Call Center Outsourcing May be Losing it’s Allure
I’ve been working in the call center environment for years and it seems that the pendulum may be swinging back to bringing back the work from overseas. While there is a place for outsourcing some work, many companies are finding that although cheaper, the supporting costs and customer cost may be much higher than expected.
A good example of this can be seen in the technology sectors. Companies like Dell are beginning to see that although initially cheaper, the “quality” of support obtained from international call centers is not up to the U.S. customer expectations. The result is a drop in customer loyalty and a breakdown of the customer relationship.
Another issue is cost. Crunch the numbers and outsourcing a lot of call center work looks pretty good. The problem is that the bean counters can’t quantify all the costs. A good example of this is an engineer in high tech needing to contact support for a new IP address. How much does it cost the company if getting the new IP address takes 4 hours? Ans: much more than they saved by sending the call to an international call center.
The other major consideration that’s usually minimized is the inconvenience factor. Managing a call center resource partner 1/2 way round the world can be complicated simply because of the time factor. Although many accommodate the U.S work schedule, the fact remains that real time action needs contact when needed and this means the U.S business needs to be flexible and manage the relationship even during the off hours.
More to come…
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 Americaâ€Â¦ 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 that̢۪s another story