Have you seen the Facebook video of the 4 year old boy acting out an inbound customer service call? If you haven’t we’ve added a link below and, whilst this should bring a smile to your face, we couldn’t help but wonder if there was a deeper message here for UK business.
About 10 years ago you’ll remember the exodus to outsource front of house operations to countries like India primarily driven on the back of a need/desire to reduce costs which, from a consumer perspective, disregarded the impact on the customer experience. There were some well publicised concerns around infrastructure, cultural differences and data protection to name a few and a large number of household names got their fingers burned with UK customers exercising their choice to do business with alternative providers who ensured that outstanding customer service remained at the heart of their business focus. This, together with the combined effects on a global economy, created a gradual repatriation of many of these customer facing roles with many extolling the virtues of their “UK based call centres” (which, let’s be honest, was a bit rich when all they had to do was better understand and care more about their customers needs in the first place – but that’s a different story for a different day).
Here at FIT we passionately believe that “people buy people first” and, if this little fella is anything to go by, overseas agent abilities to build natural empathy and rapport and deliver a positive, memorable experience is likely to be a viable business reality in the next 10-15 years. When that happens we may very well see a similar shift to outsource customer facing roles overseas – although next time the outcome may very well be a permanent one.
You can watch, listen and learn from this delightful young man at http://on.fb.me/124fs30 and let us know your thoughts on whether or not the UK customer service industry is well placed to meet these future challenges.
