By Tony Hallett, 12 March 2004 10:05
NEWS The main organisation representing Indian software and service companies has hit back at those wanting to portray customer service delivered from that country as inevitably shoddy.
Speaking at the 'Truth about offshore outsourcing' debate at the Institute of Directors earlier this week, Nasscom VP Sunil Mehta said: "There has been some anecdotal evidence [of poor service] but service levels are independent of geography. They depend on many things."
Although exceptions such as a Dell facility being moved away from India have hit the headlines, Mehta added "hard data" typically shows the ramping up year-on-year of business processes such as customer care from call centres that have been outsourced to India.
"If customers were not happy, that wouldn't happen," he said.
Indeed, one of the conclusions drawn from this week's debate, which featured Nasscom, the DTI, the union Amicus, India-based research company Evalueserve and other experts, is that training and offshoring must go hand in hand. That means training from government and employers for those affected as jobs move and training for those who get new jobs.
David Fleming, Amicus national secretary, agreed that companies have a responsibility both to the UK staff who are being replaced and the offshore workers. "In my sector there is evidence to say there is upskilling. But [offshoring] also brings issues of corporate social responsibility," he said.
Although most people are concerned about all manner of high-value service sector jobs moving away, it must be remembered that badly trained call centre agents have existed long before offshoring - or even more generally outsourcing - became fashionable.
Comments
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1. passer-by
/quote on/
"If customers were not happy, that wouldn't happen," he said.
/quote off/
it is well-hidden lie - it is happens quite often when customers are unhapyy, but the company is heavy enough so it is not visible for months or even years.
and, yes, I believe that amount of brain in each country is actually constant per square mile/km , including and starting from my home country
2. Fred
Ok, so provide one single example of tangible evidence of increased service following outsourcing. There isn't any. It is purely about the money.
3. anonymous
I would question wether their customers are actually happy. After calling Dell Gold Support and getting somebody who found it very difficult to understand me explain a technical problem, I didn't feel happy at all. The call took a heck of a lot more effort to log and I was not sure if they had fully understood the nature of the problem either.
4. anonymous
I think the problem is the same whether you outsource to India or Slough. Once the call centre is separate from the service provider all that matters is the number of calls handled. Once you get that separation the service provider effectively distances it's self from the customers problem. When you get to the stage where you want to take a complaint further it can be very difficult.
5. anonymous
As customers we dont have any choice about where call centres are located or moved to. We just have to suffer the consequences later(as ive detailed in a previous comment about the frequent appalling service and dropped calls i experienced with a BT indian call centre). Also, Im against the export of uk jobs to india and will boycott all companies that do so.
6. Narayana.D
There is always going to be a debate on this topic for the years to come by. Customer care is one of the most dicey games be it the US, UK or any other place. A customer mindset is that he/she is determined not to be satisfied. I would have done the same if my Bank Would have outsourced its custome care to the US or UK! Funny though I Bank with Citibank!
7. Mark Leman
Our Commercial Director, tried to contact his local bank, when he actually got through to an agent, he was unable to correctly explain what he wanted, he actually ended up speaking in indian so that he could sort his problems out, (hes indian) he came away from the phone saying this outsourcing is a teenage phase, purely money.
There was another article on Silicon that said uk call centres deal with more cases, and also getting more cases right first time than what outsourced call centres where getting. call centres always come down to stats at the end of the day, eventually more and more companys will forget about outsourcing as quality is effected without a doubt. theres a silicon article about that as well, cant remmber which bank it was that stopped its out source trial due to bad quality.
8. anonymous
Can't fault technical knowledge, but difficulty understanding accents and annoying time delay makes communication a headache.
9. anonymous
Numerous customers of mine cannot make themselves understood (because of their accents) to operatives in the offshore call centres and that's how I end up helping them instead. Good for my business. ;-)
Seriously though, offshore call centres are a pain in the a$$.
10. Pat Mason
If customers are not happy, they still have to phone a call centre to complain, so they don't get a choice. Offshoring is a purely financial decision and customers are not asked what they think about it as part of the decision making process.
11. John Manley
Hi,
Apart from the way the technicians are insulted by making them use, obviously, false 'English' names the main problemis the quality of the phone lines. So often either they can't hear me or vice versa. Invest in traing, yes but also in decent phone lines.
12. Mat Cashen
The problem is not lack of knowledge on their part, it is lack of comprehension. Start with a heavy Indian Accent, add international phone lines, a noisy call centre, bad headsets, and speaking about something unfamiliar, and you end up with a frustrating experience and nothing achieved. The same I'm sure is the same for the people in India.
13. anonymous
"If customer were not happy, that wouldn't happen" since when has customer satisfaction ever been a consideration for most major corporates???
14. anonymous
Even Indian call centres will come under threat eventually from another area. Speech Server technologies. Why? We've just implmented a solution in the UK that has the computer talking to customers in natual language. It understands different ethnic accents and or makes a good attempt. It costs a few pence to run each day in one of the fastest growing calls centres and works. It has delivered real ROI. Answers the phone faster than any human and never keeps you waiting. It completes a call faster than any human. Never stops, available 24 hours a day and grows with the business just about real-time. There's no tax to pay either. Even the call centre agents are amazed by the standard.
15. anonymous
Ahhh Offshoring what a wonderful experience.
Reminds of the time i phoned BT to upgrade to 1mb ADSL and was put through to some local Indian Branch who ran the line test and told me that I lived too far away. I then phoned Btopenworld who had it up and running within 7 days.
16. S Walker
From my experience it does. EVen when complaining they don't understand. If you ever get to speak to someone in England they admit that whay has been done is wrong, but still all complaints by end-users are ignored - why because it's cheaper. Even withdrawing business from the company doesn't appear to make any difference
17. Chris Nixon
I have to agree with Fred here. It is all about the money. I bought two PCs from Dell last month for myself and another family member and was appalled at the telephone support. When I rang to ask for help in filling the on-line credit agreement forms, I was pestered to do the agreement over the phone there-and-then. I was told (I paraphrase but this is pretty close ) "Why not let me do it now? It is very quick and you will be guaranteed delivery much faster. And should you have any queries at any point after ordering, I and my family will be able to sort them out". Now I am not racist, not do I object in principle to outsourcing IF the support it good. But how professional is it to harangue potential customers to do a deal on-the-spot? And to bring family members into it? It just doesn't give a good impression of the support centre. I declined and successfully completed my web application but the guy was not happy I didn't jump at his 'offer' !
18. Concerned
I have had two experiences of Indian Call Centres - Dell's aborted effort and more recently Norwich Union Directs. Both were extremely negative - Staff were not properly empowered. Escalations were either none existent or were governed by a time zone availability of UK resource. Language skills were poor at understanding dialect and numeracy. - I don't bother complaining anymore - I just move my business and feel a whole lot better for actually doing it !
Indian call centres are "fashionable" - Ill informed Company Directors looking for quick wins to gain short term "bonus" based on costs saves will store up problems for the future. The question is - will they be still around to face the music or moved on to follow a similair path in some other corporate giant.
19. anonymous
I absolutely agree with Fred - the bottom line is the dollar. There is no example of improved service. Frankly, India has very little in common with the US in terms of its agent's abilities to relate to the avg US consumer. Therefore, their relational problem solving skills are extremely lacking.
20. anonymous
I have had several calls from call centres situated in both India & the Far East. On each occasion I have found it difficult to understand the person on the other end of the phone, or if I could understand what they were saying; unless I stuck to their script they were completely thrown & just continued what they were saying completely oblivious to what I had said; which I found both rude & time-wasting. I am not saying that these people are not educated, as I know they are, but it would be much the same if a call centre for a foreign company were in the UK & a non-fluent person were making calls to their nationals. It all comes down to a lack of proper communication - which surely is the point of a call-centre.
21. anonymous
If a call centre appears clueless, it could be due to poor training, which is the fault of the call centre management. However it is more likely that is down to poor procedures, which is the fault of the company hiring the call centre. My worst experience with a call centre was when we were having broadband installed. Ineffective procedures meant that the different departments of BT (including the call centre) were unable to communicate, and the problem (their mistake) took three weeks to resolve.
The issue of complainant and call centre operative being unable to understand each other due to their differing dialects is just as likely to arise between areas of different regional accent in the UK or USA. Well spoken Indian-English is usually very precise and easy to understand.
The only reason I can see for not using overseas call centres is one that I am surprised has not been highlighted before. That is the issue of personal data. Is it not illegal, under the Data protection Act, for personal data to be sent overseas?
22. Nick Cole
The technical competence of offshore call centres is no more or less than would be experienced in UK. What is missing is the local knowledge and understanding of what is going on. Interpretation is difficult at times and it is all too easy to get dragged into a semantic debate especially if issues such as Data Protection (invariably misused as an excuse) and similar concepts are involved. Escalation is a major issue and my own experience with Dell recently was that a problem was not resolved by India but was afetr an acrimonious call to the UK office.
The real issue with Call Centres is that by the time somebody has a problem needing to be resolved they are already annoyed and the procrastination and denial that invariably occurs makes the situation even worse. If companies thought about their processes and tried to understand why people called a call centre they wouldn't have so many problems.
Basic sales and queries are easily handled offshore, anything more complex must be escalated to a local office by the offshore centre automatically instead of having to go round the houses steadily losing tempers.
The competence relates to the empowerment (or usually lack of it) of the operators and the invariable denial that there is anything wrong with the service or product the company has produced or provided.
23. anonymous
Outsourcing to India has caused confusion. When you ring for a simple direct enquiry number one has to go into great detail to explain what the name, town, address and location are? And after repeating yourself 10 times, finally, all that they want to do is put you in touch with the number direct after you have told them from the beginning, you just want the number. It makes what used to be a plesant experience, a dreadful one. Plus the charges are awful. The clock is ticking away while they keep you on line, sometimes I feel it is deleberate, more money for them.
The direct enquiry service has gone down the tube, backwards about 800% and now you have an opportunity for a british company who can offer a real service to clean up - I would even pay 10p more a call to get the old BT service back, it was wonderful, why change it, it worked perfectly. This new way there are so many 118 services, it is so confusing. All rubbish, who's bright idea was it anyway to outsource and take the job away from the people of this country. It is horrible the way it is now. Talk about going back to the middle ages.
Nobody is interested in customer service or training any more, they all want a quick buck, short-term gain with longterm problems. No responsibility to the customer. What about 'Social Responsibility' to the country, we are paying the bills, we decide who we want to run our services.
24. anonymous
Let's use a real life example, 4 days old, to illustrate one of the problems of Indian call centres.
I decided I wanted less mail through my letter box and called up the Abbey National to request that they not send me statements, or send them less frequently, not to mention the junk mail.
It was immediately apparent that I was dealing with someone in a country far, far away.
I proceeded to make my request clearly. I was then dragged through a list of six questions, with an average of two answer repetitions each.
I was then asked to repeat my request, because the guy in India had already forgotten it, and then he told me "oh no, banking code says we can't do anything about that."
Thanks for wasting my time.
Not satisfied, I demanded more. I told him that, as a longstanding customer of the bank i was entitled to a proper explanation. Moreover, that surely as the customer I had some say in what was sent to me about *my* account.
Eventually, he put me on hold and went to discuss the matter with his supervisor.
When he returned, he offered the following brilliant solution:
"You can go into your local branch, and request the closing of your account, and in that way the statements problem goes away."
The outsourcing problem is about more than noisy phone lines. I contrast it with the occasions on which I have dealt with whip-smart, fast folks at Ireland-based call centres. It is a pathetic substitute.
As a company CEO I was appalled with the quality of the service and the cheek of the bank concerned; they have effectively decided that they can save money by wasting my time. I wrote to the bank concerned to illustrate this example and challenged them to show me the medium term benefits of outsourcing.
25. anonymous
I don't see what the big deal is. Anyone who runs a business will agree with me that if it makes good financial sense (savings!), will deliver an acceptable level of service (training - don't tell me you have never been frustrated by a UK call centre) then I'm game.
At the end of the day, running a call centre is an art and as long as professionals are involved in setup & management (or transfer of skills) everthing else can be resolved.
> Accents - rubbish, regional accents in the UK alone can present a nightmare especially of the call centre individual is not well educated. Besides, voice training is not rocket science.
> technical knowledge - the same problem occurs in the UK ... how is it resolved? If you know then that is exactly what needs to be applied elsewhere.
Outsourcing is here to stay, welcome to the global economy. Lets not have double standards, when it comes to stifling competition from developing countries (e.g. Agriculture) we implement barriers. When they transfor themselves to services), we look for new barriers. We can't have double standards, All or nothing I say. Adapt or perish.
26. tim bain
Outsourcing to any third world country of these call centre jobs will do wonders for the profits short term, but long term it is a disaster waiting to happen. Once we were engineers, we made things in Britain. Then we let that go abroad, and we took Tebbits advice and "got on our bikes", or we retrained in other fields in order to get work. The ones that went into callcentres and that support role were off the unemployment register and paying taxes into the system. Spending money locally too and thus helping busineses grow here. The people that I know in callcentres typically have few qualifications or formal skills, so this work is great for them. Other work is harder for them to find.
What happens to them now? Who is spending in local shops and businesses? who is paying their Jobseeker allowances? What new work will replace this, as this replaced manufacturing? India isn't just about callcentres now, they are about anything It related. They are cheap programmers, web designers etc. and keen as mustard too.
the companies here that we fund to start-up with grants paid out of our taxes should be MADE to either stay or refund the grants and perks if they leave for no other reason than more profit.
The quality of some foreign call centres is beyond bad, and I am sure I must have imagined that nutcase further up the page saying he had a AI call manager that was better than a human? Quality is important. That keeps clients, not saving a few quid. Some of the companies clients won't be there soon anyway.....they will be out of work due to the cost cutting. There will be nothing left here at all.
27. anonymous
I refuse personally to do business knowingly with any company that offshores any services outside the UK when there's a UK alternative - yes that makes life awkward at times and perhaps more expensive, but no more so than having to live with/support relatives or friends without a job which has been moved offshore! Norwich Union Direct - take note!!! (Their Indian call centre took 2 months to sort out motor insurance problems!) Think offshoring makes services cheaper! Heck no! It just lines the pockets of the UK directors with more money! Fed Up.
28. Craig Sterling
"If customers were not happy, that wouldn't happen". Perhaps.
But then again, how many of us change companies because of poor call-centre performance? I recently changed electricity supplier because the call-centre couldn't answer my queries (and subsequently discovered that they had relocated their facility to India).
Big compainies are interested in money. They will provide the minimum quality (at the lowest price) that they can get away with and still keep their customers. Whether that is in India, the US or anywhere else.
If you don't like the service, take your custom elsewhere. Hit them in the pocket. It's the only language that they understand.
29. anonymous
The ramping up of off-shoring will begin to tell on employment here. the only reason companies off-shore is that it is cheap, exploited labour. The unions should be ensuring that wherever companies off-shore to the rates are the same as here. If the knowledge is worth a price here it should be the same there. Just because the person was unlucky enough to be born in the wrong place does not mean he should be exploited to the point of almost slave-labour.
30. anonymous
I work In an Off shore helpdesk in Spain which provides native speakers in 6 languages. We won the contract over 2 years ago, and every country has indicated a improvement in comunication.
Our centre has to be based somewhere, and for my company this is based on 2 things. Cost AND ability to hire the staff with the correct profile.
Re: change if you dont like it. Not posssible when it's an internal helpdesk!
The future threat to Call Centre locations is with the addtion of Poland Cech and Hungaryand other east block countries. These countries have good education systems and solid infrastructure. Watch the marketing headlines. " Call centre back in europe"
31. Ryan Healey
I have called Dell and Sony in the last week trying to get customer support and both times am CERTAIN I was connected with a call center in India due to the rep's accent.
The service I received from both call centers was HORRID! While the reps were polite, they simply would not speak clear enough English to be understood and could not seem to understand my simple questions! I NEVER have this problem when speaking to a customer service department based in the US. Sure, there are bad employees in the US also, but they can at least be understood when they speak and can understand what you're saying to them in English without having to put you on hold 10 times! What a mess!
32. Accent Tantrum
Anglos should get over their mental block when they speak with an Indian call center rep. Isn't it funny that Indians can understand (and are expected to understand) Brit and American accents but the Anglos cannot understand Indian accent? I doubt the Brits or Americans would be throwing so much tantrums if the call center guy had been Polish, German or Austrian who also speak with different accents.
If you can understand Arnie you can understand any Indian guy.
The peculiar thing about Anglos is that can or cannot understand your accent based on your presumed appearance/nationality. The tantrums about "accent". is nothing but an excuse for racism. Get over it because the English speaking Indian population is amongst the largest in the world. If you can understand Aussie, Brit or American accents you can also understand Indian accent or Jamaican accent or South African accent.
33. anonymous
I thoroughly agree with the designer in London. As soon as I hear that telltale Indian accent in a call, I am immediately hostile. Don't give me that rubbish about full employment, there are pockets in this country of major unemployment. BT are, as usual, the worst culprits. In my own occupation, translation, the Indians are trying to take over and pay half or less than what one earns from a translation in Europe. The usual grinding the faces of the poor.
34. Ken Wilson
I will not buy BT broadband following the experience of a friend who called the help desk. The Indian at the other end of the phone did not understand english, and instead of deleting one corrupt file deleted all emails, and then did not know how to correct the mistake. Even the supervisor was of no help.
35. Mark
Having worked with Indian offshore companies I would say that the banking industry is doomed with shoddy workmanship and shoddy service. An excellent way to allow our european competitors to make headway into the UK market just as ithas in every other industry
36. User
It's a nightmare.
37. Chris H
You cannot be serious Narayana.D, when you say: “A customer mindset is that he/she is determined not to be satisfied.” If you are in the call-centre business we can immediately see what’s wrong if that’s your attitude. All the caller wants is for their problem/query/change to be dealt with swiftly and efficiently. In the vast majority of cases they will have no problem talking to someone with a different accent. It’s when that operative fails miserably to achieve results that a caller gets annoyed and frustrated, the frustration can be doubled when you know that there is no alternative whatsoever but to stay on the line for longer and longer to reach the objective.
And no, Mr Accent Tantrum, IT Director from the USA, it’s NOT racist to have trouble understanding someone, it’s just human. The telephone deprives a user of many levels of voice tone, and that of course is happening at BOTH ends of the line. As an EFL teacher, I can tell you that there are also severe problems with particular nationalities in attaining good pronunciation of English. A student can have an excellent grasp of English but be almost incomprehensible when speaking. It’s called stress (sentence stress and word stress) and inflexion. Also, there is no such thing as an Aussie, Brit or American accent. We all have dialects, and I can guarantee that if I connected you with a BT subscriber in Inverkeithny, you’d pretty soon have a headache.
My view on this topic is that it’s insulting to customers to treat them so badly. However, perhaps we are missing the point. Maybe the objective is to cut the call rate, and to drive people crazy is one way to do that. From then on, only the really determined customer will ever call back. Working in the PC/IT arena, I meet many, many users now who will pay for a solution or fix rather than phone their “free” support number. Now there’s a real cost saving…
38. A. Bradford
Accepting that we are going to get good and bad wherever we go, why not keep the work in this country? I am a foreigner who has been living happily in this country for 25 years. I view companies who take british jobs abroad as TRAITORS. They base their business in this country, take the money from the british, but through greed ---forget cost effectiveness, that's the excuse --- are gradually turning the british workforce into pariahs, dependent on benefits which the country will not be able to pay because there will not be enough people paying taxes.
As a nation you are allowing a bunch of greedy traitors to sell your country and your self sufficiency for a discount in the price of potatoes. Not good enough, it is dangerous short-termism!!!!
39. anonymous
why dont you people get it?
The UK imports most of its food and raw materials because ITS JUST TOO EXPENSIVE TO DO IT HERE. Nobody complains about their bread being made from Polish Wheat, or their car being made in Spain because our labour costs are too high.
Services, are next. People winging about their PC helpdesk being in Bangalore rather than Glasgow is going to change absolutely nothing.
40. anonymous
"BT" and "mem-sahib", were words recognised by my wife in a recent and otherwise impenetrable cold call, possibly from an offshore call centre. I suppose its no worse than a call in broad Scouse or Glaswegian, and just as effective!
41. S.Welsh
This so-called customer support has become a joke. When talking to these support people I can't understand a thing they say and I've had to yell into the phone to just get their attention. Most times they don't have a clue how to fix a problem and I constantly get disconnected while trying to get anything resolved. It's to the point where "there is no point" in trying to get any answers to a problem. The biggest problem I have now is not being able to get any decent support. And I am getting increasingly annoyed when calling these support centers and being asked if I wish to continue in english...I'm in the U.S.A. for gods sake! I think it's time we make those outsource phones silent
42. John Toomey
I always check where the call centre is before speaking to them. Not because I am racist. Not because I believe all call centres in the UK are good.
Why? Because all big business is doing is exploiting cheap labour in India to improve their profit margin. Nothing less. I rang a call line last friday for a major PC manufactur to purchas a new laptop. I checked the location and disconncted when it was India. If you buy you are saying it is OK to exploit these people.
What I says is pay the people in India the same pay as you were paying in the country you moved the call centre from. Failing that, pay them the same minimum wage as the country they are serving. Give them the same standards that we expect of our companies in the UK.
Why not? After continuing to go around the globe colonising (invading) every piece of land we can get our grubby paws on, it's the least we can do.
43. Suman
You are all right. I am in India, Bangalore working for a Hardware company as Senior Technical Support Representative.
Our salary structure is like this:
1 Employee Salary in UK/USA/Australia is equal to 10 Employees Salary in INDIA.
We don’t have any problems in understanding our customers we are just doing our job according your time zone, we work at night and sleep during daytime.
You are lucky the call centers are in India if it was in China then you would never understand their English.
Thanks All
44. Rajatherajan
This is Raja from London, outhere and US they think its cheap labour, particular when people like Suman from B'lore says 10 peoples salary equals to one in UK/USA etc. This is a wrong educating everyone here about this. A weekly minimum wage here is £141.oo which is Rs 11,000 equivalent. Definitly you will not get Call Centre taelnt for £ 141.00 it may be not less than £ 250 and above which is say Rs 19,000 per week which is Rs 78,750 per month. We need to explain to them the economics here. You can lease out a 2 bedroom flat for in Delhi or BangaLORE FOR £ 100.00 PER MONTH. With Rs 79,750 per month a family becomes upper middle cost because of prices of certain items which are equaly very less. You can buy a P4 machine in India (multinational brand) for Rs 30,000 or so whereas you can get here for Rs 40,000 plus.
A Kilo of potato is Rs 150/-- here whereas in India it is from Rs 5 to 7/=. So the indian IT talent is not cheap, the Indian currency though devalued equivalent to Dollar and pound yet the food, clothing and housing is economical and affordable here compared to US and UK. Do you know a mini fridge over here costs £149.00 which is Rs 11,500/= where in India you can buy a large one for this price that applies to a 39'' TV etc etc. Most important other aspect is availability of talent - an IT literate with clean English accent is limited and then 30 hours week work to rule etc etc makes them expensive and non affordable not only in cost but in talent and productivity and quality of performance.
We Indian should not remain complacement on this the Back Office jobs may go to Easter Europe and other developing companies, unless the Corporate and Govt Sector brings out training and other regulations to monitor and safeguard the industry and also bring in curriculum to make it more professional. Speach therapy, Communication skill with international accent etc etc has be brought in to further strengthen our base and prepare the next generation. Other foregn language support should also to be brought in keep ourself ahead of others and remain global leader otherwise the thin skinned colored ballon will burst. We failed to do this in the Hardware and other sector which China gained and see what is China today- wow, a communist country in a short gap has become a economy strenth mathcing and marching with any developped countries. Now dont you think we were complacent - we relish in small achievements and our politiciabns relish in small benefits - ''are bada socho'' let us not miss out the IT skill. We should use this generate our wealth and bring in technology to agriculture and strengthen our rural and agro economy where most of the developed countries fall behind and again they are becoming expensive and we can give a very good cost effective and quality produce. Congress today won because of this rural vote bank - they will succed if they do this. Let us have another Sam Agri Pethodra or somebody to make our rural agro base techno savy.
long love india,
45. faiz
its really amusing to hear all you people out there yakking so worriedly about outsourcing which makes me wonder would you guys rather pay more to hear someone speak perfect english.
46. anonymous
i totally agree with the person who said they avoid companies that use call centres in india. i have never had a good experience with a call centre in india if you ask them something that they do not have the answer to on the piece of paper in front of them they just keep repeating themselves and avoid answering the question. i think these jobs should stay within the uk and the government should make the companies do this even if it makes a dent in their profits. I would certainly pay more money to a company who had a good uk call centre