My last thread...

[DirtyMartini]

I've heard it more commonly described as 'perky'.

meh, I expected better

[rah]

remember we're talking about a guy who's avatar is panda humping an apple with a member so long that not only does it go all the way through, but needs a miner's hat to see where it's sticking itself into.

[Asher]

No need to be culturally insensitive, rah. It is a turban. Think of it as a head condom.

[onodera]

Who would hire a Russian call center?
Besides Russians of course.

If we want call centers where they can't speak English properly, there's plenty of them in India.

It's our in-house call-centre. Not many firms outsource their call-centres in Russia.

[rah]

Good for them, but I doubt many outsourced call-centers have a lot of Russian speaking reps.

Every time I get an Indian call center, I complain saying I will stop using their product for that reason. A minor thing, but there are companies that are starting to move their operations back to the US due to customer backlash.

[DirtyMartini]

Every time I get an Indian call center

I make my wife call for that reason. She should have a trademark on "No, that is unacceptable; I'd like to speak with your manager."

[KrazyHorse]

Why do you make a complaint? Is it simply because you don't like talking to brown people or are there actual difficulties in communication?

[MOBIUS]

The latter. Until they can get competent brown people, I'm not comfortable speaking with the incompetent ones...

[rah]

Communication problems, but a couple of other reasons also. Lack of product knowledge, which may be related to communications. If they know know what you're asking, how can they answer. But another issue is the lack of empowerment. They can never do anything to help you.

But yes, some of it is due to having to let a lot of good people go as their jobs were outsourced to these Indian centers. It's not really cheaper since due to quality, the number of call went up but the bean counters never really to give that the attention it deserves. They also never factored in the how many customers you lost because of it. The cost of keeping customers is always cheaper then getting new ones.

We do a lot of customer satisfaction surveys for major finacial institutions and I have to review a lot of the data and it's almost embarassing to read how much customers really hate foreign call centers. One customer now preprocesses their phone calls. If you're a high roller, your call goes to a US call center. If you're small change, you go to an Indian call center. This is absurd. Once you realize theirs a difference you should be calculating the true costs completely different.

[KrazyHorse]

But yes, some of it is due to having to let a lot of good people go as their jobs were outsourced to these Indian centers. It's not really cheaper since due to quality, the number of call went up but the bean counters never really to give that the attention it deserves. They also never factored in the how many customers you lost because of it. The cost of keeping customers is always cheaper then getting new ones.

Fair enough as far as quality goes, but I'm just suspicious that economic nationalism plays a bigger role in a lot of the anti-outsourcing kick of many people than they like to admit (yes, I made that sound worse than it is by imputing racism. Sue me )

[MOBIUS]

Yeah, they're busy closing down the Welsh call centres and bringing them back to England. Bastards...

[Asher]

All of the callcentres in Canada are going to New Brunswick.

Reasons: - They have nothing else there, so the government provides incentives
- They are bilingual
- They are so boring that they have no discernible accents

[MikeH]

Lack of quality and product knowledge is bad outsourcing, I have experienced terrible and excellent call centres in India. Some outsourced places just have script for each customer, and many customers per call centre, so the person receiving the call has no concept of anything to do with the product line outside their script.

[KrazyHorse]

I actually just had the best call center experience of my life with Lenovo. It was a North American call center (by accent). It did take ~20 minutes to get through, but once I was on the woman was technically qualified, made all the right suggestions to diagnose/attempt to fix the problem (it was a failed hard drive in a ~2 month old netbook, and I'd already taken all the steps she suggested). She knew the right level of techspeak to engage in (she upshifted rapidly from total newb to knowledgable but not expert user). From the point where she answered to when I hung up with the the right solution (she was sending me a prepaid envelope to send the computer back for a free replacement hard drive...and she was thoughtful enough to remind me to back up as much of my data as possible) was ~5 minutes.

Comparing that with some of the **** call center experiences I've had (Dell billing/purchasing I'm looking at you!) is astounding, whether they're located in North America or India. I've never had a communication problem with the Indian call centers, but I have noticed that they tend to be more formulaic. I'm guessing that their location is largely a symptom of low quality/low cost rather than a cause of it

[Asher]

Why the **** did you cheat on me with that skank?