During the past decade, outsourcing a call center to an overseas destination has become an increasingly attractive option. This is a big change from the previous decade when companies typically had call centers in-house. This change has been brought on through a combination of lower labor costs, state-of-the-art telecommunications infrastructures, and a multilingual and educated workforce overseas, which has assisted struggling U.S. companies reduce costs in a challenging economy. Some of the major countries or districts that provide call center services are: India- Programming, Customer Support; China- Programming; Russia- Programming and R&D; Pakistan- Programming, Customer Support; Bangladesh- Programming and IT; Bulgaria- Programming and R&D; Ukraine- Programming and R&D; Belarus- Programming, R&D; Romania- Programming and IT; Philippines- Data Entry and Customer Support; Egypt- Customer Support and Programming; Malaysia- Customer Support and R&D.
After squeezing out all the potential productivity improvements in the domestic call centers, many Fortune 500 companies, such as GE, American Express, Sprint, and Dell, and many more, went "offshore" to further improve their cost-effectiveness by as much as 60%. Labor costs in domestic call centers makes up 70% of operating expenses, and in offshore facilities the labor costs are a mere 10% of those in the U.S. because employees in offshore facilities are willing to work at a fraction of domestic wages. The savings resulting from these cost advantages, for some companies, has been upwards of $250 million annually.
Offshore call centers employ university graduates from their enormous pools of skilled labor of approximately 2 million English-speaking college graduates and 300,000 post-graduates annually. Some Fortune 500 companies have started investing in local overseas communities so they can attract people and train them for their call centers. These multinationals have created new career opportunities for graduates looking for rewarding careers. With higher skilled employees, offshore call centers have achieved total satisfaction ratings of 92% versus the U.S’s 85%, along with 20% more transactions per hour than domestic facilities. These employees are committed to a call center career, and do not consider it just a temporary job.
Outsourcing started with simple, transaction-oriented, non-customer-facing work like back-office processing. Now it has evolved to e-mail, live inbound and outbound calls, human resources, accounting and bookkeeping, legal processing, transcription services, writing and editing, software development, web site designing, and knowledge processing transactions. These interactions were initially relatively simple, but are now much more complex requiring a superior infrastructure providing greater efficiency, scalability, value-added analytics, and integration with other systems.
To meet these fast changing complex needs and provide a superior service, offshore call centers are investing in state-of-the-art infrastructures consisting of networks with multiple domains; more than 150+ computers with high speed Pentium 4 processors, 1GB of DDR each, with 17” Samsung color monitors and 17” TFTs; Asterisks based IBM servers; IBM database servers; Mikrotik based IBM servers; FTP IBM servers (Internal as well external); wireless CISCO Routers working as a external gateway with maximum speed up to 108 Mbps; CISCO SRW-224G4 (REAL SWITCH) with 24 ports; MP-124 (Audio code with 24 ports); direct international lines VOIPs; and CISCO DES- 1024 R (Internal or fake switch with 24 ports).
Since offshore call centers offer a cost effective service consisting of a well-educated workforce supported by a superior IT infrastructure US companies are wising up and are taking advantage of this money saving method of doing business, especially during these times of economic uncertainty.
From a personal perspective, calling offshore call centers can become frustrating if the operator does not speak fluent English. One of the members in the group posting this blog works with call centers, most of them offshore, on a daily basis by acquiring information from insurance companies that have outsourced overseas, and unfortunately, employs workers who do not speak fluent English. This makes for a frustrating transaction when often the call involves time sensitive insurance matters involving payment of claims where information needs to be exchanged as quickly as possible. We have seen that offshore call centers have invested in superior IT infrastructures to meet the fast changing complex technology needs of their customers. Now, maybe these call centers will recognize the need for an equally superior group of fluent English speaking employees and invest in the much-needed English language instructional classes.
Our group would like to post a question for discussion: Do you think, with the economy the way that it is, that we should be outsourcing call center jobs, or do you think that we should try to keep these jobs in the US?
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14 comments:
Personally I don't think it is a good time to outsource any jobs. Our economy is in such a mess and so many people are unemployed and we should be trying to help our own country rather than someone elses.
Also, I have had bad experiences with call centers that have been in different countries. They always seem to not understand my question or concern.
I agree with what Mrs. Brown said. I don't think right now is the best time for us to outsource as many jobs as we do. People are getting laid-off left and right it seems so I think we should be creating as many jobs as possible in the US.
I too have had bad experiences with call centers that are overseas. I have actually gotten so frustrated that I've just hung up.
I agree with Mrs. Brown and Lori. Outsourcing is not a good thing at all for our economy right now. Plus, the people you get when calling those call centers are so difficult to communicate with because it is so hard to understand each other.
It may be a way to cut costs for companies, but in times like these, it would be better to keep the jobs here in the US not only for the sake of our people but also for the sake of customer service.
I do not like outsourced call centers because either. We need to keep jobs at home, however I think a lot of the problem with keeping jobs at home is people here who don't want those types of jobs. I think we have created this problem ourselves by constantly increasing our minimum wage we have driven our prices up and companies have been forced to rise prices or outsource some of its jobs. We want to purchase the lowest priced merchandise while receiving a premium salary. Those two things can't go hand in hand and still have all our manufacturing and service coming from the U.S. I have personally had lots of problems with call centers, but not necessarily off shore ones. One of the customer service agents that I have to work with here in the states(she is in California) has a very thick Asian accent and I have a thick Southern accent, we usually end up sending e-mails because I get so frustrated trying to understand her.
I don't understand why the U.S. would want ot outsource any jobs. Well, I do know why they do it, but the greedy corporations that do this to save money just don't realize what effect it has on our country. Not only does it give away good jobs, but it makes it difficult for customers that need the support. They should see that saving a few bucks is worst than paying it.
I understand that call centers saves the company money, but they need people that can speak English. I hate for someone that is not an American to call me. I just hang up. I think the company should keep the jobs in the U.S. because we are the one who is buying their products.
Frances Rowe
I absolutely hate when I get sent to a call center with someone who is not fluent in English. I can't understand them, they can't understand me. My problem or questions don't get resolved until I speak with someone in the U.S.
I don't think we should be outsourcing a lot of the things we are because of the high unemployment rates. I understand they don't pay as much in the other countries but there ought to be a way to employ Americans affordably.
I think that we should keep the call centers in the U.S. we already have a hard time understanding our own people and overseas just makes it worse..
Demechia
I am torn when it comes to answering the posted question. I think the jobs should remain in the states because it would help the unemployment rate and more people would be able to work. At the same time though, they would still need to be educated enough to answer questions from callers without frustrating them. Like the posting said, it's not just a job to some of these people and they do know what they are talking about if you can understand what they say. On the other hand, if the call centers were operated in the states, the cost to the company would be more and could hurt the bottom line. This in turn could mean less jobs for the working class and less money to pay those who do work for the company. I agree that communication is key and it's hard to understand most of the call centers we reach when we call them. I agree, but I think it is actually better for some companies to outsource these centers. I know I have worked a job where I had to deal with international clients and believe me, I know they couldn't understand half of what I said most of the time either.
I don’t think that your question has an easy answer. Look at the companies just in this state. Whirlpool is laying off tons of people, so is Rheem in Fort Smith. The economy is really struggling. American companies are really struggling to stay competitive. Look at the big 3 automakers, a GM vehicle costs $73 with wages and benefits while a Toyota car costs $33. I think that companies do have to look at ways to save money, consolidate, and hopefully by using call centers then can use those cost savings to keep more money in the US economy and create/keep jobs here. I also read somewhere but I don’t remember the exact details that companies who had used call centers were able to save a lot of money but then they realized that they were losing customers because of the language barrier and not being able to get things done.
I agree with what most people are saying here!! I hate when I call my satelite provider's technical help number and I get some Indian that can barely talk english!! I think there are many people here in the states that could use these jobs and they would probably take about the same pay as other countries would. There are many many homeless and lower class people that could do a much better job and you could also freaking understand them!!!
I work for a company that has offshore call centers. We have them in the Phillipines. I have taken so many escalated calls from an upset or irrate customer because of this. I have realized that most people in the US do not want to talk to someone overseas about things with a US based company. Even some of my representatives that have an accent because they are from overseas, sometimes have a customer state they do not wish to talk to the because they want to talk to an 'American.'
Looking at the economic problems facing our country today, it would be much better to have the jobs over here in America, however you have to look at the money that is saved by big corporations in having one or two overseas. They have to pay them much less than they do state side. Yes, having them over here would open up jobs, but would it cause extra financial burden on already struggling compaines and add to problems like the pension issue.
I do not think that the U.S. should be outsourcing jobs for the most part. I think the U.S. needs all of the available jobs so that there would be less people on unemployment and more people with jobs. Outsourcing is the cause for many layoffs and sometimes these people have been with that particular company for their whole career and it is difficult for them to find another job. I know it helps the businesses make money, but most of the money that a business is making is only going into the pockets of the CEOs of those companies.
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