Outsourcing outrage / Indian call-center workers suffer abuse
Noida, India –
While irate calls are a mainstay of customer service work in any country, many Indian call-center workers say they regularly face particular abuse from Americans, whose tantrums are sometimes racist and often inspired by anger over outsourcing.
This vitriol has fueled a “searing anger” among the Indian employees, says Vinod Shetty, a Bombay lawyer who has formed a collective for call-center workers. “A lot of trauma is caused.”
It seems out sourcing cause problems where ever you go. My problem is, that if the company sells to people in a country and portray themselves as part of that country. Then I think they should keep the support and call centers in the country they are making their money from. I worked a call center job at Vonage, They had support in the US. In New Jersey. Callers were very happy to hear that. Except those calls that came in from India 
eh, i tend to think you get more done by being polite, but i don’t deny that the callers who are angry are wrong to be so… maybe just wrong to take it out on the operator on the other end of the trans-atlantic line.
i have encountered the outsourced-techs before, once when the woman could barely speak a word of english, and it is mad frustrating when not only is your dsl service out, but you also can’t get someone who speaks the right language to help you AND you know that these american companies are paying people like $2 an hour (if that) to do work overseas that americans could be doing here instead of filling up the welfare roles.
its an interesting issue…
Comment by stranger — November 17, 2005 @ 11:39 pm
I think what makes people the most upset is the image that a company gives you of your support and what you get when you call.
Dell shows a guy just calling up to talk to tech support. It is some guy in America with nothing to do just waiting for the call.
Reality, you call and wait on hold for a hour and are mad already and then find out the person your talking to learned English as a second language and know about as much as you do about computers. Also they are following the script not really problem solving.
That makes people mad.
Comment by The Mad Admin — November 18, 2005 @ 10:37 am
I also work in a call center. In the evenings, many call our 800 number(s) that are in our many ads. We have a company in Wisconson that handles these calls and THET have outsourced to India. Customers sometimes call the foloowing day JUST to yell at me a little bit for it. And while most of our sales are US, we do have international business.
Peace…………………
Comment by Helen — November 19, 2005 @ 8:22 pm
From my personal experience with Cingular, what I’ve learned makes people mad is that these out-sourced employees can’t even make an entry level decisions, but all must be approved by their “managers”.
They are like extras in movies. They just read the script and can’t/are not allow to think outside the box. However, some of them seem to have quite a recognizable accent, but they do understand basic English, like words b**ch, F**ing b**ch, etc.
In order to get $10 GPRS charge waived, I spent almost 45min on the phone with Cingular rep (in India) and during the call, I was put 3 times on hold, because she needed to consult her superior. That makes people mad!
Comment by RockyJay — November 19, 2005 @ 8:40 pm
At Vonage I was the supervisor overnight. I could give credits and so could the people under me. I was just more likely to do it. Easiest way to say I am sorry is by giving money.
Vonage wants the customer to be happy so they empowered the call center to make that happen.
I also remember on the overnight about 3am we would get calls that came from india looking for support on our device.
We would also get calls that thought we were in India. We did have Indians working at Vonage but they were all in New Jersey.
Comment by The Mad Admin — November 20, 2005 @ 7:34 pm