That argument never fails to floor me. Imagine applying that logic to any other language but our own: "When I speak French, no native French speaker understands a damned thing I say without straining like crazy to understand! My French skills are SOLID!"

Gimmee a break.

Recently I was unemployed for several weeks to the point that I started getting collection calls from some of my creditors. One in specific really annoyed me, because it was like a recording was talking to me. This lady with a thick Indian accent wasn't making any pauses to let me speak and it was incredibly annoying. I don't like an all that my credit/customer support affairs are being handled by people on the other side of the World, that sucks!!!!

@lestat730: And the above is the reason support is outsourced. It's the wal-mart-ization of certain portions of the economy, including ones that generally require some sort of support for a number of consumers at one time or another (IT support being probably the most visible). People want products as cheap as possible, but don't want to *pay* for the support they may require. You paid a bit more for a machine that (hardware-wise) probably isn't as expensive as the price tag, but you were able to call, get decent support, and go on your way. THAT was the cost in the price tag, and THAT is what people just don't want to pay (but they want the right to complain about the subpar "support" they get from outsourced call centers, not realizing they're causing the desire for outsourcing - support in any company is a loss-leader, and if customers don't want to offset some of that burden, management at most companies will find ways to bite into that apple, usually through outsourcing to some 3rd world country.

Funny, these are the same complaints I always had about Indian call centers. I always thought there was a language barrier in action; interesting to see that it's nothing of the sort.

I wouldn't worry about the Indian call center people because you should really worry about the Indian medical transcription people...

The largest US medical transcription company was sold to the largest global medical transcription company late in 2008. That global company is headquartered in India...

Oh I wonder just how well patient privacy in maintaned...

On the other side of the coin, my company sends out some of our transcription to an Indian transcription company. We have three doctors/therapists they can't do, because "We can only do work that is dictated in English." The people in question are from Australia (VERY mild accent), Austria (almost 50 years living in the US), and Louisiana.

To Eyebrows: I am with you on the "who cares, as long as they can fix my problem" boat. But then you have people like my uncle who created a fairly major scene at a (rather upscale) restaurant, because "'FERNIE'? What the hell kind of a name is 'FERNIE'? I've heard of ERNIE, on Sesame Street, but you don't look like a Muppet to me. What the hell is FERNIE supposed to mean? Is that some kind of a joke? Did you just make that up or what? That's no kind of name, son, get a REAL name." This, from a man named Winston - who hadn't even been drinking yet.

Even my father - who went on record as stating that Obama would never win the election because "he has a stupid, weird name, what kind of a name is 'Barack'" (I'll spare you the spelling and pronunciation of my dad's last name but trust me, he is the LAST PERSON who should be making fun of ANYONE else's name) - was mortified, yet Winston saw nothing out of line about his remarks at all, because after all it was Fernie's fault for having a "weird name." (Fernando/Fernie is a very popular name where I live.)

I wish there were more people like you and me, but sometimes it seems like most of the US is made up of Winstons.

I hear ya. That bugs me too. That's right up there with putting subtitles on a TV show because someone has an ACCENT. Jeeps, I think I can understand them if I pay attention. And I've seen them do it over people who have a BRITISH accent!

I don't know why we even HAVE to know their name to begin with. Honestly, unless they are asshats or the call was really weird, I don't remember their name two seconds after I hang up anyway, and writing it down does no good, because when you call back you have to start all over anyway.

Yes, they do. And that sucks. It really sucks. No one should hold it over your head. But people (not just men) are assholes.

Seriously, I know a lot of people around here (this part of the country) that still think that women can't do stuff as well because they are women. Of course, I live in the Ozarks, hyuck hyuck hyuck. It's so bad that I've had women come in to apply for a job at the factory and ASK ME THEMSELVES "Can a woman do this job?" What the hell am I supposed to say to them!?!?!?!

BTW we do have ONE woman working in the factory. And she rocks. I don't know if she makes the same though. We're not allowed to know.

of course, that's generally something that's not taught in the entry level econ class. perhaps you didn't make it to that class...

I work at a Call Center and I am heavily against outsourcing however keep in mind India's Primary Language is English in fact that is the language their Government uses and they were citizens of the British Empire for two hundred years.

Only problem is, their culture and their understanding of our ways and customs are very different. Here at the Call Center I work at we have a lot of Indian's who work here but they are well trained and they know the United States so that makes them on par with us.

If accents are a problem I hate to inform you but every U.S State and city has a different accent some are worse then trying to understand someone from India's Call Centers. For example Massachusetts who to be honest with you have the worst accents in the English Lanauage.

Well, they are one step behind the Welsh of England but really India's only negative is they have a different culture and don't understand us and we don't understand them but that still is a huge problem.

It did have the advantage that they did not need to use any last names while the name would identify exactly which person a customer talked to. It also protected people from anyone trying to access the by personal info outside of work.

If I were to start up a call center, I'd do the same thing. It's nothing different than a pen name or screen name. It's perfectly legal.

I used to work at a call center in Canada that fit that description. It's just endless bullshit from both the customers AND the management.

One of the many areas they jerked us around on was pay. When I was hired they had a pay rate of $9.50/hr through training and $10.50 once you hit the floor with regular raises to follow depending on how long you stayed there.

What started happening is that people would get hired, do the few weeks of classroom training (which was practically nothing), collect paychecks and then leave before they even took a single phone call.

So management responded by offering a LOWER starting wage, ostensibly to make it look less attractive for those wanting to cash in and get out.

Shockingly, this lead to a decrease in the amount of quality workers hired, since no one wanted call center work at $8/hr (most centers pay more than this).

Near the end of my time there, another company took over the company and gave us all a decent raise, as a result our metrics improved significantly. Imagine that.

Call center work is insanely repetitive and stressful. You deal with agitated customers all day, get treated like crap from your bosses, get micromanaged beyond belief (go one second over on a break? Write up for you!) and constantly have to fight your corporate office to get paid correctly.

family & student friendly? sure! flexible hours? sure!

NOT. you'll never get a shift that let's you see your family or your school. and it's YOUR hours that will flex, not the shifts.

cry me a river.

A friend of mine worked at a call center for a whopping $7.50/hr, and told me horror stories of how when you are on a call with someone, multiple prompts pop up on the screen of your computer.. You have so many seconds/minutes to read/offer/sell these things these prompts are telling you and you have a huge quota to meet as far as how many customer calls you must take. There is someone nearby monitoring all reps. If you do not use proper lingo/terms and what not, sell certain items, click through all these prompts in a certain amount of time, and meet your quota... Well, you know what happens to you!

One of our clients pulled a contract from a Canadian call center provider and landed it with a less expensive alternative in Augusta, GA.

I would never say that Southerners are stupid, uneducated, etc. for I would be insulting my own heritage. The fact remains, however, that the move was entirely about price and at $5.15 an hour they got what they paid for: an unskilled, barely-literate workforce with thick rural accents trying to plumb the technical depths of cable Internet support.

Oh, and the client decided its Manhattan / Staten Island customers would be directed to this call center. The carnage was amazing.

I can only imagine how frustrating it would be to be talking to someone whose health care system is so different they don't really understand our system (nobody does who doesn't have to suffer through it) and is reading from the book like I am to figure out the benefits and, moreover, when I ask about "common practice for C-sections" or something, has no idea what that common practice in the US is. And that's nothing to do with intelligence or ability ... that's everything to do with cultural embeddedness.

Okay, so maybe Venkatesh is a little long for phone work and perhaps hard to pronounce for a native English speaker unfamiliar with Indian names. But there are plenty of Indian names easy enough for English-speakers to pronounce and plenty short for phone work ... and plenty of Indian names familiar to Americans from celebrities and television if nothing else. So why can't Venkatesh be Kumar or Anil or Sandip or Mohinder, if Venkatesh is inclined to pick a different name for ease of pronunciation and to get less emotional about being yelled at?

I am beyond amused at the quote the reporter pulled from CEO Chris Coles of Hyperquality, which is "Seattle-based" in the same way that I'm "Tokyo-based" -- hell, it's the Internet, a few packets of my posted comment pass through there eventually, right?

Hyperquality used to have a big office in Seattle, with staff doing QA for some very well-known companies supporting mission of "trying to help some of America's largest companies figure out how to keep customers satisfied."

They fired all of their US-based staff, shipped those jobs to India and then promptly lost at least three contracts with major companies (including the largest cable company in America) because of all the errors from the poorly trained replacements. I'm sure the technical incompetence of the programmers (also in India) didn't help.

If "some of America's largest companies" rely on the hot mess that is Hyperquality to tell them if they're doing a good job, no wonder the state of their customer service is so sad.

@snickers: But who put CSR on the low end of the scale ?

Was/is it ? the wages,the crap you take all day,the customers who don't get what they want,a cubicle/closely monitored enviorment,the pressure for sales let alone problem solving . Is it businesses under prioritizing customer service with the attitude you choose to buy it now deal with it yourself ?

I realize certain jobs may have pay limits but it that any reason not to consider it a ' real ' job ?

I think jobs like CSR are so prestigious in other countries because it's probably one of the first and only western office job many will have .

The product you get is amazing. It uses only high quality parts, has a really nice and spacious case, really good customer service, and they're always sending me freebies and extras. Best computer company I've ever had to deal with.

Sure it's always cheaper to build your own, but not everyone wants to take the time to plan, research, and put together their machine. Not to mention the fact that you have to deal with many different warranties should something go wrong in the first year.

They consider a call-center job to be prestigious? Being a CSR is one of the lowliest jobs in the US.

Here's how we solve everybody's problems: give the CSR jobs servicing Americans to other Americans in the US, and have the Indian CSRs deal with Indians.

@corinthos: I know people who did call center work I think for Dell under a third party had to quit making almost 15$ an hour because of the pressure . And the company he worked for is FREQUENTLT hiring . They try everything to recruit including flexible schedules & a good starting pay .

But they always seem to be hiring ...

@HogwartsAlum: I've read several studies over the last several months where women wind up being the bread winner at lower paying jobs .

Many businesses and/or managers look for employees and people who they can hold the job over their head ie they think really need the job . Most mothers with a family traditionally NEED the job . Many low income and or service sector employees really need the job . And in reality I think many businesses/HRs/managers pay accordingly in that they assume the employee won't go anywhere else because they NEED the job .

I think many service sector jobs in particular actually look for women or mothers to hire under the assuption they will be happy just to be working irreguardless of pay and conditions . This mentality can limit the employee pool in many areas .

But then multi national corporations use this very same mentality with entire countries .

Stupid Americans are just as incomprehensible and unintelligent. At least the Indians have an excuse (language barrier). Call BofA's 800# and see what I mean.

It's a simple dilemma, anyone worthwhile and valuable enough... doesn't want to work in a call center. It's the same reason savvy business people don't clean bathrooms for a living.

Many, many call center employees in America are not trained and don't have authority to help you either.

That's one reason I hate outsourcing. I don't care WHERE they are as long as they can help me, and if they are not trained and can't do so, it makes no difference whether they are in India or Ohio.

So no matter what, it's not saving the company money because if no one can help me if I have issues, they're not getting MY money.

One reason I got about using a fake name when I did telemarketing was that if the customer becomes irate and starts yelling at you, you're much less likely to take it personally if they aren't yelling at YOU, just at your fake name. It's easier to divorce your feelings from what you are doing and what they are saying.

WRONG!!!!

Lots of women STILL make less than men for the same work! It's 2009! Get with the program, people!

Who the fuck is Larry Elder anyway? Not a woman, that's for sure!

i also work in a customer service phone center for my job and i love the fact that if i tell someone on the phone that i am going to send them a fax the process goes like this:
the call ends. i type up the fax. i walk 25 feet to the fax and put it in the machine. i enter the number and hit send. i wait for receipt confirmation of the fax on the other end.

[also, my credit union has the ATMs set up so that you can spend a couple of minutes at the ATM once, programming your preferences as to language and such. i haven't tried it, but it's obviously possible for an ATM to work that way]

So, I took to asking our execs to try calling the call center to resolve problems with our software rather than short-cutting the process, just so they could experience what a customer does. Support got on-shored again inside of 18 months.

I'm not saying that Indians are not as good as Americans. What I am saying is that there's a big, huge difference between an American answering the phone and being able to flexibly respond - including walking across the campus to engineers they hang out with and a remote call-center drone forced to go through a bunch of useless questions.

@darabidduckie: When Toyota came and built a plant near my hometown, the first thing they did was start pouring money into schools and community projects which made the town a much nicer place to live.

Um, they do that to attract better workers, not to be good corporate citizens and give their money to the community.

ECON 101: The purpose of a business is to maximize shareholder value. Period. Do you have a 401k? If so, you should not be so quick to hate "fat, greedy companies". Your retirement depends on them.

Its like Larry Elder says, if it was possible to hire women/minorities for less money you'd have to be stupid not to!*

*Mr. Elder's point was that the "Glass ceiling" does not exist because no businessman in his right mind would pay higher wages for a white male if women/minorities were just as skilled and willing to do the same work for less money. According to Mr. Elder, the reason women and minorities, on average, make less compared to white males is because white males predominately work at jobs in fields that pay more. Compare a woman in HR to a man in IT and yes, the man makes more. Compare a woman in IT to a man in IT and they're much closer in pay rate. Compare the two with identical education, experience, and employer/region and they're identical in pay.

On the one hand, you get higher pay, better training, and nicer offices; on the other hand, you get Bob from the US screaming at you that he wants to talk to a goddamn American. Tradeoff.

Even if it takes five calls to an Indian support center to resolve a problem you have, that's still likely CHEAPER than a single call to a North American rep.

It all comes down to money. Big corps are under intense pressure to make more and more and more money to keep the stock price going up and ensure the stock options held by execs stay valuable.

They don't care about customer satisfaction, they care about making themselves as much money as they can.

If Bob the VP can buy himself a nice yacht by sending several thousand jobs overseas and making his company some money, then I guarantee you, Bob the VP would send those jobs away in an instant.

Wow, thanks for posting that. I'd never really thought of it like that before. I really guess we should turn our ire towards the fat, greedy companies doing the outsourcing and stop being so hard towards the Indians who are actually lucky to be getting the jobs, even if they're just getting reamed by those same companies in the end.

If anything, I'm more irritated at those companies coming over and making fat sacks of cash but doing nothing to improve the community aside from commercializing the areas. When Toyota came and built a plant near my hometown, the first thing they did was start pouring money into schools and community projects which made the town a much nicer place to live. Where is that with the companies setting up shop in India?

@JoshReflek: That's it exactly : a gratuitous and frivilous attempt to say their service or product comes with ' support ' . I guess they think when they throw in phrases like 24/7 availability they think it helps sell the product or soothe the customer .

It's not just customer service that suffers because of these call centers. Companies also outsource their accounting calls to them. I had an incredibly frustrating conversation with a call-center employee who was representing the Accounts Payable department of a major retailer. I could only understand about every third word he said and the call ended with no resolution.

After speaking with someone at the local store, I found out that not only does this company outsource it's accounting calls, it outsourced it's PAYROLL calls. So if an employee has a payroll question, they get someone in India on the phone. It's getting riduculous.

@Radi0logy: The companies that use foreign accent disabled reps do so to intentionally waste your time and not help you.
that way they dont have to pay reasonable rates for competant local staff who might need real training to solve or escalate your issue, while acting as though you have an outlet for assitance.

@Catchy Screen Name: The best Indian name I have ever heard is John John. That's right, first name John, last name John. And it's the name he was born with...he didn't change it. I know he must catch grief booking reservations or making a phone order.

...an even lower caste of customer service representatives than Americans.

So what caste do Americans belong to?

@Illiterate?EmailMeForHelp_GitEmSteveDave: Hurry, disemvowel him!

@CarlosT: They're not practically lying they ARE lying . You mean to tell me Bob or Cindy in New Dehli know who the Yankees are ?

I hate when the call centers pretend they are in a local office . Even worse is when they refuse to admit it . But they are trained that way by American corporate consultants .

But it's like you're practically lying to the customer.

This is why we need term limits on national offices, even though we can, theoretically, "toss the bums out" every two years.

It always irritates me and makes me begin to suspect I might not be WASPy enough to do business with whatever company I'm calling. Because obviously diversity isn't really their thing.

@Benjamin M Martin: I saw that episode . The locals just need jobs which give them money and status .

Call center work anywhere isn't desirable in today's corporate world because you are treated like a machine with quotas to sell and volume & speed requirements . Throw in the cubicle culture it's Dilbert .

My thing is the corporations that send those jobs there . If can't afford to run your own call center you either have gotten too big too fast or are just plain old greedy .

I truly having nothing against the Indian people and have several Indian friends. However, I cringe when I call a company for support and hear what appears to be an Indian accent from the representative, a often less then perfect connection for the call (since my call is being transferred across the damn Globe!) and a greeting such as "Hi, my name is Sally, how many I help you" (Because they are not allowed to use their own Indian names and it's clear the rep is NOT "Sally" or "Bob").

I agree, I have no idea what is accomplished here. My experience is the reps at these call centers can't understand any problem that varies from one of the several scripts they have been given to read, can't make any decisions and are often curt when you are unhappy that they can't do a thing for you.

I have so often stopped doing business with a company after experiencing one of these call centers, I am surprised US companies have not shut them all down by now. Ugh!

@Radi0logy: I dunno, sounds alot like Congress and the Senate to me....

[www.guba.com]

"30 days Outsourcing in India
A laidoff programmer from the US goes to India looking for his job. What he found is probably something he wouldve never imagined."

If you watch this episode of 30 Days with Morgan Spurlock, you'll have a better understanding of WHY this is happening and how it's been misinterpreted from the get-go.

Hello, Thank You for calling the customer service line. Your call is important to us.

My name is Abdul,

May I please have your name, phone number, address, pin code, last four digits of Social Security Number on the account, case number and anything else you may have used to verify your Identity 5 minutes ago before we transfered you to another service rep.

Thank You

Now how may we not have the authority or knowledge to understand or even solve your problem.

I can give you billions of reasons. All of them start with "MO" and end with "NEY".

The new "offshore" is China and Poland.