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In this episode of Customer Service Secrets, Gabe is joined by CloudTask CEO, Amir Reiter, and VP of Marketing, Tom Jenkins, to discuss outsourcing and how to adapt in today’s dynamic markets. CloudTask is an outsourced sales organization that allows leaders to focus on scaling their businesses while giving them the ability to hire state-of-the-art sales and customer success support teams, on demand 24/7. Both guests are committed to providing the right tools organizations need to create wow-worthy support and thrive in the digital landscape. For great insights on the benefits of outsourcing, listen to the full podcast below.
Why Outsourcing is the Right Answer
Outsourcing is a highly discussed topic in the business world. Most of the time it is used as a tactic to save money and increase profit. To describe it generally, it’s when outside experts help build your business or processes. The better the business processes and training programs are, the easier and more effective outsourcing can be. Amir ties together outsourcing and customer service by saying, “We’re seeing an influx of inquiries now because people aren’t prepared for remote customer support. And I think whether or not you outsource or don’t outsource, if you build a solid training program and a solid repeatable process, it’s just a matter of having smart people who represent your company the right way.” While outsourcing can potentially benefit multiple areas of a company, it’s most important to focus your efforts on having a repeatable process and a good training program.
Outsourcing That Works
Once businesses decide that they are going to outsource, it’s usually difficult to determine which company/individual to hire. To assist in this decision making process, Amir and Tom mention two things. First, you need to have a good grasp on your company and its purpose to ensure that the other company will mesh with yours. Amir states, “Look for culture that matches yours. Look for teammates that you enjoy working with. Look for a company that adds value, that has experience and can bring their experience to the table, whether it comes to training, processes, technology, templates.”
In addition to that, to make sure outsourcing is effective, it’s important to remember that outsourced people are still part of the team. Tom adds, “I’d say even though it is outsourcing as well, still think of it, it’s your team. We just join your organization. The closer we work together, the better the results are going to be. We love it when people come to our offices, people bring their own trainers or even their account managers. And you know, we go hiking, we go out for dinner afterwards. The closer we work together the better the results are going to be.” In other words, make sure that outsourced individuals connect with your company and feel like they’re a part of the team. When you do that productivity will increase and the team will have a positive experience overall.
The Importance of Empathy
In a more serious and sensitive tone, Amir and Tom also go into the current COVID-19 pandemic and discuss how it is affecting the B2B, B2C relationships. They discuss the importance of empathy, understanding, community, and a balance between life and work. Understanding your team and culture will help increase the desire to understand the customer. Tom explains:
It’s about understanding what exactly is going on, both in your business, but also in your life and how you can support, again, not just through your business, but everybody is looking to each other to create more community. And the more community you create, the better it’s going to be for your business. That’s not why you want them to do it. You know, you want to do it because we’re human beings and we want to support each other. The more human you are, the more everybody is going to benefit; business and life.
Community and empathy are essential characteristics of a business that wants to grow quickly and authentically. Outsourcing the right way is going to help businesses scale while delivering on customers’ expectations. To learn more about Amir Reiter, Tom Jenkins, CloudTask and outsourcing, check out the Customer Service Secrets podcast episode, and be sure to subscribe for new episodes each Thursday.
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Full Episode Transcript:
Bring in the Experts: Why Outsource Your Customer Service Team With Amir Reiter & Tom Jenkins
Intro Voice: (00:04)
You’re listening to the Customer Service Secrets Podcast by Kustomer.
Gabe Larsen: (00:10)
Alright welcome everybody. Today we’re going to be talking about, I think it will be a fun topic, we’re going to talk a little bit big picture about what’s going on in the current environment. How companies B2C and B2B look at customer service differently. Then we’re going to hone in on this idea of outsourcing. How should you be thinking about your outsourced customer service strategy? Why do it? Why not do it? Some of the challenges. To do that we’ve got two gentlemen joining us. We’ve got VP of marketing, Tom Jenkins coming from CloudTask and then we’ve got CEO, Amir Reiter, from CloudTask. Guys, thanks for joining and how are you? Amir let’s start with you.
Amir Reiter: (00:47)
We’re good. It could be better circumstances globally, but we’re good. We’re good. I’m in Miami. Tom is in Hawaii at nighttime.
Tom Jenkins: (00:59)
I’m not in Rio de Janeiro on the beach. I’m down in Medallín, Columbia. I’m looking forward to the recording.
Gabe Larsen: (01:09)
Yeah. Yeah. I think this will be fun. I mean all of us wish it was, good point Amir, under a little different circumstances, but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. Before we dive in, let’s have each of you just tell us just a little more about yourself and then maybe a little more about CloudTask. Amir, let’s start with you again. So tell us a little bit more about yourself and what you guys do over there.
Amir Reiter: (01:25)
Yeah, so I’m the CEO and founder of CloudTask and we are all about allowing leaders to focus on their business and I give them the ability to hire sales, customer success support teams, on demand 24/7, multi language. And we partner with amazing technologies like Kustomer and other great tecs and sales and customer success space so we can enable best of breed, customer support, sales, and success functions.
Gabe Larsen: (01:51)
I love it. I love it. Tom, tell us a little bit about yourself. We’ve got now a little bit on CloudTask, what would you add to that or in your background?
Tom Jenkins: (01:58)
Yeah, so my background, I head the marketing team here at CloudTask, great company, great culture, been here two and a half years and yeah, I think Amir did a pretty good job explaining who we are. We’re just here to help other businesses scale and grow and yeah, I’m enjoying being part of that journey.
Gabe Larsen: (02:16)
Love it. Love it. Well, let’s dive into the talk track you guys. So, and Amir, let’s start with you. We were talking pre about this, I think it’s an interesting idea. Why B2C has made the investment in customer support and why B2B has been lagging a little bit?
Amir Reiter: (02:30)
I think it’s in the easy answer, right? I think the consumer in B2C has a voice. “I didn’t get my diet pills in 24 hours and I’m going to complain on chat and scream and kick and scream and I’m never going to buy from you again. I’m going to leave a review right now in real time.” Right? So I think the consumer has a louder voice in B2C and they’re quicker to share their voice. And I think B2B, it’s driven differently, right? It’s not necessarily transactional on small items where reviews can make a difference. It’s more longer agreements, contracts where somebody that signed a contract might not be there in six months, right. You could sign a million dollar contract and you can leave a company tomorrow. Right? And companies that have been growing really fast in B2B spaces have been fueled by a lot of VC money and their goals are not necessarily NPS scores. It’s kind of revenue. Now, it’s become a much more of a player in B2B because there are review sites like G2 Crowd and Capterra and —
Gabe Larsen: (03:43)
[inaudible] getting a little more empowered. Right?
Amir Reiter: (03:45)
It’s catching up. Right? But that’s my opinion why. What do you think Tom?
Gabe Larsen: (03:52)
Tom, yeah. What would you add to it man?
Tom Jenkins: (03:53)
Yeah, I’d definitely say it’s a volume thing that definitely comes into it. And B2C tends to be doing much larger numbers. And then for the needs to invest in customer support was immediately more obvious. I certainly wouldn’t say more necessary because usually in B2B — well, not always, but that tends to be low volume, higher cost. But you know, at the end of the day, the revenue’s the same. At the end of the day a customer is still a person, whether it’s a business, it’s still an account manager, a sales rep, the support manager there. And they still need to be treated the same way. But it just feels like because it is a business there’s that kind of, I guess, lower level of empathy maybe. That’s really changed in the last few years and B2B’s really started to catch on as well.
Gabe Larsen: (04:43)
I agree. I agree. Some of those points –that definitely resonates with me. I’ve experienced both in a major way. What do you guys feel like, again I just want to stay a little high level and then let’s dive into outsourcing, but certainly time’s changing for B2C and B2B. What are you seeing going on and how can companies react most effectively to somehow maintain some semblance of success or whatever’s kind of going on here. Tom, we’ll start with you.
Tom Jenkins: (05:11)
Yeah. The first thing is just understanding that we’re all in this together. There’s nobody who’s not affected by this global situation. And it’s just really engaging with people, getting on the phone, coming back to that empathy again, it’s no longer about, “Oh, can I have a meeting? Can I have some more money? Can I have the renewal?” No. It’s about understanding what exactly is going on, both in your business, but also in your life and how you can support, again, not just through your business, but everybody is looking to each other to create more community. And the more community you create, the better it’s going to be for your business. That’s not why you want them to do it. You know, you want to do it because we’re human beings and we want to support each other. The more human you are, the more everybody is going to benefit; business and life.
Gabe Larsen: (06:03)
I love it. Amir, anything you’d add, kind of trends you’re seeing, ways people are handling all the changes?
Amir Reiter: (06:08)
Well, either changes, you know, when you bring up the topic changes you think of the current situation, changes in B2B and B2C support in general. Tom talked about the current environment. Let’s talk about two weeks prior to what’s happening, just B2B and B2C. I think one of the big changes we’ve seen in the last year was this concept of sales chat, right? And, “Oh my God, there are sales chats and sales engine, and we’re making money with sales chat.” But what we got to see from behind the scenes was that a lot of the sales chat people were customer support issues. And a lot of those customer support issues well, they were sales opportunities. So what’s the real change? It’s just that people kind of took a concept that probably existed for a long time and realized that, “Hey, we’re impatient and if we can talk to a human being on a website live, we like that.” Right? And we do like that, right? If I just had a customer support experience with Namecheap, I was about to buy domains and I got locked out because my credit card was declined. And then they asked me to unlock it, they said, “What’s the last four digits of your credit card?” And I said, “I’m freaking locked out because of the credit card, there’s no credit card. How am I going to know the last four digits of my credit card that locked me out?” And I had to wait for like 10 minutes for a response, because it was clear that the person was handling multiple chats. I didn’t like that because I got timed out and I had to start over a couple of times. So I think people realize that, “Hey, live chat is great, having support’s amazing, but they’re trying to always find that ratio of person to support case and what happens to support is support doesn’t look that as money generating, sometimes it’s given less resources. And I think if we look at — this is like a wish for me, right? — I think that if we can learn how to make chat support, or support people also salespeople, but not by selling and closing deals, but just by having answers, I think we can invest more in support and have more efficiency because I like to talk to the same person about maybe buying a new domain and a new problem.
Gabe Larsen: (08:19)
Fascinating.
Amir Reiter: (08:21)
That’s just me.
Gabe Larsen: (08:22)
That was kind of the talk of the town, right? Chat? And how we can use that deflection, being smarter, some automation. Let’s use that to dovetail into some of these conversations about outsourcing. I mean, that’s one of the things you guys have specialized in. You obviously help companies think through that. Maybe just again, on this topic, start a little more bigger picture. Why would I, as a company even start down this path? Why outsource my service center versus going inhouse?
Amir Reiter: (08:50)
That’s a good question. I think I want to answer that question, not from the lenses of CloudTask, right? I think I’m going to answer that question from the point of outsourcing and BPOs have been around for a very long time, and they’ve been around for a long time for the enterprise, right? The airlines, the big banks, right? The people who have thousands of employees. And I think whether you outsource or don’t outsource, it all comes down to having a repeatable process and having an amazing training program. Right? And if you look at the world, what’s happened recently and how everyone’s remote, you know, we’re seeing an influx of inquiries now because people aren’t prepared for remote customer support. And I think whether or not you outsource or don’t outsource, if you build a solid training program and a solid repeatable process, it’s just a matter of having smart people who represent your company the right way. And that could be through an outsource BPL, that could be people you’re hiring remotely. That could be W2’s and trainer leave. But if you have that culture of treating everybody the same internally and putting benchmarks so that everyone’s competing for the common good of a customer’s experience, I think companies win. But I’m a fan of even a blended workforce.
Amir Reiter: (10:03)
I think for me, for us, you know, we’re an outsource sales organization and we have an outsourced marketing person who helps us and he’s Tom’s best friend. So — and I also have an outsourced CFO. So we kind of preach what we saw in the sense that — find people that you mesh well with, who show up every day and who work with you and the type of engagement starts to fade away, I think.
Gabe Larsen: (10:30)
Yeah. I like that. I like that. I want to ask a follow up, but Tom, anything else you’d add or you see it slightly different?
Tom Jenkins: (10:36)
Yeah. I may have touched on it. And a big thing is the processes, especially when a lot of companies now are suddenly having to ramp up their teams really quickly. And usually when you work with an outsource provider, they’ve been there and done it over a number of years and they tweak the processes to a number of different industries, organizations, groups. And of course it still needs to be about your organization. So they are specialized to work with you to do that. As when you’re doing it first hand yourself, even if you’ve had a team for a while and suddenly have to expand it, it’s a lot of the time about not reinventing the wheel, just going with a process that you know works and there’s proof of it.
Gabe Larsen: (11:22)
Got it. And then this training thing. I mean, you hit on it, telling me you’re reinforcing it just a little bit, but is that kind of the thing that people don’t have the most of?
Amir Reiter: (11:30)
Oh my God, that’s what they really tell you when they say, I don’t want to outsource. They’re basically like, I have not invested in a full time training department and I am more comfortable looking over someone’s shoulder, which they never really do because you don’t really have time to look over somebody’s shoulder, but that has been the number one underlying objection that I have felt. And I get it, right? I think it’s hard for a leader to be like, “Hey, like I don’t have state of the art training program. And that’s why I’m scared of working with you guys.” It’s a lot easier to say, “I just don’t outsource.” Right? But that’s kind of what I’ve seen, but I think that —
Gabe Larsen: (12:02)
And what does a state of the art training —
Amir Reiter: (12:04)
I’m glad you asked.
Gabe Larsen: (12:08)
What does that look like? And Tom, you can add in on this one. Amir, go.
Amir Reiter: (12:12)
Yeah. I would say a training program that is nimble and changes with the influx of the class that comes in. An ongoing program that supports and rewards reps for taking part in advanced training on an ongoing process. And that’s just like from high level.
Gabe Larsen: (12:32)
Got it. Got it. Tom, what would you add to that?
Tom Jenkins: (12:34)
Yeah. And ultimately it comes down to having an awesome training team as well. Making– because we’ve all sat through training where it’s like death by PowerPoint, having trainers who really know how to keep things fun, light, and make sure everybody’s chipping in and getting engaged and doing. That’s when knowledge is maintained. And then having live coaching as well. It’s not just go train, go and do your thing. You need people, you need the managers, QAing calls listening in saying what’s working, what’s not, and constantly kind of having those little incremental gains to keep improving.
Gabe Larsen: (13:15)
Yeah. It is. People are thinking about outsourcing. If you had to leave them with a couple of pieces of advice, what would be — You know, “Should I outsource? Should I keep my team?” What would you leave them with Amir? Best practice, advice, takeaways, tips, tricks?
Amir Reiter: (13:33)
Look for culture that matches yours. Look for teammates that you enjoy working with. Look for, look for a company that adds value, that has experience and can bring their experience to the table, whether it comes to training, processes, technology, templates. And look to take the word outsource and save money out of your mind. That’s a byproduct. Look at outsource as in, I’m bringing in experts. And when those experts work with me, I gain those expertise and if they have something that I don’t have I’m going to tell them — and that’d be my biggest takeaway.
Gabe Larsen: (14:04)
I love it. I love it. Tom, what would you, from an advice perspective or people who are considering going one way or another?
Tom Jenkins: (14:11)
Yeah. I’d say even though it is outsourcing as well still think of it, it’s your team. We just join your organization. The closer we work together, the better the results are going to be. We love it when people come to our offices, people bring their own trainers in or even their account managers. And you know, we go hiking, we go out for dinner afterwards. The closer we work together the better the results are going to be.
Amir Reiter: (14:37)
Unfortunately the days of working for a Boeing and retiring at a Boeing are over and employees are moving around for organization, organization and you’d be very surprised. You can have a teammate who’s internal, who’s there 10 years. You can have a rep who’s representing a company through an outsource agreement who is there for 10 years. Right? It’s no more black and white, I think, as it used to be.
Gabe Larsen: (14:59)
Yeah. Yeah. Do you, one last question before I let you guys go, you kind of hit on this Amir and I’m just curious. There has been a lot of outsource companies, a lot of, been a lot of BPOs over the years. What would separate different BPOs? Is it their technology stack? Is it their training? You mentioned the training being a big differentiator, really important. How would someone start to navigate just thinking, “Oh, Gabe, there’s so many of these. I don’t know how to choose.”
Amir Reiter: (15:25)
I think the ones that have been around for 30 years will have the money on the balance sheet, the certifications through the roof, but they will lack with culture being nimble and technology. And then younger ones will be very quick. They’re the ones on podcasts with technologies like Kustomer. And so it’s just like you can imagine, right? I think you’ll find that younger BPOs will be more nimble. There’ll be more reading the articles about artificial intelligence automation while the big ones will be like, that scares me. We’ve got $4 billion in business and this is how we’ve been doing it for 30 years. And that works for some organizations, it doesn’t work for others that move quickly. So find a company that matches your size, your speed, how they’re invested, they’re invested like you, you guys are both bootstrapped.
Gabe Larsen: (16:10)
I like that.
Amir Reiter: (16:12)
Private equity backed. Right. It feels good. It feels like a natural fit.
Gabe Larsen: (16:15)
Yeah. Anything you’d add to that Tom?
Tom Jenkins: (16:17)
Yeah. Most people are outsourcing now. So understand what they’re currently doing, get peer reviews, check out the reviews online on G2, for example, and just speak to a few different teams. Find the one you like the most and give it a shot. And I’m sure they’ll work.
Gabe Larsen: (16:41)
I love it. I love it. All right you guys, well really fun talk track. I think it’s very pertinent, especially as we’re all working remotely and times have certainly changed and I think people are probably more open to just doing things different. So I think it’s a very timely discussion around B2B, B2C, but also, and then this kind of remote and outsource workforce. If someone wants to learn more about you guys, CloudTask, what’s the best way to do that or get a hold of your, or kind of see what you guys are all about?
Amir Reiter: (17:06)
We’ve got live chat on our website, or you can find me on LinkedIn Amir Reiter, real easy to find. And Tom, Tom is everywhere.
Tom Jenkins: (17:16)
We are everywhere, social, cloudtask.com, LinkedIn.
Amir Reiter: (17:19)
Wherever the social cause in the world that’s where Tom is.
Gabe Larsen: (17:22)
That’s where Tom is. All right. Well, I think that’s good. Really appreciate you guys taking the time and for the audience, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.
Amir Reiter: (17:29)
Thanks Gabe.
Tom Jenkins: (17:29)
Thanks so much.
Exit Voice: (17:37)
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