Outsourcing America

Yesterday I wrote about Morgan Spurlock's television show 30-days. Last night I happened to catch another episode, this time about Outsourcing in India. I'm acquainted with outsourcing on my current job because I deal with Citibank, the king of outsourcing. The show was right on, and many people don't realize that when they call their bank they are actually speaking to some individual with a fake name in India.

Surprised? I was when I first started noticing elderly people who often like to start conversations with the reps, ask a Citibank employee, where are you at? Expecting to hear, "Oh I'm on the west side of town." when in fact they're in India.

I think alot of people in our area are torn, since this is an industry that is driving the Piedmont. We are the India of the southeast, and to hear that people are doing our jobs cheaper, so that big businesses can pay for yet another shiny company car and Hawaii trip, seems pretty infuriating to the most of us. The other side of the coin, is by allowing our jobs to be moved to India, we've allowed what would have been a 3rd world country to prosper and care for it's citizens better.

I think my difficulty with the situation is the deception. The idea that those in India, have to change their names to an American sounding name, and take classes to speak with an American accent. If your going to outsource to India, lets at least allow those individuals to maintain some level of dignity, and at least use their own names. Who cares if we're to ignorant to pronounce them, that's our problem... and we're saving money, right? Or is there a reason for this deception? Is it, that customers might get upset if they were aware that the business they support, purchase products for, or in the case of Citibank... save their money with, is hiring India citizens for customer service. Is there an ethical dilemma for most Americans on this subject? I think there is.

I ran into this with AT&T. You know...AT&T...the telephone communications company?

Seems I got slammed (unvoluntarily signed up for their service) and I was making calls to get that changed.

Their customer serivce was obviously outsourced to India. The connection was horrible and the operators spoke broken English at best. Now no offense to those people. They are just trying to make a living in their country.

But AT&T is an American based company with the majority of their clients being American and speaking English. To have someone being a representitive and not be able to communicate fluently in the American/English language and American culture is just a silly business decision regardless of the cost savings.
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A few years ago Dell outsourced the majority of their customer service to India. Now they have moved a lot of it back and (from what I am told) continue to migrate it. Seems that the customer's were complaining about things similar to Matt's experience. Having someone reading a 'how to' screen in broken english is not a satisfying experience when you are ticked off at your PC.

I think the largest problem is the health care costs associated with an employee in America. Its an absolute albatross, and its ever rising cost is responsible for much of the plight we see in corporate America's maintaining a workforce.
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"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do" -Mark Twain

I deal with Citibank on a daily basis, and their call-center is completely outsourced. I've got to agree with you Matt. I don't want to be prejudiced, but there definitely is still a language barrier between them and us. The biggest thing I find, is if you ask them questions, how they are supposed to be asked, and don't stray, they're fine. But if your like me, and tend to use fairly colorful language, a typical individual might not use when calling, they sometimes have a difficult time comprehending it. Unfortunately, I've noticed in the business I work in, many of them will answer questions quickly, just to answer them without fully comprehending them. Which I think leads to alot of orders being wrong. That makes is difficult on me, because if the order I place is wrong, then guess who's fault it is? Mine.