Offshore Outsourcing & Scammer

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.

Recently I found a call center campaign at LinkedIn, which has been looking good at the first view:

LOOKING FOR CENTERS FROM (INDIA, SOUTH AFRICA AND PHILIPPINES)

5 year old Tech Support Company based in Texas looking for "experienced" call centers to outsource our outbound tech support sales. We have centers in India working for us from more then 4 years and generating good profits.

Pay-out from $50 to $185 for per sale.

Analyzing the product:

The product is not really a bad idea. As the company is based in in a small city, with a population of around 40000 people, called Hurst in Texas, the local possibility for offering a computer service has not really a big chance. Remote service and support can be a possible income.

Negative aspects:

• A remote service works only if the computer is still running and has a connection to the internet
  
  
• It can be only a software service for optimization of the performance, virus removal (as long the virus is not blocking the Internet connection), spyware scan and malware removal.
  
  
• The service is limited to Windows and Office
  
  
• The offered service "Setup a new system" cannot get done from remote. A transport of the computer can result that the computer does not work when it arrives back to the customer. The reason is very simple: From the vibrations during the transport a card or a plug can lose the correct contact. For this is it better for the customer to visit a computer repair center locally.
  
  
• The company exists already nearly 5 years. They are offering 4 different plans for home users and 2 different plans for business use. The monthly rate is with $15.95 the same for all plans. The initial price for home users varies from $195.95 until $349.95 only the contract time is different. At the website is no reason written why someone should make a contract for 3 years for $349.95 initial with additional $15.95 per month instead of a contract for 6 months for $109.95 + $15.95 monthly. The only difference is the initial price. What the benefits of the higher price and the longer contract time are is missing. Maybe they don't know it by themselves. In this case the telemarketer has no arguments to sell a higher priced plan.
  
  
• Compare at Amazon the price of a new computer in the USA with the maintenance plan what the telemarketer should sell: a complete computer set including monitor, keyboard, mouse and Windows 7 is actually at Amazon for $160 (Dell) available. The setup can get done with the help of the Dell Hotline. An argument for the price is in this case really missing.

In sum is the product not really a runner. In the USA is it normally that the monthly price is coming less as longer as the contract is running.

I try now to translate this advertisement for you:

You need to know that the average call center agent in the USA gets $27000/year ($2250/month or $15/hour)..I have simple divided the yearly salary by 12 and the monthly salary by 150 hours like it is in Europe usable. This company is located in Texas, There is the average income for a call center agent even lower. It is there $26000/year, which makes a hourly rate of $14.45

The offered pay out from $50 - $150 per sale is looking at the first view good, but only on the first view.

Let's take the lowest offered commission per sale, which is $50. A one is not really realistic, because for this the arguments for selling it are already missing.

The company would be positive in labor costs if she would sell each 3 hours and 33 minutes one product per agent by having own telemarketers. The company itself does not believe in their own sales possibilities at such a rate. For this they try to find a call center from a low wage country, which even takes the risk of the product. Maybe the call center should even provide the data for the sales.

My opinion is that very good and very experienced agents will be able to sell in average one product per day as long as the marketing of the product will not get improved. If the marketing will reduce the sales price, the pay out per sale will go down too or the company will not be able to survive and pay you.

So centers think about how long can you work for $50. Maybe you sell one product per 10 hours per agent in average. Are you able to survive with this income?

The sentence "We have centers in India working for us from more than 4 years and generating good profits" is only promotion and for this I can say only: "Never trust a statistic which you did not fake by yourself"

Source offer: LinkedIn offer

Source product: www.fixmycomputerdude.com

A few weeks ago, I found a posting at LinkedIn where call center agents got searched, which even not need to speak with the called person. As I did not understand how it should work, I have been interested in this kind of job, but I did not get any reply.

Three days ago I have found a posting in the group "Campaigns Outbound & Inbound" with the title "Lead Generation with Avatar Technologies":

Lead Generation under $5.00 per hour
No other BPO company can generate as many live transfers or set appointments at the cost or the quality that we can. Avatar's software enables our agents to convert prospects into potential sales, while giving our clients the benefit of cost effective...

I have been thinking that $5/hour are too less for offering call center work. For this I have commented this posting with my opinion:
It is like everywhere in the world you get for what you pay for. The agents are the capital of the call centers. Like it is everywhere usable are getting better agents a higher monthly salary than not so good agents.

My comment:

Call centers at the Philippines, a low wage country, are usually paying for their agents around US$ 1.20 (rural area) and US$ 3.80 (metro area) per hour. Quality centers have agents, which are earning an hourly wage between US$ 3.65 and US$ 6.80 depending on their performance.
Agents, who are earning too less money, are taking a second job to survive. The result is that they are coming already tired to their work and are not able to give their best. Everybody needs even at the Philippines at least US$ 455 per month for living (that is an income of around US$ 3/hour).
Think about it, which quality you’ll get, when you are reading such an unbelievable offer, where even the broker or the consultant likes to earn money. You can be sure, that you are not hiring the best agents for this price.

This time I got a reply from Ted Nehls, he calls himself to be Executive Vice President of Intelligent Virtual Agents from the area of New York City and surroundings:

Rudolf,
Thank you for your reply to Lead Generation under $5.00 per hour. Avatar uses technology to ensure the sales pitch is 100% accurate 100% of the time. Unlike traditional voice agents which you are referring to in your posting, an Avatar agent doesn't need to speak all they simply need to do is press the correct soundboard button at the correct time. 97% of Avatar customers not only have increased their Avatar team size they have also hired more US based agents to handle the leads generated for them.
When it comes to lead generation a small investment in Avatar will go a long way.
Thank you,
Ted

A few years ago we have tried to implement a similar system for an Austrian Satellite TV company, which had the problem of finding agents, which are speaking German, French, Spanish and Polnish. Happily we tried it only and compared the result against the real call center agents. The result has been disastrous. We made with such a system only around 23% from the leads, which have been made by the real agents. Even the telemarketer, which had the worst German pronounciation sold more, then the system with the prerecorded messages from professional speakers.

If you are speaking with somebody, then you are observing their behaviour and their sound during your talk. On the phone you have only the sound and cannot see your behaviour. Good telemarketer are choosing their sales strategy by observing the whim of their customers. They are even able to make the whim of the customer better by making some jokes for making a sale. All situations during a sales pitch cannot get foreseen and for this you cannot make a a prerecording for them.

On the other side, the recordings are getting played from a soundboard, which is getting handled by humans. If the employees are tired, because they need to have an additional job to survive, they will make failures by handling the soundboard. So the system of Avatar seems to have a lot of problems by generating leads.

It is like everywhere in the world: "You get this for what you are paying for".

A very good description about the NEGATIVE IMPACTS from a robot gives Tom Pulmones from Linkedin:

Utilizing a specific number of lines based on a standard script, agents are confined to only a few responses and even fewer ways of conversing with customers over the phone. This limitation to a telecommunicating agent is crippling. The basic skills that an agent develops through experience at a call center are proficient oral communication, conversational spontaneity and call handling skills. Having a few buttons to press cuts down these skill sets to a zero and seals away the chances of an agent to grow and develop himself in the field of communications, which is the no.1 capital of a call center agent. As a result, the agent of a non-voice call center will be stuck with the non-voice skill sets with no opportunity to grow out.
In terms of Operational Costs, paying for non-voice agents who use dual-dialers cuts the BPO’s operational costs by half, at the same time cuts the quality of calls by a larger percentage. Also, this is unfair to the agents who are paid for less than ¼ of what the client is paying for their hours and yet they work for and are paid for as TWO people.

Source: LinkedIn group Call Center & BPO World