Outsourcing to India
June 28th, 2008
During my day to day work, occasionally I’ll get an escalated call from our Indian call center.
“This customer only wants to speak to an American”
I take the call and I’ll always start off by saying “Thank you for your patience, your call has been transferred to me for further assistance. I am located in the U.S. but I am, in fact, English. I hope this is not a problem”
So far, it hasn’t been. And the caller will often say “I’m not racist, but I have a very hard time understanding those people” or “I’m not prejudiced, I just don’t trust those people with my personal information”
Newsflash: You are being racist. But is it justifiable?
I like a large number of my Indian Customer service reps. A good 10 or so have very good accents (One, Rachel, has a deliciously exotic accent that makes my toes curl), are extremely sharp and customer-focused people, almost to a fault. Yes, it’s true, some of the others make me want to stab myself in the face with an icepick. It’s not that they’re dumb… most have college degrees, but the cultural divide is SO vast that it sometimes feels like I’m trying to teach a dog about quantum mechanics.
That’s on the “front end” i.e. the customer service representatives who talk directly to the customers, but what about the “back end” - those outsourced employees who handle account research, mail handling and payments? Well - from the company’s perspective, the bottom line looks healthy. But in my unbiased and reasoned opinion, they’re a bunch of F&^#tards who could barely find their own a$$ with two hands and a flashlight.
How I know this is partly because of my role as escalated customer service. Our customers aren’t calling in to say “Hey! I just wanted to say that I’ve had my card for 6 months with no problems. Thanks! <click>” no… our customers are calling in to know why we F&&^ed up their account. Guess who? Bing.
But the straw that broke the camels back for me was when our own escalated research team were approached to clean up thousands of accounts the Indian team had chronically hosed. The real plum - they had to work “on project” - i.e. no credit for doing the work would be traced back to them, it would be like India miraculously woke up one evening morning and all of their f&c#-ups had vanished!
The real kicker - They allowed the research team to do it during time-and-a-half overtime. Yeah. That’s really saving money. Dumbasses. Once again, Classic Corporate Mentality: Penny Smart, Dollar DUMB
Skep