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Outsourced and Out in the Cold
By
Archana Venkatraman
Mumbai, Mar 3, 2007
Phase I of the Discover India Yatra revealed that service support is a key factor the channel looks for in the vendors. This is evident from resellers in B and C category cities like Ambala, Bhatinda and Jammu venting their ire on vendors with poor after sales support. The channel gives preference to vendors with intact post sales support. In other words - if your after sales support is not good, the channel has no business with you.
While this is not a revelation, partners claim to experience errant service more often, when it is rendered by a third party and not directly by a specialized team of the vendor itself.
The IT consumer today lays more emphasis on value than on costs. In such a scenario, service and warranty support becomes of the chief criterion for the channel to rate its vendors. It becomes more challenging for the channel community when it has to with vendors who take the bare minimal approach a third party service provider. Often, in this arrangement the vendor no longer bears the onus of servicing and warranty as the third party takes over these essential functions.
Advocates of service outsourcing claim that this way, he vendor can focus on manufacturing, while the specialized service provider delivers service and replacement to the channel. This sounds hunky dory but there s more to it than meets the eye.
To cite two recent examples, Samsung, bogged down with service issues and complaints from the channel, dropped a third-party specialist Digicom and inducted a new one. Similarly, the channel community was irked with support issues with Asus. This conflict was resolved only when the association intervened. Asus finally decided to hire a new provider and altered its rigid policy.
However, shifting service base from one provider to another on the basis of the specialist's merit may not be enough. A vendor needs to answer a few questions before it decides to follow the outsourcing strategy. How well does the third party know the needs of the channel? Does the third party support the channel like its own partners? The vendor also needs to ensure that the personnel in the service centers are skilled and they understand the minute details of the vendor-partner relationship. They need to be well versed with product details and should be able to cater to individual needs of the channel line of a vendor.
Another concern for the channel is the loss of direct interaction with the vendor. A third party service provider makes the whole arrangement impersonal, and cannot replace the rapport channel had with built with the vendor. Besides, a third party specialist has to deal with numerous other vendors at the same time. The third party may also have to handle different sectors like telecom. In a scenario like this, the specialist may not be able to provide individual attention to a specific channel community with a product head . A vendor may have to ensure that the service provider does not club all partners together.
Some vendors have successfully mitigated the service issues putting that little extra effort of handling the service by itself. Intel offers vernacular toll free assistance, while WD came up with door-to-door replacements and other such vendors with direct call center assistance and direct customer replacement module.
Vendors often fall into the "out of sight, out of mind" mold when outsourcing after sales support. A vendor may appoint a third party service provider with due diligence. The problem arises when that the vendor fails to follow up. A periodic check on whether the specialist's services are in sync with the prior commitments and agreements is essential. The vendor must monitor, assess and evaluate the third party performance at regular intervals to increase the quality of service provided by the specialist.
Another criterion the vendor should look at while hiring a service provider is the latter's growth pattern. It may be desirable to hire one with maximum reach, but to really convert this into an advantage, the quality of personnel must be taken into consideration. It is a more a question of quality over quantity, than just how big the service provider is.
The picture may not be all that perfect for outsourcing after sales support. With the growing annoyance of the channel over these issues, the vendors may have a higher price to pay than they bargained for if the channel does decide to boycott such vendors.
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