46. Outsourcing is broken

Labor arbitrage, alone, is not enough reason to outsource, not anymore.

With the rise of AI and automation possibilities, companies are thinking twice about outsourcing business or support functions offshore.

Lift and shift is out of fashion, and out of touch with the current tech scenario.

So how do you add value to outsourcing? How do you become an innovation partner to your customers? In the specific world of BPO and customer service support, how do you leverage agents in the best place and way possible?

I interviewed Craig Crisler, founder and CEO of Support Ninja, to find out the answers to these questions.

Craig has over 20 years of experience in operational excellence and modern people management. He founded his first company at age 15, and he went on to become a serial entrepreneur founding 12 more companies with 4 successful exits. He is obsessed about leveraging technology to assist, enable and empower agents to do more meaningful tasks that provide more value to their customers. He will recommend ways to do work that might seem counterintuitive, because he might be automating work previously completed by his agents. But he is not concerned about the number of seats he is filling for each client, he wants to provide value, for customers and for his agents.

Craig is a proud parent, loving husband, and trusted business leader. He leaves and breathes an empathy-informed mindset, and I savored every bit of our conversation. 

Enjoy!