Daniel Choi – On-boarding new outsourcing clients

Derek Gallimore: Welcome to the Outsource Accelerator podcast. This is a short format podcast where we explore business and outsourcing mastery. My name is Derek Gallimore and I am really excited to bring you the leading podcast in outsourcing.

Derek Gallimore: Hi and welcome to another episode of the Outsource Accelerator podcast. My name is Derek Gallimore and this is episode number 231. Today I am talking to Daniel Choi, the VP of client services from Intelegencia. We spoke to Daniel previously in episode 214 so if you want to go back and listen to his origin story about how he got started and outsourcing, then please go and do that. But this one is a good standalone episode. Today we talk about his involvement with Intelegencia, which is the outsourcing supplier. He now works with as the VP of client services and we deep dive on the service provision of Intelegencia or, and how it can help businesses like yours. So I enjoyed this conversation and hope you do too. If you’re on any of the show notes, then go to outsourceaccelerator.com/231 enjoy.

Derek Gallimore: Hi and welcome back everybody. Today I am joined by Daniel Choi. Hi Daniel. How are you?

Daniel Choi: Hi Derek, Good, how are you?

Derek Gallimore: Great, great. And Daniel Choi is the VP of client services with Intelegencia. We had previously spoken to Daniel about his origin story and how he got into outsourcing, scratching his own itch and then professionalizing it by an acquisition by Intelegencia. So today, you know, this isn’t an infomercial, but I, I feel it’s important and valuable to share with you the different service offerings that different outsourcing suppliers have here in the Philippines and Daniel and a, we’ve previously spoken to Perry. They are fantastic examples of, of the incredible professional services available here in the Philippines. So,  thank you so much and If people haven’t heard of you or didn’t listen to the previous episode, you want to just give a yeah, a brief intro as to who you are and, what Intelegencia here is.

Daniel Choi: Sure. Thanks again for having me here. My name is Daniel Choi. I am the VP of client services at Intelegencia. That means I handle a new clients and existing clients in client relations. Anything related to operation performance, billing, even anything that they are concerned with? I actually am based in the U S and I helped the clients.

Derek Gallimore: Fantastic. Fantastic. So, and that’s a really critical step isn’t it? I the majority of your clients from the US?

Daniel Choi: yeah, majority. I think about 80% of our clients are based in the US

Derek Gallimore: Okay. Cool. And so how do you find the conversation going with US clients? Like is it still, is it still something that you have to explain what outsourcing it is or do you feel that people are generally up on outsourcing now?

Daniel Choi: Oh, absolutely. With the new clients, I feel like it’s a little bit still new to the market or they know what it is, but they don’t know exactly what the, you know, workings of it are. So a lot of times I find myself explaining to new people about what outsourcing is in regards to our clients. They are absolutely happy with it and they’re only working on ways to, you know, make it better, how to make it more efficient, how to make, make it more productive, a productive.

Derek Gallimore: Right, right. Absolutely. And then so Intelegencia here is, you know, it’s not just a normal outsourcing supplier as she is right up there in the value add chain because, there’s a huge sort of backend in terms of data management, data mining coding programming. Is that right? So, so what are some examples of how you can really not only just provide services to a client but actually really enhance and augment their, their business?

Daniel Choi: Sure. Thanks for pointing that out. So with our merger with Intelegencia, yeah we have brought in a lot of a technology piece to our offerings. I think I could use some of the practical examples for illustration.  Some of our clients have, shown interest or have begun using us for, gathering data and having BI Dashboard, a business intelligence dashboard. So they have some sort of indicator that shows them how their businesses doing online. On in real time. And so they know they have the pulse of the business and also they do, I’m automation through coding through programming. So they integrate their business into the diff into different marketplaces by using API, using programming with Intelegencia. Yeah.

Derek Gallimore: Right. Fantastic. And it, you know, do you find that, is it, is it out of a necessity that people need this visibility more or, and do you actually find that when people outsource the KPI’s, the monitoring, the business intelligence and she becomes more relevant to their functions?

Daniel Choi: I think for our clients were coming to the point where they’re no longer, not only are they interested in having economical solution, they’re now becoming interested in how to professionalizing, how to, you know, get more out of, you know, what they have and because, not we’re not just a BPO with data entry and other customer service. Now that we have tech piece to it, I think we are helping our clients to, you know, take the next step and advance onward with the next level of things.

Derek Gallimore: Right. Fantastic. And fantastic. So what are some of the, you know, because I just recently went to New York and, and I’m sometimes surprised by the level of or the lack of general insight into how outsourcing works do you, do you often find that you need to sit down with people and saying this is the, the structure of things this is how pricing works and how do you typically walk people through that?

Daniel Choi: Absolutely. We have to take a, I invest a lot of time into each one of our co leads in each one of our clients. It actually does take quite a bit of time and it doesn’t, it’s not an easy thing to, you know, you outsource your work overseas. And so, you know, oftentimes I get in a call with them or I sit down with them to make sure all the, all the points are covered. And even if we miss some points, I made sure to address them later on. But there’s a lot of points to cover like legal issues, labor issues time difference, cultural difference, holidays so it’s, those are just some of the things, but you know, I make it a point that the clients feel confident in making the move to outsource.

Derek Gallimore: Yeah. And what about security? I mean there’s, there’s two aspects to security. One I think people are concerned that when it’s overseas it’s, it’s scary but 2 a lot of people say, well, how do I know that they’re working? How do I know that they’re, that they’re there? the first one, you know, how do, how do you sort of assure people that if, if they’re hiring people for 40 hours a week that they’re actually doing the job?

Daniel Choi: Right?  that piece really goes on both hands, right? So security of, you know, efficiency on how we’re productivity of people working really comes from, it really comes from experience I feel so I think our successful experiences that one, when the clients know what they’re doing and when they outsource that particular piece overseas, they have some form of expectation on how long this should take, what kind of output they should be getting. And that’s really a good place to start. And so when the clients have an idea of what they want to ask source and they’ve done it themselves, that really translates into a KPI translates into performance. And so I think the, for me at least, I, I’d rather take longer time so that they know what type of performance they’re getting and what type of performance they should be expecting from overseas. And when they have that information, they don’t need to worry about what the people are actually doing for those 48, 40 hours because they are confident that this amount of work should fill their time over full time.

Derek Gallimore: Yeah, absolutely. And I often see it as a little bit you know, what, what they would, the way that they would police and manage their people in their own home town is very different to how they then think that they need to manage people in the Philippines you know, and I think that people often overthink it when in reality, you know, even if you have someone in your office, in your hometown, you’re probably only checking in with them once a week, maybe once a day  and that’s, you know, exactly the same in terms of the Philippines. And as you say, you have the, you have the expectation set, you have the KPI’s, which, which helped you in terms of the monitoring things.

Daniel Choi: Actually, and also to add onto that a little bit, we do have pieces in place where, even we take screenshots of employee monitors for it, you know, for the sake of peace of mind for the clients but the most successful relationship between our clients and Intelegencia is one where the clients have experienced in themselves and we do weekly or monthly reports and quarterly reports of KPIs.

Derek Gallimore: Right. Fantastic. And then do you have any concerns about security, safety? How do we, how do we know that these are good people?

Daniel Choi: We go through an extensive interview process. So once we get a request from the clients to hire someone, we have them go through, not only, you know, we test their skills, but we interviewed them on the HR basis. We interviewed him at the operational level, and then we interviewed them at the client level. So our clients actually get to interview those candidates and see for themselves if they’re trustworthy or not. And not only that, you know, we, we do make sure we have legal pieces in place. So the sign not compete, these signed a confidentiality agreement so that, you know, they don’t become a threat to the business.

Derek Gallimore: Mm, fantastic. And you know, I just like to reach out to people that I’ve been working here since 2011. I’ve been living here since about 2014. And, really it’s a very similar culture. I think people in there in another country. They think everything’s scary. It could happen, but really it’s just normal people wanting a career, eager to please, you get to climb the career ladder, you know? And, and there are very many similarities to, to the west. Great. And then one, you know, and I’m just, I’ve just come back from the US the loaded with all these questions that people normally kind of asked me. And it’s interesting to hear your reflection on them, but, but how do you typically start? How if someone says yes, I’ve learned about outsourcing, I’m eager to try. What is the process? Because there’s not only, you know, with employment it’s just going out and finding the, the, the worker, you know, but with outsourcing it, it’s kind of almost two stages. One is, is really finding a, an outsourcing supplier that you connect with then connecting with them and then then hiring. Yeah. What is, how do you explain your process?

Daniel Choi: So our process is, it’s kind of linear but I think timing wise, we have different takes different times based on what kind of business they’re in and what type of work they want to outsource. But we went, once we received the request we would make, make time to contact a client and talk to them and see what their, what they want to outsource, what kind of work they do. And we will, I actually, it’ll be need of, and I’ll take time to explain to them and you know, explaining what we do and then you’re hearing about their business. And once we feel confident we both feel confident in going forward, I would make introduction to our team in the Philippines and they will start sourcing candidates for them to find the right person to outsource their work. And one staple through that period of time we will get at least three candidates for them to interview after the interview. They can pick someone or they can choose to interview other people but we go through that sort of it’s kind of like doing it in the states too. It’s very similar but then it’s overseas and a lot of it is done over just over Skype or some sort of a conference call software.

Derek Gallimore: Yeah. So, and a lot of it really is, again, people are, you know, it’s not too foreign or alien to what people already know, young. It’s just like a pretty standard recruitment process. But also I like to point out that, you know, in the US if you go through a recruitment process, then you’re paying a pretty big fee to recruitment consultants. But this is all part of the outsourcing package, isn’t it?

Daniel Choi: Right, right. There are no extra fees involved in it.

Derek Gallimore: And then, so just in terms of costs, like, you know, it, I know it can vary a bit, but how do you structure pricing? Is it a, is it a monthly fee? Is it a desk fee? Is it salaries or is it a complete package price? How do you sort of structure your pricing?

Daniel Choi: We structure our pricing with all inclusive a monthly fee, and that fee involves not only

Daniel Choi: Staff wages. We also include the benefits. We also include health insurance. we include a PTOs as well as, you know, some of the overhead that we, it does involved with having a successful operation. Internet connection, rent, all of that stuff is baked into the price and actually I would like to say the minimum price is actually. Nevermind. I don’t know. It’s private and I, if I talk about the numbers, but the pricing is all inclusive where, you know, they don’t have to second guessed there are no hidden punches. There are no fine prints. There’ll be built one amount and monthly on a monthly basis. And all they have to do is they interact with the staff

Daniel Choi: to tether, to have success a relationship.

Derek Gallimore: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And again, you know, it’s the outsourcing suppliers such as yourself that actually enable the business people just, just really get on with their business. You know, and doing business in the Philippines is bureaucratic and it is highly involved in going through outsourcing suppliers means that everything is legitimate. All taxes are being paid, health insurance is being paid, the staff being well looked after everything is compliant with the government, but you know, it’s just one simple monthly payment and that’s to to you. So, you know, they’re easy contracts and I think that’s where a lot of the value lines that people sort of under value in a way. Great. Thank you Daniel. So if anyone wants to get in touch with you, how, how can they do that?

Daniel Choi: They can contact me through email. My email is [email protected] or they can visit our website also the same www.intelegencia.com.

Derek Gallimore: Amazing. Thank you for your time. The candidate with Daniel Choi of Intelegencia. If you want to get in touch with Daniel or no, any more that we spoke about, go to our show notes, which is an outsourceaccelerator.com/231. And as always, if you want to email us, if you want to ask us anything, then just drops some email to [email protected] See you next time.