Eric 0:03
Welcome to the Contact Center Cactus Chat Podcast. I’m your host Eric Mulvin, coming to you from sunny Phoenix, Arizona.
Jake 0:09
And I’m your co-host Jake Cayang. From Dumaguete City, Philippines.
Eric 0:12
I’m a serial entrepreneur. Started my first business 10 years ago, and six LLCs later, I started Pac Biz Contact Center Outsourcing in 2015. Today, we have over 200 employees grown.
Jake 0:23
And I’m the Operations Manager here in Pac Biz. And I’ve been working with Eric since 2014. And I grew as the company grew.
Eric 0:30
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 0:38
So business managers, operations managers, business owners, this is for you. So make sure to subscribe.
Eric 0:48
Hey, everyone, welcome to the show. We appreciate you guys listening. And I’m really excited because as you can see, this isn’t on Zoom, we’re not on split screen. We’re actually in person today. Welcome to Phoenix, Jake.
Jake 0:59
Oh nice, Eric. So yeah, it’s really nice to be here. And first time to be with you doing the podcast.
Eric 1:09
Yeah, last time he was here was January 2020. Right before COVID started. Went to a conference. And so excited to have you back on our show, or our show together here. And today, we’re gonna be talking about why outsourcing gives you a competitive advantage. And so let’s say your ecommerce company, you’re selling maybe furniture online. So just if you’re selling maybe just on Amazon alone, I did some looking at before this podcast and 20,000 products came up. So how do you set yourself apart from those 1000s of other sellers? Or you could be a home services company? There’s dozens of plumbers, roofers in your city, how do you set yourself apart? And so we’re gonna talk about how outsourcing can give you that competitive advantage?
Jake 1:56
And some handle, Yeah, how do we take advantage of the strategic partnership to just be ahead with the competitors? So those things? And also yeah, we would also want to know, why is it that competitive advantage when you outsource versus hiring the local people?
Eric 2:23
Yeah, for sure. So, why is it a competitive advantage? Well, there’s a lot of reasons. You know, a lot of businesses, I look at it in two different ways. Like when you’re working with companies, that’s the perspective I have to take. And there’s two different kinds of businesses that we typically work with. There’s businesses where they’re outsourcing for the first time, so they’ve been established, they have their own call center, they’ve managed employees here for many times, it could be 30, 40, 50 years, possibly. And then you also have the startups. So people who are brand new, and everyone’s starting a business these days. They’re outsourcing support. So that’s a competitive advantage for your business. Because if you had to hire people to take calls here, answer the phones, emails, it’s going to come at a higher rate, and analyze the pain points that I hear a lot of businesses have, where they try to hire locally, but they don’t pay high wages. And if you’re paying people $20, $30 an hour, you’re gonna get amazing support, and you’ll be like companies where they really take care of their employees. And then, I met some people from Southwest Airlines recently, they don’t outsource, but they pay their people well, they’re known for customer support, you cannot provide good support without taking care of your employees. Would you say?
Jake 3:41
Exactly, yeah. Yeah, it’s a big difference when you outsource. When it comes to rate. And yeah, it’s, it’s like, you know, the difference of the standard of living is, would be there. Like, if you’re living with a simple life and, you know, being paid way above minimum for your, at your own perspective, like, because you’re living in a second, third world country. So it’s, it’s already helping you and yeah, the motivation is there already because of the rate. So, yeah, this is one of the advantages and also for the new business owners. I can also see that most of them are doing their modern research and was able to find out the advantages of outsourcing like the oldies.
Eric 4:48
If your strategic goals are, again, meeting people to know a lot about your business, then you know if that’s something you’re looking to accomplish over the next 12 – 36 months, you got to be strategic in what you’re finding there. Notice, we’re talking now about price as one component of this. We’re talking about really a lot of different factors such as values, it could be experience, it could be cultural, you know, many companies, they might want to outsource. I talked to a lot of people that are like, I want to outsource to the Philippines, because of the reputation you have. Often people are friendly, and they work with us. And like, yeah, this is exactly what we wanted to do. Our customers are happy. So yeah, again, it comes down to objectives, where you’re trying to accomplish your goals and finding the company that can help you meet those objectives. But it’s important when you’re having those conversations with companies like Pac Biz, companies like another call center out there, that you’re actually figuring out what are those questions I need to be asking? Because you’re not going to get the answers unless you ask. Anybody that asks me any question, you know, I’m gonna go and look it up, I’m gonna figure it out. But only if they asked me if it’s something that is not in our sales presentation, or on our normal, like, what people typically ask us, not in our website, then, you know, we’re happy to answer anything. And I think a lot of companies, hopefully, are. But yeah, figure out what’s the call center that can help you align with those objectives so that you can solve them so your business can grow? We want you guys to grow, because we get to grow along with you guys, too.
Jake 6:35
Yeah, and, yeah, we, you know, outsourcing, is, you know, that’s, something that, you know, all of the companies, outsourcers are you know, taking advantage nowadays, it is, you know, at the same time, the companies who are doing the outsource are also gaining from doing it. So, yeah, it’s just a matter of, like, what you said, and it’s a matter of of choosing the right one and getting the exact service that you needed, sometimes you need the others, this thing, which others doesn’t, or you need more volume of, you know, calls or calls being answered, and getting, you know, the quality or, you know, the customer service to the highest level. So you can also get that kind of call centers or outsourcers or you can get the high quality. And, you know, high quality is more on, you know, giving good service to be precise and accurate with the details. So, that would also sometimes, it means a little longer calls just to get those informations correct. So, those things, so all you have to do is just to get the right, and make sure that you get the right outsourcers.
Eric 8:04
Yeah, because we were not even the best fit for everybody. We really worked with businesses that want to, like you mentioned about the longer call times, we have to be able to invest into your customer experience. If your main objective is as fast as calls as possible, and we don’t get an opportunity to help the customer, then we might not be a good fit for you. We’re not about speed, we’re about quality. Now, if your objective, not to say that we don’t have metrics, if you have certain call time units hit we’re going to work to hit that. But you don’t work with Pac Biz, because they’re the fastest call center in the world. No, we’re really focused on customer experience. So if you’re trying to do cold calling, not us! We do inbound customer support. So again, this is finding those call centers for 1000s and 1000s of us out there. Everybody specializes in different things. So people that specialize in outbound, people that specialize in collections. You know, those are things that I wouldn’t want to do. But I know there’s companies out there that could do that. So, well, I hope this conversation was helpful for you guys listening, and, you know, hope you guys are getting it. I think by the time this episode comes out, it’s about time to make sure you get your plan for 2023. And so, you know, you should be thinking about those strategic objectives for next year. I think I was at a talk recently, where the guy presenting was like you could have a horrible business but with a great strategy, you could be successful. If you’ve got a horrible strategy and a great business, you might be struggling. So think about that, business owners that are listening. Make sure that you’re working on your strategic plan for next year and then outsourcing is part of that, then let us know how we can help.