Outsourcing Customer Services
Personal Communication Services (PCS) cellular phones have becomes a necessity in the ever-growing society. It is common thing these days when you heard cellular phones ringing. “Cellular phone providers in the United States sign up three new users per minute and have a combined customer base of approximately 112 millions” according to CNN website (http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/03/29/phone.service.t_t/index.html). With this significant amount of customers in the nations, companies started outsourcing the telephonic customer service. Most of these services were outsourced to Asia. Many customers wonder why every time they call the customer service line they were engaged in a conversation with a representative who had a heavy accent. Companies still provide the in-store customer service but in order to satisfy the needs of the customer they had to maintain a 24-hour service line.
Cellular companies started to develop plans and strategies to provide the most available services to the customers. At the beginning of the cellular phone era, customer service was a national market. This created thousands of jobs with many advantages to the customer and the employees. Customers did not have to spend any money calling a toll free number at any time during the day or night. The employees had the option to work from home by having access to the company’s system. Suddenly the companies started to look at different options to increase the cost-cutting strategy and one that enhances the shareholder wealth. Quickly they became aware that by outsourcing those telephonic customer services job they could save a lot of money in labor while preserving the satisfaction of each customer. “Companies can cut 20% to 70% of their labor costs by moving jobs to low-wage nations-assuming that the work is of comparable quality” according to Jennifer Reingold...