Insource to Outsource to Crowdsource.

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Insource to Outsource

to Crowdsource.

What’s really next?

Crowdsourcing is an innovative way to drive value for customers. Every organization has a strategy for how they want to treat customers, how to engage those customers and how to support those customers. The challenge has been, as business has evolved, consumers have come to expect instant gratification. Everything around the digital economy is about how do I get service when and where and how I want it. That’s driving challenges for clients with meeting these demands. It’s just too complex to have the type of staff you need all the time, 24 hrs a day, trained effectively to deliver high quality interactions for your customer set. That consumer mentality is drifting into every organization. We are helping very successful clients adapt crowdsourcing models to provide a better, more diverse workforce to support their customer engagements. Our experience indicates successful organizations begin with development of an effective customer engagement strategy, which drives development of an enabling operational strategy. This paper will focus on the importance of a good customer engagement strategy, considerations for a corresponding operational strategy, and ideas from crowdsourcing that may influence how we deliver in the future.

Customer engagement strategy: Putting the customer in the center

In organizations where the customer is in the center of the ecosystem, everything is focused on delivering value for the customer— when they want it, how they want it. Then the challenge is how to staff for and support those interactions.

What’s the customer strategy? How do you want to engage your customer? What does the brand mean? How does it resonate with the customer experience? How often does that customer work with you? How much value does that customer drive? Answering these questions will give you the look and feel of the desired customer relationship.

For effective organizations: Customer strategy drives an operational strategy

The challenge has been as customers have matured in outsourcing services, they thought of outsourcing as a progressive relationship, from insourcing, to outsourcing, to crowdsourcing. If something is too costly, let’s outsource it. In this word view, crowdsourcing is the last evolutionary step to lowering cost. We have found that is not really correct.

What we’re finding is if you use all 3 parts together in a holistic way, you actually drive significantly more value for the client engagement at the right cost model, driving the highest value for your client. The best model includes keeping some things in house. We believe the true, intangible nature of what the brand needs to be, the direction of the brand, the intellectual property around how you interact with the customer, the governance, the risk model, even prototyping some of the new processes, should be kept in house—that is your secret sauce.

www.concentrix.com

At the center of the organization... Not marginalized at the edge of the organization

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Once that gets operationalized, outsource it. Outsourcing provides a scalable extension of your workforce. Not only an extension of expertise, but, also of processes, technology and geographic delivery.

Crowdsourcing can provide a flexible workforce, on demand, trained and aligned to your brand, as well as to your products and services. A crowdsourced model allows you to have very low attrition, very high staff engagement, very high value interactions with your customers and a variable cost model that is very attractive to your business.

The successful sourcing strategy should be viewed as a progression to build inward towards the central customer strategy. The idea is to bring the advantages, expertise, and new capabilities to enhance customer engagement. The sourcing operation becomes integral to the customer ecosystem, spanning not just care or technical support but coordinating with functions like marketing, sales and product development. Every operational and sourcing action should be framed with the question: “How will we drive value from every customer interaction?”

Rethinking the internal

customer ecosystem

Customer leadership in care, support, marketing, sales, and product development should come together with trusted customer-focused partners to define and design a holistic customer engagement strategy. Common drives for internal excellence often focus on themes such as:

• Creating one company, one experience and one brand—

through every interaction.

• Perfecting omni-channel interactions to meet customers

where, when and how they want to communicate.

• Orchestrating and coordinating internal departments

towards common customer goals and integrated, coordinated experiences.

• Focusing on what the internal organization does best, and

strategically getting help with areas where outside expertise is needed, greater flexibility is desired and better economies are achieved.

Insource

Outsource

Crowdsource

OR the internal customer ecosystem OR the extended customer ecosystem OR the innovated customer ecosystem

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www.concentrix.com

The extended customer ecosystem

What we’re finding in more companies today are clients who extend their customer ecosystem beyond their own company because they want to access “world class” skills and intellectual capital, as well as best practices in processes and cutting edge technology. As companies continue to look outside to improve the heart of their customer operations, they:

• Understand an outsourcing partner must be integrated

into internal customer strategy.

• Partnering for value over mere cost reduction, meaning

the success of the partnership is assessed by the outcomes it achieves.

• Seek expertise and capabilities better than can be achieved

in-house, either due to special skills, different resourcing models, new technologies (e.g. social and analytics) and greater operational flexibility.

• Demand analytics-driven intelligence from partners

to create new, powerful views of customer and operational performance.

Can we apply lessons of

crowdsourcing to customer

engagement strategy?

Aspects of modern crowdsourcing have been around for many years. We created services to support consumer products companies in harnessing user communities to provide product support. The challenge with this earlier incarnation of

crowdsourcing was the lack of connection between the “crowd” and the brand. Customers who received support from other “super users” attached less value to the brand. The total value of the customer relationship began to diminish.

Today, a new model is emerging, which harnesses the power of the crowd to enhance customer engagement.

Case study:

Australian university partnerships

Community-based delivery centers at the University of Ballarat in Victoria and the Unitec Institute of Technology in Auckland utilize a flexible student workforce to provide high-value, cost-effective services to our clients while creating opportunities for students. Tapping into a broad, skilled population of students with a range of skills allows quick mobilization around opportunities for Australia and New Zealand. At each of our centers, we employ a combination of research and innovation, advanced analytics capabilities, human talent and cutting-edge technology. Experienced Concentrix staff lead a flexible student workforce. Some of the benefits realized include:

• Scalable, demand-driven workforce

• Alignment of time zones, language and culture

• Close proximity with lower-cost services

• High-value, cross-industry capabilities

• Higher utilization

• Technology-focused corporate citizenship

• Increased student employability

This approach leverages many of the concepts in crowdsourcing and provides an opportunity to push new strategies forward. We put the delivery center “in the crowd” by placing it on campus. Our scheduling system enables us to plan work before, between and after classes for the students, who earn more than typical college jobs, but with great flexibility. When call volume surges, we communicate the need for workers via SMS. Given the close proximity of the workforce, the environment is highly scalable in very short periods of time. The result is a highly skilled, very stable workforce to meet the needs of our clients and their customers.

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44201 Nobel Drive Fremont, CA 94538 USA

About us: Concentrix, a wholly owned subsidiary of SYNNEX Corporation, is a global business services company focused on process optimization, customer engagement strategy, technology innovation, and ecosystem performance. Our holistic approach to customer engagement, deep domain expertise, and process innovation enable us to deliver unique, transformational solutions our clients.

For more information, please visit www.concentrix.com.

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Conclusion

So, what’s next? The progression to outsource or crowdsource is still one of looking inward, augmenting what we have today and improving the customer ecosystem with every tool and strategy at our disposal. Crowdsourcing is an intriguing concept that may have profound applications within the customer management function, creating creative disruptions and advancements in the realm of customer interaction.

“What’s next” is ours to define.

About the author

Chris Caldwell, President of Concentrix Corporation, is a performance driven, insightful leader with a passion for encouraging innovation to transform business outcomes. Chris has received numerous awards and recognition for his entrepreneurial approach to business and mastered an unrivalled understanding of diverse geographies and cultures. Most importantly, Chris helps some of the biggest brands in the world solve their complex customer challenges.

For more information

To learn more about Concentrix crowdsourcing capabilities, please contact your Concentrix sales representative, or visit:

Insource to Outsource to Crowdsource.