Offshore Outsourcing & Scammer

I got during the weekend the following email:

I’m one of your followers here in LinkedIn. We are a new call center here at the Philippines. We are currently dialing 2 outbound campaigns. But i think our current campaigns are not fitted for us. Our clients have positive feedbacks with our agents. But I think our income is not enough to cover our expenses.
We are currently dialing timeshare. For the month of January of the current year we had 60 confirmed appointments but only 14 showed up. Our expenses range for270k-300k. Income is not enough for us to grow. 

The problem is:

• You’ll not find for this kind of vacations a lot of people.
  
  
• Why should the people limit their self by making for the rest of their life their vacations at the same place?
  
  
• Would you buy something what you use once a year?
  
  
• If you rent a hotel room and have problem with the service, then you’ll change the hotel. With timeshare is this not possible.
  
  
• If there is nature catastrophe or an accident, which makes the beach unusable, then you would not make in such an area vacations. If you have timeshare, you have to pay in any case.
  
  
• If you like to make vacations at another place of the world, you’ll not save anything. Who knows what will happen the next minute. Why you shall make a decision now for the rest of your life?
  
  
• What happens, if the timeshare company runs into bankruptcy? You lose your money or your value too.

Such a product will get bought only from some stupid people. Especially if they have time after saying yes on the phone until going there, they can inform themselves about the system. In such a case they will not show up for making the contract.

I can only say the call center owner is guilty by himself. Maybe he has seen only the amount of the commission and not the product.

BROKERS; YOU MAKE YOURSELF UNBELIEVABLE WITH SUCH PRODUCTS!

CALL CENTERS, IF YOU GET SUCH OFFERS WORK ONLY ON A HOURLY PAID RATE!

For this we need to know first why companies like to outsource to offshore call center.

The answer is very simple. They like to maximize their earnings.  The average income in the high wage countries for telemarketer is around $20 per hour (Source: indeed.com from February 2015). Depending on the country are here additional expenses for the staff necessary. The real costs of a staff will be up to 50% higher than the salary of the staff.

A good and usable product is getting sold automatically if you present it in shops. There are other products like insurances, mortgages, etc. which are getting offered from brokers. Most of the insurances are offering combined packages, which are offering a discount. If the customer takes out one package of this group the price for the remaining things in the package will rise.

If a company offers a new combined package, then it has to have better conditions for the customer.  In this case the company needs to sell more of these packages to have the same winnings. No one gets money as a gift and the company needs to earn money too. This cannot be done by lowering the price for the customer without lowering the cost of sales too. The commission for the sales people will decrease for maximizing the profit of the company and their shareholders. Such a procedure results in a downward spiral in price and performance.

The costs for hiring offshore telemarketing centers are around at a quarter of the onshore prices. Mostly are their products simple not sellable or even the winnings not big enough for paying per hour. For this the most companies found here are offering only pay per sale.

This behavior is very short-sighted, because local people are losing their jobs. People, which have lost their job, have less or no money available. These peoples need to reduce their expenses too for having enough to survive until they find a new job. For this the companies are losing potential buyers. This is leading to the next downward spiral, where the products need to get cheaper and cheaper to get new customers. As nobody can offer the same performance for less money, the performance gets reduced too until the product is getting useless.

Such products shall get sold by using offshore call centers. In the most of the cases the companies are too greedy for supplying data (phone numbers and names) for the call center. The call center should even take the risk about the data. As the most serious data provider in the high wage country are selling data only locally, the international traded data are already heavily used and for this reason more or less useless. Nobody can perform with such kind of data.

The result is: SUCH COMPANIES ARE TO GREEDY AND DESTROY WITH THEIR GREEDINESS THEIR OWN BUSINESS!

You can use the following translation for the offers found here at LinkedIn or Facebook:

• Pay per Sale
  The provider does not believe that his products can get sold or The provider does not believe that the call center can sell the products
  Why in this case he likes to go offshore?
  The reason is mostly that it is the last try before running into bankruptcy
  
  
• High commission rate
  As higher the offered commission is as harder is it to sell the product.
  As higher the offered commission is as more useless is the product
  As higher the offered commission is as more financial problems the company has
  
  
• No data provided
  The call center shall even take the risk and invest into the data for selling the product.
  The company has not enough funds already to invest into good data
  
  
• Upfront payment, security deposit, etc.
  The company has not enough funds to pay the broker or to survive with out the payment of the "rich" call center owner. It is already too much what they are offering for this service.

Like everywhere in business you get for what you pay for. For this an outsourcer need to know what is in his budget and what he can get for this budget. As better the quality should be as higher the budget need to be.

You like to reach as many people as possible for a low budget?
Why are you not sending out mass mailings, mass emails and short text messages in this case? You can even record some messages and send it to the caller by using a full automated system. You need no human agents in this case. You can send out millions of emails or short text messages during a short time. If you have not the infrastructure for short text messages or calling with voice recordings, we have it. You need only provide the data, the content and you need to tell us how many we shall send per hour.

You like agents, which are working like robots - Take robots?
Why do you not use an IVR system with speech recognition in this case? There you can play recordings done by professional speakers. You need no human agents in this case. The system is able to run 100 000 simultaneous outbound calls. That is not really a problem. Are you able to pay the phone bill in such a case? Are you able to handle the responses and the flames if you are using such a system? Will your own phone system not break down in such a case?

You like to have an accent free professional speaking agent for low cost?
Use the Avatar technology with professional recordings. But think that the called one will remember the sound of the voice. For the case you are calling the same number a second time you have to change the recordings. An agent can handle multiple calls by using the Avatar technology. But he has to listen to the caller for selecting the correct sound file played in answer to the called one.

You like human agents which are calling, but the costs should be very low?
No problem, search for one or more of the many call centers, which are working with using the technology like dialer and queues.

You like to have a quality call center, where the agents are taking time and handle each called one like a king?
Even that is possible, but in this case you cannot expect, that such a center is working on a per sale base. There are a lot of quality centers with high qualified agents available. All this centers have something in common: They are working only on an hourly base and you have to provide them good quality data with more information than only phone numbers. The call volume per hour and agent will be lower than from the other choices above, but the success rate will be much higher.

I know it is hard to bring quality if the broker or the customer thinks that everything is free and they need only pay for sales and not for the work, which is behind the sale and are even thinking that you need to take all the risk. The highest risk is their own product, which they are not able to sell by using a normal way like in a shop. Reject such offers like I have described it in “A LinkedIn offer where the broker likes to reinvent the slavery - David Goodstein”. The result of taking such an offer will be that you are destroying your own reputation. 

A good sale needs time. You are expecting a good quality work from your agents. Why are you making it hard for your agents by using such dialer where the called person hears a prerecorded message while you are connecting to your agents? 

If the caller gets it, that he is listening to a tape, he knows already that you nothing else than a Call Center. The sound of a recording is different than the greeting of from the agent even if the recording is from the same agent, which shall pick up the phone. That is not a technical issue it is depending from the stress and mood of the agent, which changes the sound of his voice during the shift. 

Use another system than such a dialer like described before. Your agents are not robots. Let the agent decide his own workflow and working speed. This will reduce the amount of called people over the phone per hour, but will increase the sales rate. Use a system like “Click to Dial” or “Code to Dial”. This can be simple done by your internal website with a button like “next caller” or by dial a code at the phone. In such a case the phone of the agent rings first and the VoIP System will dial the next caller in the list. Sure the agent need to wait until you reach someone, but the agent is already in the line and the called one does not hear a prerecorded message.

Let your customer provide the data of the people which you should call. Your customer knows better the target group of his product. For this he can make a better selection by using an address broker. Good address brokers in the US are trading their addresses only if you are using an IP-address from the US or you have a postal address in the US. The data, which get traded here from one center to other centers, are useless, because they got already used too many times. Good data are expensive, but your customer likes to sell his product. If your future customer does not like to provide data, than he is too greedy in any case and his product is from a very low value too. Such products don’t get sold good. In such a case you should take only the contract if he is paying per agent, hour, phone minutes, data and the necessary clean up against the “Do not call list”.

Make your own fair contracts and conditions for which you are working. These contracts, which I have seen until now from the brokers and customers don’t have even the value of the paper on which they will get printed. You have only duties and no rights in these contracts, which I have seen until now. They are only for ripping you off. If one point of your contract does not fit for your customer, than this point can get negotiated, but don’t let get yourself ripped off.

David Goodstein is searching for a call center at LinkedIn, where he can pull money, the call center has the risk and the work. The difference to the other scams is only, that the offer is very well described including the cheat (I have only picked out the most important parts):

• "The only thing the customer is responsible for is the monthly monitoring fee. The fee ranges in price between $39 and $60 a month"
  Sorry, who likes the monitoring? In a normal world is it this one, who asks for the monitoring need to pay for it. In this case is it the client, for whom is done the work!
  
  
• "You are responsible for your VOIP minutes"
  Your client is not able to pay the phone bill for the calls to the United States, which are normally traded at www.voicetrading.com for US$ 0.0052 and at www.voicebuy.com between US$ 0.0045 and US$ 0.0075 per minute. This is already too expensive for his customer. How would his customer pay the bill in this case for the call center?
  Sorry Mr. Goodstein, but you like to have a gift? Which gift gets the call center? At this world is nothing for free.
  
  
• "Initially (first 2 weeks) your commission is based off of completed installations only and not on a transfer basis (payout is $150 per installation)."
  Mr. Goodstein, do you really think that someone can survive with $150 for 2 weeks even in a low wage country? Do you really think that you can get someone, which takes the risk of your business for you? I think that nobody will be so stupid and accept such an offer.
  
  
• "We require you to use our Non - Voice Avatar like technology."
  Wow Mr. Goodstein, you like to make a test drive with your Avatar? In such a case you have to pay the agents per hour and not per lead! How the agent will be able to handle difficult and angry people? Mr. Goodstein do you have even recordings for this kind of people? How long is your list of recordings? Should the agent listen to the customer or permanently search for the correct recordings in the list?
  
  
• "After the 2 week trial basis, if we see your team is capable of sending quality transfers on a consistent basis, we will pay you $6 per transfer, with a 60 second buffer)"
  We have seen already that you are not searching for quality. But even $6 is too less, if you accept only 59% of the transfer, like you have sent it in the Excel file, which is attached here. In this case the $6 is only $3.54. Mr. Goodstein, we all know that the US south states lost the war for the slavery. Do you like to reinvent the slavery again?