Even Indians Hate Indian Call Centers
You're not alone hating Indian call centers. Indians hate them too, mostly because they get stuck dealing with an even lower caste of customer service representatives than Americans. The well-educated smooth talking CSRs get the prestigious jobs infuriating foreign customers, while the the untrained masses are paid basmati to cater to India's domestic customers.
The results, predictably, have been lower quality of service for Indians as they try to navigate their cell-phone plans, their credit-card bills, or their flight reservations. "It took me three years to get a job with foreign clients," says Manish Tripathi, a 24-year-old call-center worker who asked that his employer's name not be mentioned. "And the difference was vast. Every day, they trained us on the software, the computers were better, even the telephones were nicer."
[...]
But for Indian call centers that serve Indian clients, Coles says the issue is basic: pay and prestige. "Folks in the contact-center industry are always looking for an improvement in compensation and status," he says. "There is certainly a food chain, so the effect is that talented folks that may enter in the domestic sector are looking for ways to move themselves [to] foreign language."
Unlike in the U.S., complaints in India are not about the fact that jobs have gone overseas, of course, or about accent or language. Instead, like Americans, Indians just want quick service. "It is unbelievable sometimes," says Anupam Mathur, who manages several bank accounts for his employer, a New Delhi-based furniture company. "They don't understand my questions, they don't have any answers, they don't have the authority to solve my problems."
Except for raking in gobs of cash, the folks running India's call centers just can't win.
Poor Call-Center Service Angers Indians, Too [BusinessWeek]
(Photo: antjeverena)
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I guess I know one number that people won't be calling as a lifeline!
(Slumdog Millionaire Reference)
The funny part is, India is no longer considered an "offshore" location by most businesses, it's become just another location - like Germany or Davenport. Wages are rising and well qualified candidates are scarce.
The new "offshore" is China and Poland.
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.
"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.
They should go to Iceland! They be broke!
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!
@dcarrington01: I find it ironic how often people complain about Congress but very rarely toss out their Congressmen when s/he's up for re-election. Approval rates of Congress are about 25% but reelection rates are about 90%.
@Saisu Mimen: I realize that it is cheap, thats not really the point. What I'm asking is what is accomplished by having a big CHEAP useless entity there? Clearly if they wanted to, McDonalds could set up a number in India for technical support and staff it with useless people, but its just a money pit if theres not a reason behind the calls. So if the calls arent getting resolved, and the people are just being paid to not do anything on the phone, it seems like saving money by wasting money.
@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 .
@PLATTWORX: I don't get why American companies haven't figured out that "Anoop" is a perfectly American name and I don't need my Indian call center rep to be fake-named "Steve" as long as he can ANSWER MY DAMN QUESTION.
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.
@johnfrombrooklyn: It's the "prisoner's dilemma" writ large. *My guy* is ok (usually because he brings home the pork), but it's the *other guys' guys* that are screwing up the country.
This is why we need term limits on national offices, even though we can, theoretically, "toss the bums out" every two years.
@PLATTWORX: What I don't understand why they're even allowed to use a fake name. I understand why they do it (John sounds better than "Anoop" to your average American).
But it's like you're practically lying to the customer.
@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 .
@PLATTWORX: My local bank has done this. I called recently to see if I could somehow set a language "preference" for my ATM card. Look, I took 4 years of Spanish, yet the only Spanish I know is mostly from television commercials. Yet every time I use the ATM, it seems to think I have learned fluent Spanish in the week since I last used it, and asks me what language I want to continue in. It's ALWAYS English. So I called the support line.
Talk about something NOT on a script. How many people call so they can save 5 seconds while at the ATM? The person on the other end could not seem to understand and you could hear them clicking/flipping through the answers they can give you before they finally told me there is no way to make it so I don't have to choose. WTF?
Call centers serve two purposes. The first is to sell or get new business. In these cases, you typically have an American educated English speaker who answers the phone on the first couple rings. The second is in the instance when the company already has your money. In this case, their only goal is to keep as much of it as possible. In this case, service is shoddy, you get stuck calling someone from Delhi, and nobody can help you. Most companies build in this "frustration" cycle hoping and knowing that many of us just give up.
@johnfrombrooklyn: In our state's case the people running against the incumbents are usually not capable of taking orders at McDonalds. We had one election a few years ago where they guy running against our lone congressperson was running on a platform of taking away existing womens rights and instituting religious law, seriously. The guy was nuts and he got about 20% of the vote.
...an even lower caste of customer service representatives than Americans.
So what caste do Americans belong to?
@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.
@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.
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.
@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 .
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?
My former company (Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company) outsource payroll, hr, legal and retirement and pension. As soon as I left I removed all my assets from my retirement and pension accounts to a locally managed IRA.
@darabidduckie: Truth is that Indian workers get paid pennies compared to North American help.
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.
@PLATTWORX: I feel bad about the abuse those call-center workers must get from angry Americans. I understand being annoyed about it, of course -- although the workers handling American calls have solid English skills, I sometimes have a hard time understanding their accents -- but it's certainly not our theoretical Anoop's fault that his employer decided to move its call centers to India.
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.
@dragonfire81: Just to elaborate on this, I remember hearing somewhere that you can hire 5-10 Indian call center workers (Depending on training) for the same price as one US call center worker.
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.
@Benjamin M Martin:
I have to second this suggestion. Everyone working in the tech sector should watch this. The basic issue comes down to this: in a global market the difference between quality of life in one market (country) and the next MUST move toward equilibrium. You're going to need to come to grips with that eventuality and this episode of 30 days is a very good view of the current state of affairs.
@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.
Cost is what drives this and it's a false economy. I've been with a couple of American companies that decided to out-source support against my vocal opposition. To me, it costs more in the long run because you piss people off, which really hurts ongoing contracts, new sales, and your reputation in general.
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.
@Illiterate?EmailMeForHelp_GitEmSteveDave: i love my credit union for NOT doing this. there are two call centers in town for them [my state's capitol city] and one of them is late night and the other is open until 8pm. when i was applying for a loan a couple of years ago i had to fax some paperwork and was told that if i faxed it before 8pm to send it to the office on X street and if after 8, send it to the office on Y street in the downtown main building.
[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]
AETNA manages my company's FMLA/sick benefits [thankfully not our insurance] and their call center is outsourced. i am not thrilled to spend an hour on the phone spelling my boss's name, the name of a state capitol that every american 5th grader knows [my resident city] and the name of the street i live on [river... R-I-V-E-R... no, V as in victor. right, ok, you aren't familiar with the word victor. um, what's another word that starts with a V...]
granted, their english is much much better than my hindi, but i'm getting really sick of explaining that diabetes isn't curable and there is no foreseeable resolution to my need for intermittent FMLA leave without my death occurring.
also, the amount of time it takes the call center to get the info entered, the processing steps to get sent to the US representatives and the paperwork to get in the mail to me... i have 9 days from the call to get my doctor to sign it and send it back, they won't fax it to me and i often get the paperwork up to a week AFTER the deadline expires.
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.
I figured out that with some companies if you call their "International" line, you get someone in the US. Happened with Microsoft a few weeks ago. Unbelievable. If you're in the US, you get farmed out to someone who has no idea what you're saying. If you're from a foreign country, you get someone in the US who has no idea what you're saying, either. Blows my mind. It said it right there on the website: International Customers seeking a direct line to USA call: xxx-xxx-xxxx, I can't remember the number. But I called it from the US and sure enough got a CSR in washington! My problem was fixed in seconds.
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!
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.
@woot:
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.
I don't care for the Indian call centers either, but why do people assume that our 'lower class' workforce is any more intelligent than India's middle or lower class workforce?
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.
@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 .
@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 ...
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.
The other day I called Alienware for some help. I was shocked, amazed, and very pleased to find the help on the other end was extremely knowledgeable, from the US, and spoke with PERFECT easy to understand English! I'd love to see more companies do it like that. The guys at Alienware treat you like a king every time you call.
I have never understood the point of creating a huge call center and staffing it with uneducated, unprepared, incomprehensible people with absolutely no authority to make any changes, fix anything, or do anything.