"Sir, you're being transferred to the Philippines now"

[daleduke17]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100530/...sa_outsourcing

This is a great thing, and hopefully starts a trend to bringing jobs back to the USA to legal citizens. I cannot stand being transferred to a representative in another country.

And yes, I do know that there are several areas of the country where people may have thick accents (including immigrants)...but at least they're (hopefully) citizens of the USA.

Also: Ireland?

[Hobbs]

That's a bullshit piece of legislature if I ever heard one. Why should it matter which country the person helping you is from? We've even seen people on CS get bitched at b/c they're a call rep from a different country.

[draggar]

.. and we all know that $0.25 per call "tax" will be passed onto the consumer!

[Android Kaeli]

That's a bullshit piece of legislature if I ever heard one. Why should it matter which country the person helping you is from? We've even seen people on CS get bitched at b/c they're a call rep from a different country.

I have no problem with people helping me from a different time zone/country/whatever, but I'd like to understand what they're trying to tell me. If I need help with my computer or something, I'd like to be able to understand what the tech on the other end of the line is trying to tell me rather then trying to play 20 questions with what the tech said two minutes ago.

[daleduke17]

That's a bullshit piece of legislature if I ever heard one. Why should it matter which country the person helping you is from? We've even seen people on CS get bitched at b/c they're a call rep from a different country.

Like someone else said, I want to be able to understand the person I am speaking with. Plus with the unemployment in the USA, this could help force the hand of several companies in the US to bring jobs back to the states.

[Hobbs]

I don't get it; first people want less government, then people want more government.

I can understand them fine; and I think that's overstepping the bounds of the government.

[smileyeagle1021]

My problem with outsourcing, whether to third parties in the United States or out of country, is how often the outsourced employee actually has no fucking clue what they are doing (not necassarily through any fault of their own, more likely bad training) and are just reading premade scripts... thank you, if all I wanted was a predone response I'd go to the frequently asked questions on the website, now stop wasting my time and get someone who knows what the hell is going on on the line (like I said, I don't really blame the employee since normally it is due to poor training).
Otherwise, there is good reasons for outsourcing other than just cost. 800-Holiday outsources to the Philipenes, but they use them primarily for two purposes, first to help with the evening rush, second to continue to provide overnight service so they don't need to run the US call centers 24 hours a day. Truth be told, I've actually at times had better luck with the Philipene call center than the Salt Lake call center (and I know it's the Salt Lake center I've been routed to, because I've called a number that I know routes to a specific market only served by Salt Lake).
I get the feeling though that this bill will be passed because it smacks of political pandering, and pandering sadly works in this country.

[Racket_Man]

I'm sorry but the home-grown call center(s) that my company uses is worse than any out of country center I have had to deal with.

they have screwed up soooo many orders, have sooo many contradictory scripts/locales/policies/just do not care/just get the customer off of the phone/not know our specifics/sent order to stores literally hundreds of miles away/etc.

at times I like dealing with out of country centers because the in country centers the dunderheads they either hire or not bother to train and management for continuing to go along with this crap

[Dreamstalker]

If I need help with my computer or something, I'd like to be able to understand what the tech on the other end of the line is trying to tell me rather then trying to play 20 questions with what the tech said two minutes ago.

Ditto. Even if I'm on a landline, the connection is always terrible on both ends.

I also have issues with the motives of the companies (hey, we can pay someone in Asia 1/10th of what an intelligent* tech in the US would cost).

* By this I mean willing to go off-script for complicated issues. The last time I needed to call $ISP tech support for a poorly-configured POP server of theirs, I was told "you need to get rid of Mozilla. We don't support it [yes you do] and that's your problem" (no it's not, are you listening to me?)

[Red Panda]

If consumers don't want foriegn call centers bad enough the companies will get enough complaints and lost customers to change. All this basically is is a tariff and tariffs tend to hurt consumers

[crashhelmet]

If consumers don't want foriegn call centers bad enough the companies will get enough complaints and lost customers to change. All this basically is is a tariff and tariffs tend to hurt consumers

Yeah, that's the unfortunate part of this. While the companies may get hit with the taxes/fines, the consumers will be the ones paying it with an increase in costs.

Companies will continue to move their call centers to wherever they can find cheaper labor. It doesn't matter if they're moving it from San Jose to Pensacola or from Dallas to the India. They'll continue to do whatever drives up their profits.

CH

[jackfaire]

My beef with call centers in other countries is when they are in countries where English is only spoken when the person is working on the phones talking an English speaking customer.

This can create major language barriers. Other than that only one of the call centers I worked in closed because of outsourcing to other countries.

People need to be careful when they hear a company outsurces in making assumptions as well.

I heard someone get pissed once because they heard Company B outsourced their call center. They didn't give the other person enough time to mention the center was being outsourced to Nebraska.

[smileyeagle1021]

They didn't give the other person enough time to mention the center was being outsourced to Nebraska.

I used to work as an outsourced employee... when I worked at the reservation center I worked in a department that was where hotels had outsourced their reservation calls too... want to know the effect on how many people the hotel had employed? It actually increased the number of people working at the hotels. While they lost a few reservations agents, the increase in guest satisfaction from the service provided by the reservation center over poorly trained hotel workers increased the number of guests which increased the need for front desk staff, restaurant staff, shuttle staff, and housekeeping staff... overall it provided for an increase in jobs for both where the jobs were outsourced from and to.

[Crazedclerkthe2nd]

Having to bring jobs back to the U.S. will increase costs, which will increase prices. When you can hire TEN foreign reps for the same price as one North American rep it's obvious which option is more financially viable for businesses.

We've become a society addicted to low prices and those low prices come at a cost. You can't have your cake and eat it too. There's a reason wal-mart pays low wages to their employees, that's the trade off in taking all the price cuts they do (frequently below cost even).

I'm not sure I even like the disclosure part of the legislation. If someone hears "Sir, you're being transferred to India", I'm sure most people would mentally add "to speak to someone who doesn't have a damned clue how to do their job" or "to speak to someone I can barely understand."

I appreciate the spirit of the bill, but I just don't think it will work out.

Call centers are an interesting creature. One thing I can say, with reasonable certainty, is that call centers, foreign or domestic, don't really give a crap about actual "customer service" they are concerned only with getting you off the phone as fast as they can and keeping their handle times down. Often this means intentional hang ups, answers that don't make sense, over simplifying of issues or the blind transfer to someone else.

[jackfaire]

Call centers are an interesting creature. One thing I can say, with reasonable certainty, is that call centers, foreign or domestic, don't really give a crap about actual "customer service" they are concerned only with getting you off the phone as fast as they can and keeping their handle times down. Often this means intentional hang ups, answers that don't make sense, over simplifying of issues or the blind transfer to someone else.

Not ours you get fired and yes actually fired not just told you will be for doing those things. They take customer surveys more importantly than they do our stats or how well we do our job.