Evil of Outsourcing

Customer Experience, WOW Factor, Customer orientation ... all these are jargons used by many so-called-the-business-legends. Many Business corporations fall into the virtual word webs these consultants during the initial interaction and start following just like a nerd. To be honest, I've never seen any consultant who can aptly define or say what is a customer orientation.



Is it just about giving the right product at right time to the customer? Well I feel it is much more than that. Companies often think that once the product is sold,they have won the customer. They implement all kind of CRM products to track what he wants and when he wants. Mind there is NO such CRM software in this world that is customer centric. All the CRM softwares you name it SAP or Seibel or Clarify just mine the data of existing customer, form a pattern out of it. They DON'T interact with actual consumers to gain data. Its all the company centric or focused information. You feed in data which is comfortable or relevant to your company / product.



A couple of weeks back, I went to a famous discount store in the city. After all my purchase, during billing an executive of the store came to me and asked, "Sir, we found that you are purchasing products worth more than Rs.XYZ and we are willing to give you a ABCD Card of our store. You can avail many discounts and prizes for the rewards point accumulated in the card for every purchase. Its a lifetime free card" . Though, I normally don't entertain these kind of impulse selling, keeping in mind that I may shop at this store in FUTURE, I accepted his offer. We signed a couple of documents and stamped all the relevant photocopy for proofs. He said, "Sir within a week, you will get the card at your residence".



Three days later, I got a call from PQR Bank asking for verification. I wasn't aware that this store is associated to this bank for credit card. So I promptly denied of applied for any credit card with PQR Bank. A day later, I got another call from the same bank, asking for verification, still I couldn't remember that I've applied for any card with the bank and I denied it. There after I didn't get any calls from them.



Yesterday, when I went back to the same store I met the executive. He asked " Why did you do like this sir?". I said," What I have done?" . He said, " Our people from PQR bank have been trying for verification, but you denied for applying any card. You have signed all the papers for the same last time." . I just then understood the link. I told him, " Boss, I honestly doesn't know that its for the card I have applied with you. They haven't told me that its for ABCD Card. They were selling for PQR Bank Card. Ask them to do verification another time, I would take it up".



What's wrong or what went wrong with the situation. They were trying to sell me a product with brand name ABCD which was then associated with another brand PQR. When they have outsourced everything, the backend team knows only about PQR and not about ABCD. The customer knows only about ABCD and nothing about PQR. They lost a sale here.



The evil of outsourcing is to maintain consistency in passing the information. Communicate & Collaborate are the TWO big thing that should be taken care when the business is outsourced. Due to mis interpretation and mis communication, both ABCD Store & PQR Bank have lost a sale. The executive lost his commision. The verifiying Agency lost a transaction. The verifiying agent lost his incentive.



Is this company a customer oriented company??