They are not responsive-- Sharing from London

As my East Coast train zooms away in high speed from London Kings Cross Station towards Leeds this morning, I find that the service is just perfect, the in-train announcements; the food that is being served; the alignment of the seats; the cleanliness of the coach; the reservation-cards stuck up on the head-rests of each of the seats; the soft skills of the people managing the train; the responsiveness of the train staff to the needs of the passengers and their getting back with the right solution.

In fact this is the level of detail to which all service providers must adhere to while providing service to their respective clients. It does not matter whether you are running a Transport service; a Restaurant; a Law firm; a Call Center or a LPO/BPO/KPO. Any client or customer should pretty much have the right to be served with some seamless delivery of end products.

While discussing about the pain areas in dealing with Indian LPOs, a London law firm which regularly off-shores legal work to India did complain about the responsiveness and soft skills of Indian LPO employees. This concern was echoed by many others who off-shore legal work to India. “People don’t always get back in time, they sometimes do not speak out their problems” is exactly what was uttered. “If given a difficult thing to do and they don’t understand it, they would not even tell that they have not understood the work”, “They would start doing the work somehow anyhow and then might end up doing the wrong thing which is pretty much a waste of time”— are the comments that were doing the rounds during the discussion on this extremely sensitive as well as important topic.

“You know some thing? In India they do not know how to say “no”, the just say “yes” to everything”… this was the comment made by a speaker in the Conference. The Indian LPO vendors present in the Conference did of course do their best to explain to the law firm delegates that people in India are very sincere about their work but the law-firm delegates concluded that it was a cultural issue and that needs to be taken care of by both sides.

So my considered opinion is that don’t try to overstretch or promise the impossible while talking to the client. Let not “doing the impossible” be the USP while pitching in for work. In fact every one knows that there are a dozen other reasons for foreign-law firms to off-shore work to India than getting the impossible done.