Offshore Call Centers, Corporate Profits, and "Jim"

Let me just say from the start, I can't stand offshore call centers. It's not just because I'm in the industry, working part-time for a call center in the U.S. They irritate me from a customer's perspective for all the same reasons John Q. Public is irritated. It has nothing to do with personal prejudice. It has everything to do with public pride.

First there is the security question. In this post 9/11 world, we're a little more mindful of security. I don't have duct tape and plastic sheets for the windows. My first-aid kit needs restocking. I'm not security crazed, but I'm aware enough to not want to give all my personal and credit card information to someone beyond the reach of U.S. law. Maybe it's naïve to think that my bank doesn't already have my private information whizzing around the world on fiber optic cable, but I'm certainly not going to make it easier for someone to steal my identity. It's bad enough to get scammed in the States, but at least the law might reach the culprit. How am I going to go after some scammer in another country? We've all heard the news of some unscrupulous insider in the U.S. stealing credit card numbers. How long until some poor overworked person, making $2 an hour overseas, realizes what can be done with just a few prime, credit cards? They don't even have to be ambitious enough to steal thousands of numbers. Just a few dozen would give them enough buying power to quite their job. Mark my words; the next big credit card security breach will come from some where overseas.

Secondly, there is that pesky economic issue. Big companies are watching their short-term bottom line and really don't see the long-term impact of outsourcing their call centers overseas. I could stand up and scream here, "They're taking our jobs!" but the truth is, until companies start feeling the economic impact from the loss of customers and revenue, overseas outsourcing will continue. Actually it will only ebb and flow. Losses will cause some jobs to come back to the U.S. until, some fiscal quarter in the future, the books will need cooking and then the offshore contract will return to save the quarterly financial report.

U.S. companies have such a short-sighted view of the business cycle. Grab the money while it's there. Make the stock look good. The snake's head eats its tail until there's nothing left. U.S. corporations need to start making 50 year plans instead of 5 year plans. We should have learned from the old Soviet Union, those 5 year plans just don't work, even when you string 10 off them back to back. Offshore solutions may work well for manufacturing solutions, but when you are trying to provide a service that relies so heavily on language skills and successful, succinct communications, using labor for which English is a second or third language is not effective.

Which brings me to my third and final point; it's just plain inconvenient. The communication gap is huge. The state-side customers can't understand the offshore operators. The operators can't clue in to the subtle nuances of American colloquialisms. What should take a few minutes, now takes half an hour because we have a failure to communicate. A typical conversation consists of the customer requesting, "When will my order arrive?"

The received response from the foreign operator is often, "Have you the paperwork that came with your order? I need some information from that so I can fulfill your request," as if they did not grasp the fact that the order had not arrived. Round and round the conversation goes. (I'm not making this up, by the way. Having chatted with many of my comrades in the industry, I can assure you this is an all-to-often repeated scenario.) Knowing that the success of a call center is measured in very discrete metrics, the most important of which is "average length of call", it is unimaginable that these calls are very profitable. Neither profitable for the call center or the company contracting the service.

Now allow me to tell you what triggered this little article. For the last two nights, I've gotten cold calls from India about being "pre-approved" for a credit card. Now that scares me right there. How much information do they already have on me? Of course both calls come as I'm putting the first bite of dinner in my mouth. I kid not. The calls were timed perfectly to the second, two nights in a row. It's like they have sensors in my molars, telling them the exact moment that I take the first bite of dinner. The first night, after politely declining the offer, the young lady moved right into her rebuttal. I started smacking my food and slurping my soup very loudly into the phone. She remained unfazed. My wife was glaring at my over her fork so I just had to do the "Ok, lady. Buh-bye," and get back to my soup while it was hot. What kind of soup, you ask? Hot and Sour. Yes, I outsourced dinner to the Chinese restaurant, but I'm not embarrassed because that restaurant is in my town, run by my neighbors. Any language barrier that we have with my order is easily worked out with body and/or facial language.

Well she obviously didn't bother making any note of my disinterest, because on night number two, this is how the call starts, "Hello, my name is Jim Anderson calling from…" Hold the phone! Please don't insult me "Jim." You name is no more Jim than mine is Rajiv Gupta. What is the deal with adopting Anglo-sounding names? Is this supposed to boost my confidence? All it does is put more suspicion in my mind and a chuckle in my throat. Between the laughter in my mind and the accent in his voice, I can barely make out the name of the company, but it sounds vaguely familiar. Needless to say, my conversation with "Jim" was rather brief.

For any consumer reading this, the next time your experience your call going offshore, vote with your phone; hang up. Then use your phone to vote again and call the company's corporate offices to let them know that you are not pleased. You may be doing them a service. They may have no clue that the American call center company that they've contracted with is routing their calls offshore. To the companies that knowingly take our service calls out of the country, your bottom line is best served by keeping your customers satisfied. If you goal is to sell products in India, The Philippians, or Uganda, then keep up your practice of employing people in those countries. If you are hoping to sell you products to consumers in the largest economy on the planet, the United States, it would behoove you to encourage employment within its boarders. The next time I hear the word "offshore," it better mean that we are drilling for more oil to reduce our foreign dependency. Capital investment is a good strategy; quarterly penny-pinching is no strategy at all.