Heroes in Business - Eric Mulvin, Successful Outsourcing Part 2, Company V

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

Eric and Jake continue from where they left off with more advice to help start-up outsourcing companies find their success in a growing industry in this episode of the Contact Center Cactus Chat.

Welcome to the Contact Center Cactus Chat Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Malvin, coming to you from sunny Phoenix, Arizona. And I'm your co-host, Jay Kayang, from Dumagiri City, Philippines. I'm a serial entrepreneur, started my first business 10 years ago, and six LLCs later, I started PacBiz Contact Center Outsourcing in 2015. Today, we have over 200 employees growing. And I'm the operations manager here in PackBiz, and I've been working with Eric since 2014, and I grew as the company grew. 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. So business managers,

operations managers, business owners, this is for you. So make sure to subscribe. operations managers business owners this is for you so make sure to subscribe all right welcome back to episode eight we're just going to pick up right where we left off uh and i'm joined still by my co-host jake in the philippines thank you for joining yeah all right thanks and uh 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 outsourced before, right? It started with you. And so what advice can you give to a company that is hoping for a successful start

to our sourcing oh man that's uh that's a great question i like to set up on that you're right i did start by outsourcing myself that's how pack this got started and um you know we started from scratch we're like we set up our own office uh We set up, as we 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 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 a hundred plus million. And so just in the Philippines alone, I understand there's 10, like probably over 10,000 different call centers, 5,000 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 a great example is in the U.S. 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-N-Out Burger, you know, those are places that have

reputations for having, for paying their employees really well, but also providing a great service. And you kind of, you get to experience that. great service and uh you kind of you you get to experience that uh in fact it's it's it's what they pride that it's uh they have the employees that stick around for so long like costco you can go in there and you can see their name tag and you could see how long they've been there you know since 2013 2017 you know like there's fast food places you would go to they would never put that on their on there because they'd all say 2022 you know july 2022 november 2022 they'd they'd be very very recent you don't want to show that but having employees that stick around a long time because they're valued then that comes out into having a really great service and i think the same thing happens in the call center space as well.

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. 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 are 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 a nutrition rate under 20% so the people stick around and you know if you work with us over two three years you're still gonna 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 cost 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 HT 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. Businesses are geared towards one thing or the

other, not really both. And if you're trying to go for speed and trying to blast out as many calls as 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 make the customers feel better and add to your lifetime value, there's 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. Yeah, I would say that the core values that we have is is the main weapon of, you know, to choose the right center for our source.

Because, you know, if you don't, you don't, you know, let's start with let's just talk about respect. You know, if you have this respect, you know let's start with let's just talk about respect you know if you have this respect you know people who stick to you know keep working and they you know they they'll be happy compared to other companies that are you know we they keep on changing and you know getting more the attrition rate is high and you know getting always getting new people working for them. And that's bad because the experience alone is really a big thing. Working with being a call taker in any businesses,

especially with the taxi business it really matters you know it's like you're knowing all the people who has been calling every day and it's it's really different if you know the flow the the speed the accuracy it you know it goes along with the experience so that's that's how it is so if if you have the right uh core values you your people will stay longer and this experience of being a a working in the call center with a specific job will will go longer and you know they they know exactly what they're doing at all times. So 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 just about the right center, the right culture of the center and core values itself. Yeah, Awesome. Well, I thank you for adding that. And you're right. You know, it is almost like a weapon, I guess, 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 with my sales presentation talking about these are our values this is what we look for because it really really is everything that we base our decisions on at 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 match that. And I'm just straight up honest with these people. 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 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, if you don't have your core values for your business, figure those out, figure 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. 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. It's always a pleasure, Eric. Yeah, likewise. All right.

See you guys next time. Thank you.