Right up our alley ?

[Dave Hull]

On Mon, 11 Aug 2003, Brian Kelsay wrote:

> Bradley Miller wrote:
> 
> > http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Aug/08102003/business/82527.asp - Increasing 
> > export of white-collar jobs is cause for concern
> 
> Onward marches the death spiral.  I gues they don't realize that 
> eventually they will have to drop their over-inflated prices on products 
> when there is no one left that can afford them.

I hear many of the people working in call centers in India have advanced 
degrees in business and undergraduate degrees in technical fields. These 
people could perform the duties of our American corporate executives at a 
fraction of the cost saving us billions annually. ;)

While we're on this subject of sending jobs overseas, I recently called tech 
support to report a failed hard drive on a server under warranty. After 
spending a few minutes on hold listening to muzak, I was greeted by a 
non-native speaker of English. Our connection was very poor, not as bad as 
some cell phone calls I've had, but nearly intolerable.

After struggling for several minutes to explain to this person what the 
problem was, she may have studied English formally in school, but she was ill 
prepared for conversation, especially common idioms for failed equipment.

Eventually she gave me a different 800 number to call, even this took several 
tries as it was difficult for me to understand her pronounciation of the 
digits.

I hung up and called the new number. After several more minutes listening to 
muzak, I was greeted by that familiar Texas drawl and within minutes I had a 
new drive shipping my way.

Sure this is anecdotal, but my experience with off shore call centers has been 
awful and I fail to see how it saved the company any money in this instance. 
It frustrated a customer and eventually I was routed back to the US for help.

-- 
Dave Hull
http://insipid.com

We have an equal opportunity Calculus class -- it's fully integrated.