So the thing is….
One of the newest technologies that seems to be growing in the call center environment is that of virtualization. That is, people working from home in a virtual or electronic call center environment. This is actually a great way to provide better customer service while keeping the work in the country of origin.
From an employee standpoint, there’s the savings of travel, DSL provisioning usually provided by the company, and a flexible work schedule.
Big Business moves Call Centers
Big company executive are always telling us that outsourcing jobs from the United States is a good idea. These are the same people that told us outsourcing our manufacturing infrastructure was a good idea. We were told that our manufacturing people couple be retrained to use computers and work in technology focused areas like call centers. Then, big business went to call centers, moving them to other countries.
Call centers being closed were in the rustbelt of the Midwest with average wages in the Wal-Mart range. They were closed because even though the cost of telecommunications was much higher transferring a call half way around the world, the total cost per call was drastically lowered. Why? People in India with masters degrees and experienced engineers were happy to make 20-30 thousand dollars a year. So the cost per minute in the US was between 30-80 cents a minute, while in India the cost per minute was well under .15 cents.
Here’s the question I would put to short sighted corporate America… Who’s going to buy your products after you destroy the middle class in America? You can talk all your want about competition and the need to lower rates in call centers and other such stuff. You never say tough how we Americans can compete with countries without our environmental laws, or labor laws, or higher tax rates, or slave labor wages in third world countries.
The reason why these people are willing to work for such a small wage is also the reason why we have problems with Mexican illegal immigration. But that’s another story
Please Leave all sense of Reality at the Door
It’s no secret that I don’t hold call center management in high regard. I think the main reason is that I once worked in a call center as an operations manager. I saw with my own eyes the stupidity that was management as they consistently blamed poor performance on employees whose only fault was in trying to satisfy their manager.
I saw team level managers given goals that were diametrically opposed to each other. But because they wanted to keep their position, they agreed to do the best they could.
The problem with a call center environment is not the work, o even the management. It’s the constant moving out of reality that causes the problem. There are many people that actually like customer service and don’t mind phone work. The problem is when they’re given such ridiculous things to do in addition to satisfying the customer on the telephone that the job runs into trouble,
Who thought up the idea of up selling to people calling into a call center with complaints? The customer is upset or angry that the product originally purchased doesn’t work correctly but the phone agent is expected to try and sell them more stuff! How stupid do you think the customer to be?
Managements answer is that they were stupid enough to buy from them in the first place.
Oh well…