Outsourcing jobs from the U.S.....how cheap can it be?

by restrangled 11 Replies latest jw friends

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  restrangled

  I just had to order a very expensive camera from Circuit City for my husband's business and they asked that I call a 1 800 number to confirm the order.

  I spent 30 minutes on the phone with a girl I could hardly hear....2 other orders seemed to be happening over the same line.

  Out of frustration I asked, "Is this India?" She said no, Manilla!!!!!

  Can you believe this? How much cheaper can these people be? After 30 minutes to a foriegn country does it really pay off?

  Am I nuts to feel so cranky?

  r.
• 

  Highlander

  How much cheaper can these people be? After 30 minutes to a foriegn country does it really pay off?

  Average filipino worker earns about 8000 pesos per month. I believe the average filipino in a call center earns about 14,000 pesos per month. That's equal to about 325 US dollars.

  The savings is substantial, however to be fair, many of the technical call center positions are coming back to the US. They are now putting some of these call centers in rural towns where the cost of living and cost of employees is cheaper, yet you get an employee that has better english and hopefully better training from the company.
• 

  SnakesInTheTower

  restrangled...

  what...no response after 90 minutes? I thought this thread would be on fire,,,LOL

  Dont get me freaking started!!!! LOL

  I do bill collections for a cable contractor...I often have to call the 800# to process a payment for the customers. The calls usually go to one of 2 call centers in the Philipines. Its a crap shoot...some days I get someone who speaks english clearly..but accented...other times its like someone speaking with cotton in their mouth... frustrating to have to repeat a 16 digit credit card number 4 times...and then they repeat it back and its only 15 digits...cause the satellite connection dropped a second.

  My phone, DSL, and DISH are all through AT&T...(ironic, I work for a cable contractor and dont use their service..what's that say about the cable company?)... However, the DSL customer service is in Mumbai, India...but if I complain enough, they transfer me back to Missouri or Texas.

  Here is the problem..you said this:

  How much cheaper can these people be? After 30 minutes to a foriegn country does it really pay off?

  answer YES. When I was in India last year, there were so many call centers advertising for employment, and advertisments for learning English as a second language, you would not believe it. The pay is so good at the American call centers that even the government employed doctors and dentists...with 8 years of university and med school...quit as doctors and go work for the call centers. The average government employed doctor makes about $800 US a month (so I was told)...my exfiancee is a dentist in private practice and made $1500-2000/month (she could have made more in a major city)....so the government doctors make $1000 in a nice, comfortable, clean call center working 40 hours a week... and are happy! (by comparison...middle class in India...government teacher, etc...is $400-500/month). .but then again the cost of living is terribly cheap there. I have commented on this before on this forum..... ..oh..here is an interesting stat:

  $5,400

  Average annual entry-level salary for Indian information technology graduates.

  (that's $2.60/hr folks) Wide Angle did a show about this not long ago on PBS: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/india2/index.html

  So, yep...its a ton cheaper even with the problems of longer call times (Industy average call time in the US call centers is 5 minutes or less....but that call in the US costs $15 or more..in India..with no benefits and paying under $6/hr....its one third of that...

  So unless you complain to the US headquarters..and thousands more like you and I complain...the corporations will not change their business model.

  I call it the Walmartization of the world economy. Americans think they can go to Walmart or the dollar stores and get everything dirt cheap, but then are shocked that all the good industrial jobs are gone and their crap has "Made In China" stamped on the bottom. We in the western world cannot have it both ways...we cant have low cost products and yet have high paying jobs in our countries making those same products....until it becomes too expensive to ship products across the world via container ship or airplane, those jobs are gone. Go read a book called "China, Inc."... real eye opener....

  In the industry that I went to college for...working in a medical office, with a specialty in medical transcription and medical billing...even those jobs are being outsourced....local hospital just last year outsourced their billing department to India...for the aforementioned cost savings... and transcription? A doctor can transcribe his notes into a digital recorder and have his receptionist transmit the electronic file to India over the internet... where it is 4am there...and by the time the doctor rolls in the next morning...the transcript (or at least a draft) is waiting in his email inbox....and no problem understanding the Indian doctor's accent...its Indians doing the transcription! So my college degree...I am not using it....but I have it....

  SnakesInTheTower (of the "not outsourced yet" Sheep Class)
• 

  bisous

  Actually, call center jobs are drifting out of vogue in India as other more satisfying and higher paying opportunities are developing there for the budding middle class ... below is an excerpt from a story covering the topic and a link to the rest ...
  
  "Call centers are symbols of India's economic boom. With Anglicized names and feigned Western accents, Indians handle credit card problems and troubleshoot computers, collect debts and conduct customer satisfaction surveys. Over the past decade or so, relatively high salaries in the call center sector have attracted thousands of applicants across the country. But now the boom is going bust because India's college graduates and young job seekers just don't want to be bothered with the business anymore.
  
  Young people say it is no longer worthwhile going through sleepless nights serving customers halfway around the world. They have better job opportunities in other fields. The work is tiring and stressful and offers few career advancement opportunities, says Dr. A. Sankara Reddy, head of Sri Venkateswara College in New Delhi. In response to students' complaints, Reddy said the college a few months ago banned call center recruiters from campus. At least a handful of other local colleges over the last few years have made the same decision."
  
  http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1671982,00.html
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  Satanus

  The falling american dollar is going to help to bring jobs back, and keep more. That way, americans can have their cake and eat it too. Although, they will find it harder to travel outside their country. Hafta eat their cakes at home, i guess.
  
  S
• 

  Dorktacular

  Sorry I didn't respond to this post sooner, but I was too busy for the last 4 hours trying to get some customer service from some guy in India! LOL

  I worked for a very LARGE company who "outsourced" their tech support to the Phillipines (I called them the Philistines). We had a call center staffed by people who used to actually be technicians building, repairing and operating the product. AND they spoke English. Well, the company thought it would be better to fire all of the experienced, useful, helpful people and transfer the service to the Phillipines. Long story short, the customers were so displeased the company almost lost all of it's major accounts because they couldn't understand anybody on thee phone unless they got out their "You too can spoke Engrish" dictionary. They were also upset because they couldn't get any support outside of the stupid flowchart the Phillipines call center person was reading off of a computer screen and the call center wouldn't forward calls to field technicians when a customer requested service. The company had do cancel the contract with the Phillipines. Well, as it turned out, by that time, most of the tech support people they fired found new jobs and wouldn't come back. Others wouldn't have pissed on their previous employer if they were on fire because of what the company did to them after years of faithful service. So the company's field technicians now have to handle incomming tech support calls as well as actual service calls to accounts.

  I have learned the hard way. Before I make a major purchase, and yes this even includes my home mortgage, I always ask for the customer support phone number. I go home that night and call just to see who answers the phone and where they are located. I WILL NOT buy a product that has no support in the country where I live! I want a live, local person just in case I have to shove that piece of crap computer or big screen up their ass because it isn't working. You may save a few bucks buying a product from a company that has outsourced tech support, but trust me it pays off if you ever have a problem. Pay extra so you can get service.
• 

  loosie

  Restrangled you must have had me in mind you started this thread.

  I work in technical suport for an internet service provider. We are all losing our jobs here in early december. They are outsourcing to India. I have worked for this company for over 4 years. I can fix a customers internet service with my eyes closed, by heart and in my sleep.

  We are currently only taking a small percentage of calls here in the US because they are breaking India in. at least 20 % of my calls a day are customers complaing of how they cdouldn't understand the last rep they talked to because of their Indian accent. another 20 % are customers whose issue I have fixed because the previous India rep messed things up even worse. the other 60 % are lucky enough for this to have been their 1st call and they got the US the 1st time.

  No offence but most of our customers are from the south and their accents are hard to understand. But since I have doing this for so long I can translate southern to english. But translating southern to indian is much harder, if not impossible.

  I make about $13 per hour. And I can handle most of my calls in 8 minutes. The India rep gets paid $3 per hour and averages 25 minutes on their calls.

  The company isn't doing this because of the customers wanting it. they are doing this because of the $$$$$$.
• 

  Gopher

  I think the drive to get the cheapest available help may eventually backfire. Eventually the workers in India won't want these jobs, and American companies will have to turn to other places like.. China! However, India is developing a lot of Information Technology workers, and those are considered good jobs there.

  I have some mixed emotions about this. The type of programming work I used to do is now being done in India. However, I was hired by a company headquartered in India to work with the on-site team (here in Minnesota) as a Business Systems Analyst. A majority of my company's workers are offshore, so they're able to provide the American client company here with a less-expensive IT service. It's the trend in America right now, and I don't know how long it will stay that way.
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  Jourles

  I wonder how long it will be before the peso overtakes the dollar and we have Mexican tourists coming to the USA tipping American workers in pesos and we're grateful for those tips?

  Don't laugh, and never say never.
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  wanderlustguy

  It's the financial environment we live in. Everyone wants everything better today than yesterday, and cheaper. As long as there is someone who will do the job cheaper with only a "reasonable" loss of business and a significant savings, they will get the job.

  That's why I work for myself now. Just couldn't watch people killing themselves for nothing and telling them they were doing the right thing.