Jake, in the Philippines. Thank you for joining.
Jake: Thanks. And yeah, we were left off with a question. And yeah, of course, if you, you know, we haven’t talked about this, like outsourcing, we always talk about outsourcing from you know, different companies. But if you can remember, Eric, you outsource before, right? It started with you. So, what advice can you give to a company that is hoping for a successful start to our sourcing?
Eric: That’s a That’s a great question. I like the setup on that. You’re right, I did start by outsourcing myself as how packers got started. And, you know, we started from scratch, we’re like, we set up our own office, we set up, as we’ve encountered issues, we put up backup power backup internet, we had to get a bigger office, there was a lot of things that we had to figure out that took a lot of time. And, you know, it’s, it’s really difficult for a company to go and do that. So, you know, for for outsourcing successfully, there’s so many different options out there, like just in our city, where we’re based in in Dumaguete. There’s, I know at least about 50 or so plus different call centers that are based there. And that’s in a small town of 250,000 people in a country of 100 plus million people. And so just in the Philippines alone, I understand there’s 10, like probably over 10,000 Different call centers, 5000 big enough to be, you know, registered on some different databases. And then if you expand that out, you know, so just like everything, you know, like, great example is in the US, you know, the phrase I like to think is, you know, you kind of pay for what you get. So if like, for example, Costco In and Out Burger, you know, those are places that have reputations for having, like for paying their employees really well, but also providing a great service. And you kind of you get to experience that. In fact, it’s it’s, it’s what they pride that it’s they have their employees that stick around for so long, like Costco, you can go in there, and you can see their nametag. And you can see how long they’ve been there since 2013 2017. You know, like there’s fast food, places you would go to, they would never put that on their on their because it I’d say 2022, you know, July 2022, November 2022, that they’d be very, very recent, you don’t want to show that. But having employees that stick around for a long time, because they’re valued, that that comes out and to having a really great service. And I think the same thing happens in the call center space as well. You know, if the employees are taken care of, then they’re going to take care of the customers and they’re going to stick around a long time. If you’re, you know, like, look at the issues that happen when you’re at a fast food place where it’s always someone brand new. Now, the job is not that difficult. Possibly, there’s some complexities, I don’t want to oversimplify people working at McDonald’s, but it gets a lot more sophisticated when you’re having to work, you know, the clients that come to us and the problems that they’re facing that they want us to solve gets way more complex. And so it takes, you know, we put college educated people on the phone, they they have years of experience, and we have an attrition rate under 20%. So people stick around and you know, if you work with us, over two, three years, you’re still going to have the core team still taking calls two, three years from now. And I think that really translates to a really different experience. But they get it it costs more if you go to like if you’re you really got to look at what your focus is on like if you’re trying to maximize your AHT your average handle time versus maybe the budget, or it could be you’re trying to maximize the NPS score, Net Promoter Score, it really depends, you know, businesses are geared towards one thing or the other, not really both. If you’re trying to go for speed and trying to blast out as many causes, you can and not focus on the experience, you could find centers that could do that, if you’re trying to find centers that really focus on the experience, and that they have staff that has empathy and can can make the customers feel better and add to your lifetime value. There are centers that do that, too. But there’s different costs associated with each and they really make a big difference from the customer experience perspective,
Jake: yeah, I would say that the core values that we have is, is the main weapon of, you know, how to I choose the right, center to source. Because, you know, if you don’t, you don’t, you know, let’s start, let’s just talk about respect, you know, if you have this respect, you know, people will stick to, you know, keep working, and they, you know, they will be happy, compared to other companies that are, you know, we, they keep on changing and getting more the, the attrition rate is high, and, you know, getting, always getting new people working for them. And that’s, that’s bad, because, you know, the experience alone, which is really a big thing, working with, you know, you know, being a, a call taker, in any businesses, and, you know, especially with the taxi business, it really matters, you know, it’s like, you’re knowing all the people who’s been calling every day. And it’s, it’s really different If, you know, the flow, the speed, the accuracy, it, you know, it goes along with experience. So that’s, that’s how it is. So if, if you have the right core values, your people will stay longer. And this experience of being a working in a call center with a specific job will go longer and, you know, they they know exactly what they’re doing at all times. So this is we’re talking about people who’s been very, I mean, the expert of what they do, because of that long experience. So, yeah, it’s, it’s just about the right. The right center, the right culture of the center, and core values itself.
Eric: Yeah, awesome. Well, I uh, thank you for adding that. And you’re right, you know, it is almost like a weapon, I guess, if if you’re thinking about, we’re competing against these other centers, because, like, for me, I’m the one talking to all the businesses, and I’m hearing what their challenges are. And it’s just really only been the last 60 to 90 days that I’ve actually really focused on core values when I’m talking to businesses. And I lead with that I start out my sales presentation talking about, these are our values, this is what we look for, be cause it really is everything that like we base our decisions on on our center, the way we coach staff, the way we hire them the way we let people go when they’re not a good fit. And we also look for businesses that mapset. And I’m just straight up honest with these people, like, you know, if you’re not a good fit with our core values, we can’t work together. And if I see issues with our existing clients that you know, are running up against our core values, then I’ll speak up and tell the clients and let them know, because of how important it is to us. And the amazing thing I’ve seen is how it’s really attracted the right kind of businesses to come our way. And so my suggestion is if you don’t have your core values for your business, figure those out, figure out what those are, and think about like what’s important to your business and then you could find a company that’s a great fit. And you can find one that just matches you guys perfectly. So well, that’s all the time we have for today, and so thank you guys for listening, Jake appreciate being my co host. And so we’ll look for you guys next time on episode nine. We’ll be talking more about outsourcing and the customer experience and sharing our combined almost 20 years of knowledge working together here. Thank you guys for listening.
Jake: Always a pleasure Eric.
Eric: Yeah, likewise. All right. See you guys next time.