Overseas outsourcing SUCKS

You know those completely useless canned answers that you get whenever you email Google for help? I just got it straight from the horse's mouth that they come from China.

I have nothing against China, but I HATE US companies who send US customers to ESL workers in developing countries to provide USELESS customer service.

My rant for the day.

 

I don't understand why everyone is so against out-sourcing. America has become rich because of free trade, now your economy is doing badly and suddenly everyone there goes all protectionist.

In my experience poor customer service happens all over the world - India, China, Scotland, Ireland, *everywhere*. I don't care where the customer service people are, I just care whether they can deal with the problem.

Personally, all the poor customer service I've had from Google (had Adwords adverts show up with a 200% CTR, never knew why until I joined here) came from reps in Eire.

 

I don't think anyone is against outsourcing if the level of service provided is on par with what it would be (or is perceived to be) if it were not outsourced. It is one thing to have someone who is "local" not be able to help you, but it is another to have trouble understanding the person (because they don't speak your language) and then have them be no help to you. In that situation, I would rather just be in the same position I was in before I called the "customer service" number and get my 15 or 20 minutes back.

 

If they are helpful, they can be taking the call from the moon for all I care.

I had a bad experience with Dell where by the time I was done they had ordered me the same computer 3 times. There was a real language barrier which meant a long time and many calls back and forth.

I finally got a local number out of someone and the situation was remedied in 5 minutes.

Its those situations that frustrate you.

 

Hell yes. I've had this experience too many times and it seems to be getting worse by the day. I've endured it with the bigger companies too like Oracle, Macromedia, Microsoft etc.

It's one of my pet hates. Especially if whatever you're trying to achieve requires technical depth, and ultimately a decent handle on english. Believe it or not, I had an experience a while back where we paid upwards of 20K for 'Gold' support. And what did it amount to ? A technician VPN'd into the server, had a poke around, apparently found a memory leak, and then spent 90 minutes trying to communicate the fix (2 Paragraphs of information via email was the final deference BTW).

Telling them what was thought of their support ? 2 minutes..

What annoys me most though is the clear statement being made about what these large companies think of their clients. They're well aware of the language issues - but do they bother to do anything about it ?

Not good when you have a very tight maintenance window on production systems etc.

Brian/Chachi, I relate

Cheers,

JL

 

I wrote a bit of a rant on that in Tech Support is Dead.

 

forkqueue:

I am definitely not protectionist, I am just sick of the horrible customer service I get out of India.

One of our business parters has a huge tech support shop in Australia and the service is excellent.

And, what a surprise, they speak English in Australia!

Also, I have been outsourcing directory submissions to Great Britain and the service has been fabulous.

 

What are your ideas about software (web) development outsourcing to India and eastern Europe guys?

Interested as to your experience with that.

 

Hmmm. I'm always told America became rich because of free trade and low tax, but many our periods of greatest expansion were when we had tarriff barriers and high taxes...

 

Actually they speak English in India a hell of a lot too - they have so many different languages in different parts of the country that they have to use English as the unofficial 'national' language. In my experience the problems with the outsourced call centres are mainly poor quality telephone lines and strong accents. This applies when speaking to call centres in Glasgow too (and to be honest I find a thick Indian accent easier to understand than a Rab C Nesbit style Glaswegian). Fortunately a quick Google search has found me this handy guide:

http://www.clyde-valley.com/glasgow/dialect.htm

Heh, here in England everyone always says how much better customer service is in America.

The grass is always greener..

 

Interesting topic. BTW, I wrote an article on what causes this "lowered quality." The article was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal shortly after I wrote it

 

Restaurant service in America is almost always better than in Europe.

 

Nice article Ajeet. Both me and Ajeet are from India, and quite a few others here as well.

India is developing, and no doubt about it that IT in India is helping the economy of the country a lot. Lot of countries today are opening offices in India to reduce their cost. Let's name a few.... Yahoo, Google, Dell, HP, Microsoft, IBM, Nokia, etc and the list goes on. If I am right, the first country to have Google's office/development center outside US was India.

But regarding Call Centers, ye, it's a problem. Let me give you a quick answer to that. The demand from outside India for support personel is growing or I should say multiplying so fast, that the companies have been forced to get high school passouts, train then for the product, and put them on the job. That's as simple as it sounds. I know atleast 4 dozen guys and girls, who are high school passouts, and in some cases making more then what their graduate colleagues are making.

It's all about Demand and Supply. According to http://www.geohive.com/, India is #2 in population, yet, their is shortage of manpower in India. IT professionals are in dmeand, and therefore we have so many IT Schools come up, which is trying to cater to the growing need of IT professionals. I am looking for 5 more guys and girls for my office here in India, somebody help, lol

 

Adam Smith says "raise rates".

 

I follow that

 

The Wealth of Nations is one of my favorite books.

 

I almost went mad once when my sites were down and I ended up in a chat with some Indian dude that only spoke 10% of English. It was like speaking with an alien. No problem with outsourcing customer support, but geez, can't they find people that can actually speak English?

 

I am an Indian, and I still agree to you 100% fryman, that CS must be a high school passouts who was trained to be a Mark or a John and try to help somebody for a software he/she has never used himself/herself. They are just trained with some FAQ's.

As I said in the post above, the cream of the crowd is with the older call centers, the new ones just have the newbies.

 

Nice one, Ajeet!

You guys are lucky! Try a Scottish brogue and an Indian call center. That's a combination of accents that just does not work! I can understand what the call center staff say to me but alas, they are overwhelmed trying to figure out my end

Oh well.

 

If they actually speak English, the price would be a lot more higher. That is what you get for the price you are paying.

Best Regards,
Surfup