Outsourced Call Centers Losing Feasibility?

Daniel Pronych writes "BusinessWeek is running an article about how outsourcing call centers in India are no longer an 'inexpensive option' for American companies. These shops are now striving for better outsourced work from the U.S. and Europe multinational companies; many are fed up with U.S. clients trying to continually lower prices. New Delhi-based EXL Services, for example, terminated a contract with Dell Inc. because EXL was losing money in the deal."

Might both lose

[joe 155]

In the UK we have had a lot of companies who outsourced their customer care to India, but because of this there has been a real backlash against companies who have done so at the expense of British workers. Now you often see in adverts people advertising that they have UK call centers only. I wonder if it is maybe becoming unworkable for both sides in these deals.

Maybe if they didn't skimp on the facilities

[antifoidulus]

My worst offshore callcenter experience wasn't because the guy on the other line was incomprehensible it was because I couldn't hear him. They were obviously using very crappy VOIP technology and he would just keep on cutting out in the middle of sentences. Furthermore(this might not have been the VOIP but it probably was) I could hardly hear the guy. I turned the volume up on my phone and still couldn't hear him, but when he transferred me to the American call desk I damn near got my ear blown off because it was so loud. If they are going to cut costs on the workers they should at least spring for facilities that actually allow for decent voice quality.

Re:Witty bit of wisdom

[mobby_6kl]

> India? Third world? Where have you been living?

Here [hd.org]

Re:Besides rising wages...

[Aladrin]

Actually, that's not entirely true. When I worked for Gateway 2000 (they hadn't changed the name yet) I worked for 1 of the only 2 contracted call centers. The others were all owned by GW2k proper. Having volunteered in a computer shop for a few years while I was in highschool and college, I was already pretty far along the computer repair path. Once I got the hang of the call system and how to talk to people, my calls got REALLY short and at the same time, I fixed the problems. I didn't 'hose n close' as they called it.

One day, I get yelled at for my call times. Not because they are too long, but because they are TOO SHORT. 'You are to average between 7 and 11 minutes per call,' they said. I argued that I was fixing the customers' problems and that they were all leaving happy, with the exceptions of those that had to be elevated to 'second level'. 'It doesn't matter,' they said. 'Spend more time getting their information. Ask them some personal questions to stretch the time out.'

Not once did they suggest I wasn't helping the customer. My real problem was that I never got stuck on those 2 hour phone calls because I knew what I was doing and simply fixed the problem right away. I knew all the really tricky problems, like the taskbar that just WON'T move. (Boot into safe mode and back again and it'll fix itself. It IS actually possible for it to get stuck. It happened to a PC in the call center once.)

So in the end, it's not about short calls. It's about calls that are the right length and look like you helped the customer while keeping the call time down far enough to make money.

Re:More government tax on corporations who outsour

[AlXtreme]

Small wonder that those countries where the people were asked their opinion voiced a strong NO. However, it will take something stronger to really wake up the EU politicians.

Sorry, as a No-voter I must correct you on this: we voted against the EU constitution, not against the EU. Most people, like me, aren't anti-EU but would just want the EU to take it a bit more slowly. And you can't compare the US with the EU, NAFTA/EU is a better comparison. That was the main reason why most rejected the constitution: We don't want to become the United States of Europe.

Re:More government tax on corporations who outsour

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly: true capitalism (which is based on the principle of voluntary trade for mutual benefit) doesn't exist in the US, and as far as I'm aware, anywhere else in the world today. In fact, the US economy today is much closer to socialism or corporatism (coercive economies) than capitalism (voluntary economy).

The deeper government (and its special "right" to employ coercion as a business model) is entangled in the market, the further away from capitalism the market is.