Why Stay Onshore

Thinking of outsourcing your technical help desk to an offshore provider? Think again

The allure is great. You hear the pitch, “We have a highly skilled labor pool that is fluent in English at a price that is a fraction of U.S. onshore rates.” But what are you really getting? Here are several things to seriously consider before making this decision.

1. Dialects – Yes, they speak English, some much better than others, but almost all have some form of dialect that may be difficult to understand. Being “fluent” in English is only part of the equation. Understanding the American English idiom is equally important. Being able to speak and truly understanding what is being said plays a big role on the end-user experience with an offshore technical help desk.

2. Countries – Do you know whom you are really talking to? Many offshore outsourcing companies are continuously looking for the lowest cost labor pool. At one time, that was India, but as India’s standard of living continues to increase, they are not necessarily the lowest cost labor pool any longer. Today, Malaysia, Vietnam, Costa Rica and several other countries have been the focus for expansion of offshore contact centers. This adds another level of complexity to an already complex environment, and is difficult to manage and provide continuity of support.

3. High turnover – the very nature of low cost labor pools can change the dynamics of a geographical population very quickly. As competitive contact centers move into the same areas, there can be a high degree of turnover as workers change jobs rapidly for relatively low increases in salary. Some centers have experienced annual turnover rates of as high as 70%. This makes it extremely hard to build continuity of programs and consistent end user satisfaction ratings are difficult to maintain.

4. Infrastructure – the labor pool is only a part of the equation. What is the country’s infrastructure like? Can they sustain technology with the increased use in power, telecommunications and bandwidth requirements that large scale contact centers bring to the area? Reliable phone systems and networks are a must for consistent support. Ongoing power and network outages can cause significant downtime. If your end users cannot place a call or get updates in a timely fashion then the savings gained by outsourcing is completely negated by end user downtime.

5. Hidden costs –What is the real cost of going offshore? Consider the following: different dialects, cultural issues, inconsistent knowledge and infrastructure problems can all contribute to an increase in the average time required to resolve an end users issue. If the increase in time required is as low as 10% over using an on-shore help desk, you may very well have negated any cost savings realized due to lost end user productivity and you end up with dissatisfied end users as well. In addition, the increase in the amount of time that management has to be involved to monitor and manage an offshore help desk is generally not even considered in ROI calculations, but is a very real and expensive overhead.

Bottom line, the end user’s experience with the help desk is what sets the overall perception of the entire IT organization. Failure at this level casts a shadow over the entire organization that is not easy to overcome. At CoSentry, we are 100% U.S. based. We understand the culture and we understand the importance of getting your end users back into production as timely as possible.