One of the things that MPC has prided itself on is the fact that its service and support is 100 percent U.S.-based. This is more than just a matter of jingoism: it reflects the simple fact that many of our customers (particularly in segments such as federal government and education) prefer dealing with someone on the other end of the phone who is American…end of story (no offense intended, Bangalore!).
That being said, our company, like many others, has outsourced some of its customer service and technical support functions in the past. Back in January, however, MPC brought its customer support for servers back in-house, along with all e-support (chat and e-mail inquiries). For its desktop and notebook products, however, MPC continued to rely on an outsource partner.
As of 8:00 pm (MST) on Saturday, August 30, MPC will complete its transition to a 100 percent, in-house customer support model. If this seems to fly in the face of industry trends, let me explain. The typical call center is optimized around call volume. While we care as much as any company about the cost-effective management of customer support calls, our greater concern is with quality rather than quantity. Simply stated, we wanted greater control over the customer experience from first call to final resolution. Toward that end, we recently hired 60 new customer/technical support employees (40 in our Nampa, Idaho location and 20 in North Sioux City, South Dakota).
As part of our in-house model, we have created an incentive-based compensation plan that rewards our staff to resolve customer support issues as close to the time of first call as possible. Moreover, managing this process in-house allows us to inculcate a service culture based on customer ownership, not simply managing call volume. This isn’t just an ultruistic motive. Since MPC promotes customer service as an important differentiator in the markets we sell to, we really have no choice but to set an industry standard or look like a bunch of hypocrites.
So why am I sharing this with you, since we have already announced this decision to our employees and customers? I have to confess an ulterior motive.
This blog is, in part, a litmus test for our local media in Nampa and North Sioux City. Despite my long-held conviction that one should never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the gallon, I’ve been stewing for a couple of weeks now over what I consider to be less than balanced journalism in the reporting of recent workforce reductions at MPC. To begin with, some of the media coverage we received incorrectly reported that the jobs affected (less than 5 percent of our workforce) had been ”outsourced” to Juarez, Mexico as part of our manufacturing transition from our Nashville plant to our manufacturing partner, Flextronics.
Point of fact: the reductions that occurred were part of a larger transformation of MPC’s business model - one in which the value of our IT solutions matters more to the markets we serve than whether or not we assemble our own components. As this model continues to evolve, some jobs will be eliminated while new ones are created. Aside from the same imperative that every company faces to effectively manage its overhead, MPC will continue to look at EVERY function in the company in terms of how it figures into the value proposition we are delivering to our professional computing market segments, from Federal to K-12.
So…here’s where the litmus test comes in. I’m sending a link to this blog to the media in North Sioux City and Boise/Nampa. Will the fact that we have hired new employees merit the same attention as the fact that we recently reduced our workforce by a similar number? I’ll be watching The Idaho Statesman with particular interest. While our esteemed local daily ran an article a few weeks ago on the details of the severance package received by a former member of our management team, the very same publication ignored last week’s annoucement of our most significant new product introduction in nearly a year! Go figure.
Sorry for the rant, but for the record, let me make one thing very clear. In my career as a PR person, I’ve had clients who on more than one occasion suggested that local media ”owed” them positive coverage because they provided local jobs and paid local taxes. As a former business journalist, my counter has always been that this might be a more compelling argument if businesses were running philanthropic enterprises based solely on job creation within their communities. Please! Companies hire people with the expectation that their contributions will result in profit. That’s capitalism 101, folks. Enlightened self-interest works.
I don’t believe that the media, local or national, has an obligation to carry our water. That’s our job…and if we do our job right, our customers will tell our story more compellingly than anyone in the media. What I do expect, however, is the same standards of professionalism from business reporters that they should rightfully expect from me, or anyone else at our company. When the story concerning MPC is negative, report it…but for pete’s sake, get the context right. When the story, whether new hires or new products, is positive, I believe our local communities have just as much right to know about that as well. That’s just good journalism.
End of rant.
