Last week I talked about the issue of offshore outsourcing, and the complexity of the arguments that surround any conversation on this topic. Specifically, I discussed the issue of jobs, how many people claim to have lost jobs to the people of other countries as a result of offshore outsourcing, and how Blueliner has approached this issue. See “A Contribution to the Offshore Outsourcing Debate…“
Unemployment is not the only issue people have with offshore outsourcing. For many, sending customer service and computer programming overseas is the equivalent of sending manufacturing to China: it cheapens the product and damages quality control. This mind-set has been exacerbated by the fact that outsourced customer service is hard to hide. If you get on the phone with someone in India, after all, they are probably going to sound Indian. Minor language barriers, combined with latent American frustration and impatience when anything goes wrong, make for combustible situations.
The result is a generation of people who see offshore outsourcing as a drain on jobs and detrimental to the customer service of American companies. Add that to the perception that big corporations and their wealthy executives are pocketing the profits, and you have a ticking public relations bomb.
Again, I don’t have all the answers, but I do know how Blueliner has approached the issue. Basically, as a company who manages its offshore division in-house, Blueliner can assure customers that they are receiving work from top-of-the-line staff. We do not believe in saving money at the cost of quality output, so all of our employees come in with extensive experience. Our designers have done work for major government websites at home, our programmers are all certified in the latest programming languages, and our managers bring extensive experience and advanced degrees to the table.
We also never put our overseas team on the front line with clients. We know the damage that language barriers can have on good communication and customer relationship management. By appointing US-based professionals to handle project management and customer relationships, Blueliner maintains a totally professional flow for the entire life cycle of a project. The managers work directly with the development team to ensure quality control while simultaneously communicating with client to ensure that everything is done according to client desires. This combination of quality overseas workers and U.S.-based managers on the front lines with clients eliminates many of the issues that are brought up in the “quality” debate.
As for the question of who benefits from cost savings, the ideal solution should be everybody. Expanding overseas has allowed Blueliner to grow at a much faster pace than it could have domestically while simultaneously increasing the ROI of marketing campaigns. Clients benefit from campaigns with a lower acquisition cost, while Blueliner has been able to expand its revenue by 500% and its staff by 1000% since 2003.