Embedding is a wonderful alternative to outsourcing a business process. It offers the best of both worlds.
A non-core process is sent offsite for either stronger expertise or lower costs and you get an expert who is solely dedicated to your company involved in your company culture.
Customer service is one of those areas where the skills are important and the industry-specific information (in most cases) can be picked up later. When you outsource your customer service to an embedded employee, you get a trained customer service professional who can quickly learn everything there is to know about your product and your customers’ needs. That’s why so many large companies use call centers to staff their customer service needs. People can pick up product knowledge as they go, but it’s much more difficult to teach someone patience with the inevitable frustrations of customer service.
Getting and retaining good customer service people is a challenge. If you want a person or team who truly cares about your customers, you have to either spend an enormous amount of time finding the right people or an enormous amount of money on an expert to train your staff. With employee tenure of fewer than 3 years at a company (particularly a the lower levels like customer service), it’s often much easier to find a company offering embedded employees who already have all the customer service training.
