Offshore Business Practices

[wolf]

I saw a feature on 60 Minutes a couple of weeks ago. Rooms full of people who were practicing saying "Hello, my name is Barbara ..." These workers are given classes in colloquial American English and accents. A lot of people that aren't getting jobs in acting are going to work in these call centers, as they are able to make money hand over fist by their standards, and it's really a form of acting. I've never spoken (as far as I know) to one of the 'good' ones on the phone, but some of them are very convincing in terms of sounding American.

It was interesting when they were interviewed individually and they gave their real names and then said their "work" names ... Sanjiv, Ram, and Purnima became Steve, Ron, and Betty.

[tw]

Originally Posted by wolf

I saw a feature on 60 Minutes a couple of weeks ago. Rooms full of people who were practicing saying "Hello, my name is Barbara ..." These workers are given classes in colloquial American English and accents.

Damn. Their even training immigrants to replace Barbara Walters?

[wolf]

I'm not sure how to react.

tw made a joke. It is actually quite funny.

I shall laugh.

[elSicomoro]

That's twice in the past week, is it not?

[tw]

Originally Posted by tw

Their even training immigrants to replace Barbara Walters?

American does not even know how to speak a foreign (English) language. It's "They're".

[elSicomoro]

What have you done with the old tw?

[wolf]

He's a pod.

It's the only possible explanation.

[Uryoces]

Originally Posted by richlevy
Number 1 rule of Capitalism - "You get what you pay for"

We pay our guys in India $400 a month, and we get what we pay for.

What we're discovering is that the Indian workers cannot for the life of them think outside the box. These are highly-educated, friendly, very nice people, with no capacity to reason outside what scripts they are given. This situation is not improving for the 9 months this has been in operation. Half our day is spent fixing the issues the Indians screw up. Luckily, our portion of the call center is not going to India in the near or forseeable future. That's not to say they wouldn't try to move it.

What I find disingenuous is the Dell commercial where the idiot is lying in bed calling Dell tech support and reaches an American. They moved their support to India. Only Dell business support was moved back to the US because the quality of support was so horrendous. Foamy the Squirrel has somthing to say about all this.

What pisses me off to no end are people that bash lassiez faire capitalism [no beef with the bash], and then tell me to look for my cheese elsewhere . People have criticized the book I linked to as being overly simplistic, and a tool used by management to brainwash their employees. Right on both counts. Our management had us attend a "Dealing with Change" session that featured the book.

I fully expect that there will be tech support opportunities elsewhere, as our counterparts cannot repair or construct machines remotely, but this MBA, next-quarter-is-all-we-care-about-til-we-fulfill-our-exit-strategy-mentality is destructive and can't go unpunished.

[Cyber Wolf]

Originally Posted by Uryoces

These are highly-educated, friendly, very nice people, with no capacity to reason outside what scripts they are given.

This isn't an Indian thing. Being like that is demanded in call center policies here in the US too. Going beyond the script isn't encouraged much because that potentially increases call times and in some call centers you have to take X number of calls an hour to be considered productive. I've run into enough of it, as the operator and as the customer.

[Clodfobble]

FWIW, my husband says the same thing about all the outsourced Indians he has to work with who are supposedly programmers and developers for his company, too. He says even management is aware of it, and they have mentioned closing that office and bringing all the jobs back home if the Indian office doesn't start solving problems without having to be babysat through each one.

(Although in reality, what will probably actually happen is they'll close that office, and just dump all the extra work on the already-existing American employees.)

[lookout123]

my personal favorite indian call center experience was with a mortgage company. i called them inquiring about a payoff. the first person read their script and i asked a question she was not prepared for and she said she couldn't answer that. i asked for a supervisor who said the same thing. i went through 4 "thickly accented" supervisors before they transferred me to a dead end voice mail box.

apparently there isn't anyone who is authorised or able to answer anything off script in that particular center.

[BigV]

What quality and production can you expect from a manager of electrical components whose name is Randy Shorts?

Finally, in frustration, Quality Coils shut down the Mexican operation in April and reopened the Connecticut factory. Randy Shorts, Quality Coils' manager in Juarez, says that the Mexican workers could match the productivity in Connecticut, and he blames Mr Gibson for giving up.

[OnyxCougar]

I had to deal with McAfee online tech support recently. A transcript is in either the internet or technology thread... I cancelled my McAfee service and I'm still working on getting my company to stop using them as well.

[tw]

Its rather silly to blame WHERE support comes from. Devil is in the details. Do it yourself. Here is a Gateway computer model GP7-600. It had only 64K memory. I want to increase memory. No problem. Their support page is http://support.gateway.com/support/default.asp . Enter the serial number: 0018640774 . Access what is provided to tech support.

Now imagine yourself as a support technician. What size memory SIMMs can be installed in this computer? What software will upgrade this machine? For example, what is the latest BIOS and what does that upgrade do? You tell me. You have everything that tech support has.

Surprises. I could even run the program that (supposidly) identifies all upgrades unique to that machine - and still get wrong answers. They list an NIC that was not provided with that machine and that still is in that machine. They also list sound cards that don't exist. And they list software upgrades that already exist in that machine.

Now it gets interesting. I get two 128 Mb SIMMs. They will not work. Why? Jumping ahead a few hours later, I learn these Gateway computers, even after upgraded with the latest BIOS, will understand 8 chip 128Mb SIMMs, but not undertand 2 chip 128Mb SIMMs. (I learn this from other sources outside of Gateway). How is tech support suppose to know this? Tech support has access to the same web site information sources we have. They have virtually nothing.

So we blame tech support for being stupid? This Gateway support was from the west coast (confirmed by asking about the weather). He claimed he has access to information I did not have. So I asked him to read from his pages. Then I described the chart on his page or completed paragraphs (from memory). I had access to everything he had. Tech support would be just as bad anywhere else in the world.

Its not about where tech support comes from. In fact some of my least technically informed tech support people are Americans. Its about top management. BTW, Gateway has long been removed from my list of acceptable machines because of management decisions. This story only confirms my decision.

So how does technically incompetant management blame someone else? They put the tech support in Ireland or India. Then the racists among us quickly blame ... them others.

Gateway should long have been removed from your 'acceptable' list. It was that obvious some years ago. Rarely matters where tech support comes from. But some will never believe this.

Why do I call tech support? Because their own web sites are so devoid of facts. In an America where so many computer builders don't even know what is suppose to be in a power supply; that is also the mentality of their top management. Management protected by an anti-American concept called "Buy American". Don't like the tech support? Then look who is running the company - and therein lies the problem. Bad web sites not constantly upgraded to include answers to latest questions. Foreigners doing American jobs is secondary.

Tech support moved to India? If you have any doubts as to the intent or why, then first ask - does top management even know how to use the product? Did they come from where the work gets done , or are they graduates of the business schools? Anything may be called symptoms.

Posted above is a Quality Coils story. That abridged Wall Street Journal report also discussed other companies. They provided the names and dates. It is long, therefore it was worth reading. Find details of their top managers up. Notice their educational backgrounds.

We had a massive NE blackout one and a quarter years ago. Who created it? Foreign employees from Argentina? Would not matter who was doing the work. All top management in First Energy Corporation was so devoid of technical knowledge that they even ran a $400 billion Bush Cheney fund raiser so they did not have to fix a potential Three Mile Island problem. We could be reading the book "We almost lost Toledo". Blaming foreigners is too often akin to being racist. Blaming others only because they are different? Where is the technical ignorance that was not first in top management?

You have an example from Gateway. You tell me how I was suppose to know what SIMMs go into that computer AND that 2 chip type SIMMs will not work. You want to blame someone. Start there. Why can I not get simple technical support?