Outsourcing: Amit Shankardass And Andrew Kokes Of Sitel (Part 4)

By guest author Tony Scott

Tony: What do you think is driving your clients to use outsourcing overall, and why do you think they are choosing you over other BPO and inbound call center providers?

Andrew: I think the value proposition for outsourcing is essentially that it is better, faster, and cheaper. If you talked to our customers, and we have a string of 50 customers worldwide, you would see it comes down to one or a combination of those: the ability to take what you are doing today and improve the process. [By this I mean] to improve your speed to market with that process or the output of that process, or to do it in a less expensive manner. Generally speaking, it is one or a combination of those three that people are looking to improve within their call center or contact center environment.

Tony: And how do they find you? How does your sales model work? Is it a direct sales model or people who are in a channel model?

Amit: It is very much a direct sales model. It is a fundamental outsourcing value proposition. But one of the things to keep in mind is that when we sell outsourced services, and even more so, when we sell offshore call center services, we are selling to individuals, not companies. Companies are an aggregation of individuals, and company culture is an aggregation of groups of individuals with belief systems, right?

When you’re in that kind of sales model, you have to have sales executives who are not only outsourcing and offshoring experts in our business, but who also understand the psychology of individuals and how people buy.

To [understand how we] sell the services we sell, think about this for a second: Where does the representation of a company come from? Many people argue that customers are the crown jewels of any company, and all of a sudden they give [them] to us, and outsourcers are controllers of the crown jewels, right? That is a major decision, and those decisions are certainly not made at a tactical level – they are made at strategic levels. They come from a company culture. Our sales executives are exactly that: executives who understand the business, the industry, and the buying behavior. You have to sell to individuals, and sometimes there are preconceived notions and biases.

Tony: Talking about the total cost of ownership model, what percentage of your business is based on labor rate arbitrage – the pure cost differential – and what percentage is based on on value-added services or on specific knowledge that you may bring to the table to be able to work with your customers? How do you articulate that to your potential customers?

Amit: That is a great question, and I will tell you, we articulate it in very plain and simple terms. First, I use the total cost of ownership, but it also falls under relevant labor arbitrage; let me explain what I mean by relevant labor arbitrage. The idea of labor arbitrage is you take a job and move it offshore; you do it cheaply and the client is happy. And, by the way, Indians saw a lot of that in the early days of contact center outsourcing in the early 2000s.

Today we have the ability to do what a client wants done. We have the skills they need, not just language skills, but the experience they need, and the knowledge workers they need. Generally, if we look at our portfolio of delivered services, we need people with a strong technology background who have good English-speaking skills. Well, India pumps out more technology graduates and engineering graduates than anywhere in the world, and a lot of them speak English with some fluency. “What a great location to buy services from!” clients were saying in the early days of outsourcing. But now, we say to them, “We find the best labor with the right skills in the right region with the right kind of capability under the appropriate economic model.” That is when the total cost of ownership model kicks in.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Outsourcing: Amit Shankardass And Andrew Kokes Of Sitel
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