* Giving work to impoverished or depressed areas of the country
Charlie Ergan is CEO of EchoStar Satellite, which owns Dish Network, one of the world’s largest satellite television providers. Dish Network boasts more than 10 million subscribers and nine privately owned satellites (“birds” as they’re called in the industry). The company has the right idea when it comes to outsourcing. The majority of its call-center operations are housed in the U.S., predominantly in impoverished or depressed areas of the country where the jobs are desperately needed and people are glad to have someplace they can call “the office” again.
Here’s a listing of current call-centers:
* Bluefield, West Va.
* Christiansburg, Va.
* El Paso, Texas
* Harlingen, Texas
* Littleton, Colo.
* McKeesport, Penn.
* Pinebrook, N.J.
* Thornton, Colo.
Ergan also maintains a call-center in the Philippines, presumably for his Pac-Rim customers. (EchoStar’s programming is incredibly diverse, including Arab, Asian and Latin American broadcasts, among others.) Additionally, the company has two satellite control centers, one in Cheyenne, Wyoming, the other in Gilbert, Ariz., and engineering centers in the Netherlands and Littleton.
Ergan’s organization has won the J.D. Powers award for Customer Service excellence twice in the last few years. Clearly, he gets it when it comes to customer service as well as finding ways to save money on operations while not moving the entire operation overseas.
If you ever tour one of the call centers, you’ll find an exciting, bustling high-tech environment – a thousand PCs strong in some cases – everyone on the telephone talking with customers about anything having to do with satellite television. Customer Service Representatives (CSR) work with customers regarding Pay-Per-View, programming their remotes, buying new receivers, aiming their antennas at the birds, and so forth. From time to time companies like HBO, Starz and others come in, bringing food, soda, and goodies such as movie posters. The idea is to keep everyone jazzed about Echostar’s programming and hardware offerings.
Ergan pays a good, not great, wage and offers a benefit package. Some call-centers are open 24/7, so new employees might find themselves on the midnight shift. The supervisors (“coaches,” as they’re called) at once make sure that their employees’ needs are met, and that they’re on the phone working.
Here’s the point: McKeesport, for example, was at one time a booming steel production town until it was discovered that the Japanese could made steel more cheaply and the operation was outsourced. Until Ergan pulled into town, shopping for an ideal “farmsourcing” location (the term farmsourcing means relocating your operation to rural areas of the country where jobs are scarce, people are happy to work for you and your costs are much lower than in urban areas) McKeesport was basically a ghost town. Now people drive to the same steel mill they drove to before, only they sit down at a computer and talk to someone about satellite television.
In a recent article in Computerworld called “IT inbreeding,” the author says that leaders who farmsource aren’t taking advantage of the “exposure to other cultures – and markets – that the offshore connection affords.” He goes on to say that farmsourcers are “inbreeding”, implying that because my Texas accent is like your Arkansas accent, that’s somehow a bad thing because we’re not culturally diverse enough.
I dunno’. Seems like there are a lot of rural areas where water’s plentiful, the air’s clean, real-estate is inexpensive, utilities are cheap as are building contractors and folk would welcome a new enterprise with open arms. Oh, and Ergan’s folks get to talk to a culturally diverse array of customers about every kind of programming topic under the sun. One person wants to watch European cricket matches, another wants to know what’s going on in Dubai, another is interested in Argentinian cattle futures.
Clearly, with Ergan, the outsourcing issue centers on business need. He needed Asian-speaking call-center assistance, probably found it difficult to locate in the U.S., and opted for a Philippines outsourcing alternative. But the bulk of his call-centers? Farmsourced.
Makes sense to me. Offshore when the business need absolutely dictates, consider staying on the continent or even “farmsourcing” where the business need says so.
