Outsource this!
August 3, 2006
Wow, I watched a show for the first time last night called 30 Days on FX Network. This show was created by that guy who ate nothing bu McDonald’s food for 30 days to see how his health would hold up. He not has a show dedicated to other people doing things for 30 days etc. you get the point.
So last night they had a Computer Programmer who lost his job when his company decided to outsource application development to TATA in India. This episode focused on him going to India for 30 days to find and recapture his job at an outsourcing company. What a plot, it caught me right from the ad and I was hooked until the end of the show.
This guy ends up staying with a middle-class Indian family in Bangalore, one of the major outsourcing centers in India. The area had brand new skyscrapers with shiny glass and American company names at the top all over the place, positioned right next to the worst slums you could imagine (tent cities to some degree). The contrast was amazing, and the guy on the show was really taken back by it. The worst poverty we would ever imagine next to a huge Computer Company building.
the other thing that was very interesting is that all of these recent college grads there were aspiring to become “Call Center” employees. This was a great job to them, not the typical looked-downed on telemarketer her in the states. India people attend language schools, not to lern English but to learn the accent of Americans. They take tests and when they pass they get a great job as a call center employee on the night shift 12:00 PM - 3:00 AM. They love it! They take on American names to make it easy for us Americans when we call.
This all struck me as odd. Obviously I have been in IT for years and I am very familiar with IT Outsourcing. I even worked for a consulting company that built their own development center in India. What struck me was the fact that all of these recent grads are lining up to pretend to be Americans. They change their names, they learn the accent, they work in the middle of the night, etc. all for us! What the hell is going on here? Why would they want to do this? Well, I think the answer is they have little choice. India is a country gripped by poverty and to some degree unstable and corrupt government. People there are suffering, they want to work, they want to earn, and they want to do a good job. The outsourcing industry has been a huge relief to people there, providing good paying jobs to many, many people. They do what we no longer want to do. Has America become so spoiled that we no longer want to do telemarketing? I am not sure, I think there are plenty of people here that would. Companies how ever seek competitive edge and are forced by the market to adapt or die. Outsourcing is not inherently bad, it is just bad when it is your job that is outsourced. Economics are looked at globally but your job is still your livelihood, I understand that
Another interesting point is that the India programmers he encounters are convinced that India’s outsourcing is being driven by the fact that they are the best technicians in the world, not by the cost factor. The guy responds by saying that Americans are on the same level but cost is driving the move, not skills. Your thoughts? It will be interesting to see when Vietnam, Russia, China, and the other developing countries give India a run for their money by providing even lower cost. Will it be that all of these countries have superior skills or just a cost factor - I don’t know…
One of the interesting side bars in the story was the young couple living with their parents. The wife and husband moved in with the family after their arranged marriage. Her “duty” is to take care of the whole family, doing endless chores and serving the family. She however aspires to be a “call center employee” and ends up getting a job at the call center. Her husband, after punishing her for not bringing his tea, allows her to get the job but he worries that she will not be able to handle her duties at home as well as at work.
Welcome to the American lifestyle my friends, could there be a beginning to a woman’s movement in India - lets hope so!!
I welcome your replies…
ITSalesPro-.-
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Patrick Kilhoffer | March 14, 2007 at 2:55 pm
Companies frequently look at their call center expenses as something that should be reduced to as low a figure as possible, much like a phone bill or a power bill. The problem is that when a company is offering a basic product like a cell phone, the only real difference to the consumer is how they are treated when they sign up and how they are treated by the call center when they have a question. It’s a false economy to spend $300 to get a new customer and then try to save a couple of bucks on their customer service.
Having said that, I think it’s great that they have an option to get out of poverty and by spending their pay at local businesses they can support other people in their efforts to get out of poverty as well.
Realistically, B2C calls are not very challenging and frequently involve an upset person. Let the Indians take those calls. If americans want to work at a call center, most of them would rather handle B2B calls anyway, and the Indian call centers can’t handle the B2B calls so it all works out in the end.
Let everyone do what they do best and we can lift the entire world out of poverty.