Audiences appear to be answering the call for NBC’s new comedy “Outsourced!” as the characters and plot lines develop. The Washington Post’s TV column reported last month that NBC has picked up a full season for the program.
What does the industry think of “Outsourced!”? I have weighed in with my own thoughts on the Readerboard blog. Here are a couple of expert observations from outsourcing consulting and contact center suppliers:
Eric Simonson, managing partner of research, Everest Group:
“This fall NBC launched a new workplace comedy, Outsourced, that follows the day-to-day lives of the employees in a Mumbai contact center. For those not yet eagerly watching every show, the contact center supports a catalog retailer that sells novelty goods and is managed by an American whom moves to India. Surprise, surprise, lots of jokes about cultural differences form the backbone of the plot.
“After a couple of overly simplistic episodes at the start of the season the show seems to be finding a groove, and media critics are starting to support it. NBC recently picked up the option to produce the full season of episodes. (Previous episodes are available in steaming video on NBC’s site).
“The show is starting to grow on me as well, and I feel a strange professional obligation to analyze how well it reflects India and the reality of global services.”
“Like all workplace-based comedies, work seems to be the last thing on anyone’s mind. (Might lick the economic recession if the entertainment industry set a better role model for what work looks like – what will they do next to corrupt the youth?)”
“After deep statistical review (top of mind recall), I offer my official view of the top three mistakes in ‘Outsourced.’
“1. Time zone shifting. Although the writers understand that India is a long ways from North America, they seem to have forgotten about the whole round, spinning earth thing. Instead of working night-time hours to support the North America customers of the Mid-American Novelties, the contact center conveniently operates what appears to be a leisurely 9-to-5 daytime shift. Makes for nice lighting, but certainly not reality.
“2. Fat chance those are Indian cows. Cows are holy animals in India, but that does not mean they eat well – they are skinny, bony creatures of the neighborhood (and street). Give the show props for accurately capturing the random cow in day-to-day life, but put those cows on a diet! Terrible casting of the bovine characters.
“3. Lock ‘em up – please! Unlike any delivery center I have visited, this one has an open door policy. Open door to the street. Open door to the hallway. Open door to offices of other companies hosting their contact centers in the building. I can’t think of how to make scanning badges, signing in, and other normal security stuff fit smoothly into a plot, but have at least a LITTLE security! Maybe a sleeping security guard at the door? Please, something!
“These are the biggies I noticed – am sure I missed some that others picked up. Now if I could just figure out what sourcing model they are using…a captive? A BOT? Maybe a virtual captive? Nice to have an excuse to watch more television…”
Kathy Krucek, product manager at Aspect:
“The 'no cube' concept made me wonder if it was intentional and along the whole idea of ‘virtual agents/work anywhere agents’ or if it was simply due to cost containment (or writer omission).
“It was interesting to see the videoconferencing going on there with the managers from a UC [unified communications] perspective but not sure how widespread videoconferencing is yet in call centers there.
“Overall, it seemed like it was a pretty quiet/low activity call center (small) in terms of call volume and number of agents on the phones at one time. There seemed like there was a lot of agents in the lunchroom at the same time though (as opposed to staggered lunches) until they work in shifts and had a shift change right before lunch; possible workforce management issue (overstaffed or staffed incorrectly, not forecasting properly for slow times)?
“In terms of performance management, they were doing some evaluating and one-on-one coaching; the coaching we saw wasn't that great: either provided all positive or all negative feedback as opposed to a mix of both (strengths and opportunities). Also, it seemed like they were initially only looking at one KPI. They gave praise to the guy about having the highest 'customer satisfaction rating' but didn't take into account other KPIs like average handle time (how long the guy was spending talking to each customer/was he efficiently handling contacts) and was he filling the sales quota?
“On the recording/quality monitoring/speech analytics side, it seems like they eventually figured out the AHT issue about by having the manager live monitor (in real time) the guy's conversation. However, if they had been recording their conversations and doing speech analytics/automatic call mining, they could have uncovered the issue a lot sooner (what was he talking to customers about?).
“Tying the recording/speech analytics with other performance management metrics like AHT and sales revenue numbers automatically would have pointed them to the problem much sooner. Seemed like they ultimately caught the issue and were able to coach/train the agent to improve sales performance, which is certainly better (lower cost) than agent attrition/turnover.”
Are you watching “Outsourced!” and have some comments or blog entries that you want to share? Please contact me via TMC’s Readerboard blog and we’ll run a selection of them periodically.
NBC’s "Outsourced!" is on Thursday nights at 9:30 p.m., 8:30 p.m. Central. (That’s right: Kansas City time at the now-vacant Mid America Novelties’ onshore call center.)