Ok...let me just start off by saying before recently, Outsourcing was just a buzz word I heard on am radio and talking head tv. But being in upper management of a large company, I had to face examine this trend a lot more closely.

My company employs many people who man the phones for either support or service. Now with the stagnant economy, rising interest rates, and inflations, we've been forced to lay off a great deal of our ranks.

So in an effort to cut costs, we flew to India with a firm who's helped to establish "overseas operations."

How disturbing this trip ended up to be. If we ended up outsourcing our support/service team overseas, hundreds of American workers making around 30k/yr would be unemplyed. So there's one negative impact of outsourcing.

If that's not bad enough, these Indian people who would be taking over this sector of our company would go through even greater a change. In order to make this transition work, we had to essentially "re-educate" the Indians who would work for us. They would have to go through numerous hours of language programs in order to lose their native accents. In order to sound more American. The goal here is to make the end consumer believe they are talking to Joe American. This is unbelievable to me. I met many Indians who worked for other large companies who we've all heard. They lost their spirit. Most of their families wont speak with them. All they care about is American culture/fashion/couture.

I don't know if any of my fellow TA business execs have seen outsourcing up and close, but if you have, you know what I'm talking about. It's a losing situation for all involved.

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1776

Interesting post...

Generally speaking, outsourcing wouldnt be as widespread and proficient as we observe in today's economy if it were truly a lose/lose situation. Outsourcing occurs because there is some mutual gains for both parties involved (in monetary terms anyway).

Outsourcing, as you'd know, is merely a cost cutting excercise.. and as a result would make a company more competitive/profitable. This increase in competitiveness/profitability would have to outweigh the loss in local jobs, otherwise outsourcing would only be confined to textbooks and not be implemented in the real world. Let's also think of the long run monetary impacts.. a more profitable/competitive company is less likely to run into losses (thus closing down business) and can eventually expand its operations, thus creating more jobs you could say..

You put forward an interesting point about the social and moral impacts that your Indian workers are facing. I would have to agree with you on this point that the Americanisation of these workers is definately something that is less than admirable.. I mean, what good is money if we cause these poor souls to be estranged from their families and communities.

The question is... are the long-run monetary benefits of outsourcing (for both the domestic company, and our Indian counterparts) covering the short-run costs of job losses (in our local economy) and the social/moral negatives we create with our business partners..??

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Another negative effect is the quality of service. Basicly everytime I've had to deal with an Indian over the phone the second what I need is even slightly different to a standard request confusion rapidly follows.

I find that you may as well be using one of thouse "push 3 now" services. Because they just can't deal with non-standard stuff very well.

I know these guys are well trainned but I find it really difficult to get answers to any questions I have. And they can be pretty rude (in a passive sence).

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If you can read this, I'm seriously fucking bored.

I got a telephone call recently to my house from a guy working in a call centre in the Philipines, he wanted to know if id like to go on a world cruise with a well known American cruise company (i heard of them anyway) i said no, i had no plans to travel around the world on a ship at the moment, and pointed out to him that i usually get seasick anyway even on short journeys....anyway to make a long storey short he assured me i wouldnt get seasick on their ships as they had anti roll etc, so i said listen im not interested and wanted to end the conversation, i said i was going to hang up, and at this stage he got really agitated..he couldnt believe i was going to hang up..id swear the guys job depended on the sale the way he reacted..i hung up off course...

Moral of the storey is, cold calls from call centres are really annoying no matter where they are from.

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Yea its quite rare in the UK (plus Ireland?) to get a phone call from some company and not have it be an Indian (called Lord Cuthbert Poncenby-Smythe no doubt!) Even customer services have gone abroad now. Plus any job that can be done by sending the work electronicaly (like data imput etc) I worked for HSBC for a year and they lost bout 4,000 jobs to India. The customer service people are quite good (probably graduates from uni) When I have spoken to them on HSBC telephone banking they have been excellent. However, the ones that call you (to promote summat like a fucking phone with a fucking mp3-digital camera player when I have a digital camera and a minidisc and I want to talk to people on my phone thankyou very much you annoying little gobshite) are a waste of space. Poor English and fucking annoying. Feel sorry for the ones that call my dad (actually that includes the English ones too!)

It can have its advantages tho. I was quite bored one day when William Churchill (with a strangely foreign accent...) rang me up to sell me a phone. Being bored shitless and slightly cruel I decided to ask him if the phone had the game Snakes (it was quite a facny phone so no chance of a shit game like that). Anyway, he didn't know what snakes was, and after asking for about 15 mins (and being told it had a fucking camera ) he put his manager on how spoke better English, but unfortunately had the same knowledge of snakes as his collegue. Anmyway, there isn't a contract out there that can save me more money than the one I have (bt genie) which was a little fact that these people could not grasp. "But this has a camera!" they kept saying. Annoying little shits! (Suppose its not their fault but they have an accute skill of ALWAYS ringing you the minute you sit down for tea!)

There have been recent studies that show that business who outsource customer service, etc. to Indian call centers actually end up losing over the long run.

I forget where I read these reports (I read too much ) but I believe the main argument was that the customer service is simply less good and people who know this don't want to buy the product/service from them in the future. They would not mind paying more.


I guess thats not to untrue, for instance I would rather buy a computer not from Dell then from Dell, because their customer service is so losey. Their computers are not necessairly cheaper/better than any rival, and being in Texas I have to pay sales taxes on the purchase too.... the only thing they have going for them is their financial services.

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quote:

Originally posted by DiMethGuy I met many Indians who worked for other large companies who we've all heard. They lost their spirit. Most of their families wont speak with them. All they care about is American culture/fashion/couture.

This is the first time I am hearing about this social impact.

All they have to do is learn some american slang and sound like one on the phone. They are still Indian at heart when they go home.

Anyway..........

Greenspan had said that outsourcing is good for USA in the long run. And everyone agrees it is good for the Indians. So it is a win-win situation, IMO.

and what does an upper management exec dude doing posting on TA ?

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This has been going on for years.
I know India isn't involved in this but just look at NAFTA and what's happened to the labour force just in North America (since 1994).

I have heard about the level of competence outside NA being an issue however; as soon as you get outside the scope of their script, things start going all to hell real fast.
I've experienced it myself first-hand when I worked for GE IT Capital Solutions. Their main call centre is based in India and for the most part, basic things are about all they can handle.
Coming from a technical background it was actually very frustrating to deal with them most of the time but I just bit my lip...

I think I've read that same article Yoepus, regarding businesses actually loosing money in the long run due to their outsourcing. I can't remember where I read it either, but I do remember it.

Outsourcing sure looks good for the bottom line which is what every company wants, however there can be just too many intangibles and problems with the area that they've outsourced to. It becomes a larger problem than the initial problem they were trying to solve.
I'm not saying this is true of all companies but it sure does exist.

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If the lack of service truly is a long-term disadvantage to outsourcing our callcentres then we just have to put more thought into where we outsource to.
It seems that the loss of business through poor service is just a result of company's looking to make a quick buck in the short-run.. But why should these company's change their strategy??? Performance bonuses for uppermanagement is based on yearly results (ie. profit), and gives no incentive for managers to think long term. We have to broaden the scope of accountability (somehow) to get these managers to truly work for the best interest of the firms longrun results....

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quote:

Originally posted by zig I got a telephone call recently to my house from a guy working in a call centre in the Philipines, he wanted to know if id like to go on a world cruise with a well known American cruise company (i heard of them anyway) i said no, i had no plans to travel around the world on a ship at the moment, and pointed out to him that i usually get seasick anyway even on short journeys....anyway to make a long storey short he assured me i wouldnt get seasick on their ships as they had anti roll etc, so i said listen im not interested and wanted to end the conversation, i said i was going to hang up, and at this stage he got really agitated..he couldnt believe i was going to hang up..id swear the guys job depended on the sale the way he reacted..i hung up off course... Moral of the storey is, cold calls from call centres are really annoying no matter where they are from.

That sounds more like a scam than a cold call.

One of the main reasons why a call centre job is so attractive is that the you only require a good command of english. You can be trained for the rest. Most of the people joining call centers have little hope of getting any other such equally paying job because they hardly possess any skills. What they tend to overlook is that it is a very stagnant job with very little room to rise. It's also extremely monotonous and there seems to be a growing trend of rude clients.

In the long run its probably not worth it. I know a lot of college going friends whose only ambition is to get such a job so that they can make money. Kinda sad.

Anyone can surely do better then that.