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: We’re excited to talk to you guys today for episode four. And we’re going to continue the conversation around hiring. We talked in episode three about the challenges that we’re seeing you guys are facing, which is around people that aren’t ambitious. Lots of turnover. One thing that Jake talked about was, you know, when we, when we get schedule from our clients and then okay, work these shifts. Then after that, we start getting more requests, hey, can you fill this time and that time and hey, you know, can you put someone else extra on today? And is because those people that they’re hiring are not working out? They’re not showing up. They’re, they’re going to the events that we’re supposed to be helping cover Or, you know, so stuff like that. So today we’re going to talk about what companies like us call center outsource companies, what we do to help solve those problems and how can we how do we eliminate those pain points? And what that enables you guys to do in the process? So, So Jake, you know, you’re the one again, that’s working with these businesses, and filling those requests, right. So talk to me about you know, what are what are some of the things that we’re doing and how are we running around behind the scenes to help solve their pain points?
Jake: Yeah, to start with, you know, we have our own people here in Pac Biz, you know, we also have our own problem same as the the people who are outsourcing but you know, can be minimal, or I don’t really know but what we do is for, for each account, we make sure that they can discover it so we have these people you know, working to learn more about the accounts and be familiar with it, and they until they pass and they can be qualified as a backup person. So what this backup person do is, you know, here in the Philippine labor code, we, we provide different types of leaves, like vacation leaves, whate else, the maternity leave for women and all other stuff. So this, these backup people will fill in if needed. So we have them already prepared to for the account to cover anytime, including absences. We do have that also but yeah, we make sure that we cover the shifts that the clients are providing. So that’s the reason why we can also cover other requests, because we have these people out as backup. So yeah, Thats, we eliminate this problem of the client like they know they can call us anytime or send in an email that they need a person to cover for the shift. This is outside of the agreed number of agents like they wanted to have 20 so we provide 20. And, you know, outside of that are their requests. So we have this other agents you know, outside of that people who are already assigned with that schedule so they can.
Eric: The back up people definitely I think, you know, you touched on I think it’s such a big ability, like flexibility that we have, that the clients aren’t able to have. You know, for us. We have just over right now, as of recording here this summer 2022 just got about 200 people working at Pac Biz. And, you know, if you’re a business that you know, has a small team, you’re trying to conserve cash. You don’t have a bunch of extra, you’re not well funded like these giant startups like DoorDash and Uber and Airbnb, they have unlimited funding and seems for anything. You guys, we can’t do that. The clients we work with, are, they’re not doing that too they’ve started like, funding that you need and you’re not trying to blow it all on customer support. Because you’re trying to invest in to your your product and to your software and to operations and to marketing. So you don’t have a lot to put towards that. So when someone is sick, or when there is a big increase in demand all of a sudden Wow, that campaign that we did is generated twice the business that we thought now our wait times went from, you know, something manageable that people don’t mind to now they’re waiting like three, four minutes on hold, or they’re waiting hours for their ticket to be resolved or days. And that’s that’s a problem for businesses and the customers and especially if you’re trying to grow your business, so that’s huge. And I really think, uhm you know, there’s there’s that component of it where if you’re a business that is just trying to run day to day, but growing businesses too. You know, I talk a lot with clients about like, if you’re a growing company, and you know that in the next three to six months, you’re going to need more staff. How do you prepare for that, you know, you got to train someone it takes, there’s a learning curve. So talk to me about like what we do and what what a lot of other outsourcing companies do with the backups. Like how does that backup help? When it’s businesses scaling like that?
Jake: Yeah. And to add to that, Eric, I have seen some supervisors and managers jumped in to help cover shifts on shore. Like these people are not supposed to be taking calls they’re supposed to be thinking you know, higher things that could improve the company and not entertaining and you know, receiving calls, hours and hours for you know, to fill in for people who are not showing up or you know, uhm just to eliminate the high number of call waiting on the queue. So yeah, this is this is the problem that I have seen over the years so uhm and we got that resolved by you know, providing more people and you know, we always have you know, as backup they’re always available, so we help them grow.
Eric: Alright, Jake that is such a great point, you know, and thank you for bringing that up because that is something that I hear so often is and in, in every industry is you, these businesses, they wait until the supervisor’s taking calls the manager’s taking calls, you know, they’re trying to help bring the queue down. And what ends up happening is those are people they have other responsibilities in the company too. You, you need other things to get done, and they’re not getting done because they are over-doing more interviews, they’re doing more calls, they’re covering the calls. So that is, is not good for a company. And you know, it’s important to cover that, but like how is your business going to be able to grow when you’re stuck in that situation? You gotta get past that pain point so that you can start solving other issues for your business. And that’s where we really come in because, you know, so if you guys have had this problem for your business for the last six months, 12 months since COVID. I’m here to tell you that this isn’t going away. It’s going to get worse like right now like I heard a statistic last month or last week about hiring that right now. There’s only, there’s two jobs for every one uhm person that’s looking for work. So if every single American got hired for all the open positions, there’s still like 5 to 7 million jobs available. So the idea that you’re going to be able to fill those positions and that people are going to stick around, It’s not going to work so, but there’s a solution, there’s and there’s a solution that everyone around the US, Canada and UK are turning to and that’s outsourcing and it’s working with businesses like us to outsource these functions so that you can hire better talent and and pay your people that are in a higher level roles more. So I think that’s our time for today. So thank you guys for listening. Jake, thank you so much for joining and being my host here and talking about outsourcing and what what you could do to solve those challenges.
Jake: Yeah, thanks, Eric. And yeah, see you all for the next episode.
Eric: Yeah, see you guys in the next episode.