The ActiveFilings' Blog

A few minutes ago, we had to call our bank, Chase, to check on the status of an unauthorized transaction to our account. After a long verification process, we were finally connected with a human being.

And so very shortly after I began explaining my situation, I came to realize that this person was not American, and she was not even in our country. It seemed to me that she had an Indian or Philippino accent, and judging by the quality of the communication, it was obvious that I was talking with somebody thousands of miles away from me.

This made me think about 3 things to take into account when choosing a provider, especially the ones with whom you know you will have to interact with at some point. Examples of this kind of providers are banks in first place, computer equipment dealers in second place, and last but not least, the company that is going to incorporate your business.

The 3 things to think about before deciding who to go with could be written as follows:

1.- Quality of communication: off shores call centers get connected through voice over IP, which is like using Skype or Vonage to make a phone call. You can connect through them, but the quality will depend on the internet traffic in every and each of the nodes you have to connect in order to reach your destination. Of course, when you most need this communication, chances are that the network is going to be too busy to provide you a clear connection.

2.- Language. English is English everywhere you go. Accents are not, and they can really hurt your business. Anybody that has spoken to an Australian, Indian or South African, will tell you it is not an easy task to get your point across, even in the same language, when accents are involved.

3.- They are not here! they don’t understand our circumstances, our problems and concerns. They just follow a book which clearly indicates them to say “I apologize” every 2 seconds and a predetermined set of answers that they will follow to dead. The call center’s operators don’t make decisions. They don’t suggest alternatives and they are there to ultimately just take your message. Same as an answering machine would, although much more polite.

Your bank, as well as ours, must be saving some money. Your providers can tell you that to have a call center abroad allows them to provide you a lower price than the competitors and so on. Well, it is also up to you to decide to what extent you will sacrifice the post-sales support just to pay a few less dollars.

Our advice: ask your provider where its support call center is located!

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