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Dell Moves Call Center Back to US

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the americans-hate-accents dept.

alphakappa writes "Fox reports that Dell is moving its call center operations for the Latitude and Optiplex computers back to the US from Bangalore, India after an onslaught of complaints from dissatisfied customers who couldn't cope with the differing accents and scripted responses. Is this the beginning of a trend where companies recognize that the quality offered by relocation to cheaper centers around the world doesn't result in customer appreciation and better quality?"

20 of 961 comments (clear)

  1. For corporate customers ONLY by descentr · · Score: 5, Informative

    Note that this is only for Latitude and Optiplex machines for corporate customers, this is not for normal home users. From the article:
    "Calls from some home PC owners will continue to be handled by the technical support center in Bangalore, India, and Weisblatt said Dell has no plans to scale back the operation there."

    So, it looks like quality won't be increasing for the average Joe. Dell will probably keep sending support calls from home users to India until it makes enough "cents" to do otherwise.

    1. Re:For corporate customers ONLY by eam · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually, it says that corporate customers account for 85% of Dell's business, not 85% of calls.

  2. Not a surprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I worked tech support for Dell for a year on the business Latitude/Inspiron lines. Often we would take calls from the home and small business customers desperate, often begging not to be transferred to India. There was no reason the Indian support couldn't be trained to the same level as the US support (Dell has excellent in house training for its techs), but for some reason the Indians were mostly trying to solve problems using a decision tree tool.

    The US support was constantly being pressed to update the tool, but like many corporate IT programs the tool was written/updated by another department that did not handle customers on a daily basis, and the tool was fairly sparse.

    The biggest issue is the the tool did not take into account the customers prior support history... if the customer's cdrom won't read, and yesterday you replaced it, today you need to replace the mainboard... etc. I also heard persistant rumors of rapid turnover in India...Tech would get trained and jump ship to other companies in Bangalore.

    Like most tech support departments, Dell has customer that have a miserable time (my sister has had 8 service calls on a 1.5 year old system). The truth is that most tech support calls (80-90%) are FTF (First Time Fix).

    1. Re:Not a surprise by PPGMD · · Score: 2, Informative
      I have dealt with the India tech support and they were horrible. My issue had to do with running a non-native resolution on my LCD display, they had me re-start, blah, blah, blah, finally he gave up on that issue.

      About a week later I stumbled across the Dell Support forums, sure enough the fix for my issue was the second stickied post on that forum. A basic issue and they couldn't even handle that.

      A couple of months later, just a month after my warranty expired I called, this time it was it was even worse. The first time I called I was on hold for 40 minutes, finally when one of their techs got on the phone, their phone system was so bad that they couldn't hear me. Tried a second time, same result.

      Finally on my third try it worked (I have already wasted 2 hours on hold) and I got to talk to them about my LCD lamp inverter over heating (an issue that was minor, and fixed with reboot 6 months before, not worth shipping my laptop in for a month of service, like last time), they not only told me I was out of luck, but when I asked for a manager; the manager literally yelled at me.

      That was my last straw with Dell, I promptly called up my Dell sales rep and canceled the server order that I placed a couple of days before. Dell lost $250,000 of my business because of their horrible tech support.

  3. Re:I suspect we use the same company by sys$manager · · Score: 3, Informative

    Convergys has call centers in the US and Canada as well as India. I don't know how they choose whose calls go where, but it's not like they're simply an Indian call center. They're actually hiring phone monkeys in the US and Canada too.

  4. Interesting Article in the economictimes by bulchanm · · Score: 2, Informative

    a leading Indian Business daily newspaper The Econmictimes has an article that quotes a dell spokesman as having said "Dell has no plans to scale back resources at the Bangalore call center or change employment plans in the United States, although he would not comment on specifics."

  5. Re:Coming back? No. by hawkestein · · Score: 5, Informative

    There will always be lots of back and forth between those who want the software written, and those who are writing it.

    I was reading an article in either an IEEE magazine or an ACM magazine not too long ago, and the authors claimed that outsourced software might be of higher quality precisely because of the absence of back and forth that's around in-house. Management (or whoever wants the software written) is forced to spend more time defining requirements properly before handing them over to the programmers.

    There are really two separate issues: 1. Management doesn't tell the programmers what they really want in the software, and 2. Management doesn't actually know what they really want in the software. If #1 is the dominant problem, then outsourcing might get you better software because the requirement docs might be better on average, but if #2 is the dominant problem, then outsourcing might get you worse software because there isn't enough feedback getting back to management.

    --
    -- Will quantum computers run imaginary-time operating systems?
  6. Re:Coming back? No. by Trepalium · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you're contracting work out to third parties, you should not be surprised when something like this happens. The third party contractor will try to reduce any cost he can, and if that means reusing code, he will.

    --
    I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
  7. good news from someone whose job went to India by photovoltaics · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is good news for someone whose job is moving to India over the next three months. As the systems department manager, I am in the position of having to train the people taking my job in India, too-- without meeting any of them.

    To say our Indian colleagues' skills are sub-par, would be an understatement. I realize the skills of the people I am working with may be an anomaly; however it is still the case.

    I had no warning, and I was told on a Friday this would start the next Monday. Some people at the US ofice were immediately let go. I was told I was lucky to still have my job.

    Perhaps I should just quit and let them sort out the details?

    1. Re:good news from someone whose job went to India by ph43thon · · Score: 2, Informative

      If you have any chance, you should quit, obviously. While I was at Dell last winter doing the Optiplex Tech support... they required everyone to use their new "logging" software called DSN. What we were doing was beta-testing the software that they would use to guide the Indians in their trouble shooting. You just check boxes based on the answers the customers give.. then it gives you new questions to ask. Check more boxes.. etc. "Let us know if we need to add more options for questions," they said.

      I found it fairly funny that this was the "way of the world".. people helping to optimize the software that would ensure the loss of their job. Anyhow, I quit. Though, it seemed pretty obvious that the Bangalore Call Centers were going to be problematic. People were always complaining about the Indian techs they talked to.. wrong parts, wrong address, etc. But, then again, I got complaints like that about the Call Center in Alabama, too.. wonder which is worse..hmm.


      p

    2. Re:good news from someone whose job went to India by devphaeton · · Score: 2, Informative

      [b]Perhaps I should just quit and let them sort out the details?[/b]

      That is exactly what i did. This isn't related to IT or coding, nor was it employees in a different company. But in a large corporation a few years ago our entire department was getting canned and an outsourced company was coming in to take our place. "We're cutting costs"

      We were instructed to train this outsourced company for six weeks on how to do our job. Not only did they lack the enthusiasm and integration that we had, but they were snotty to boot. After the second day of training, we (the dept.) unanimously all walked out.

      We got handed the "you should be thankful that you still even HAVE a job" line also.

      Sorry, we were all just too insulted by this. From the friends i still have at that office building, i hear that the turnover rate for people in that dept. is awful. They've even gone through a few different outsourcing companies since then, and the latest one negotiated the same wages all of us were making at the time we left. And the job still isn't getting done right.

      So fsck em.

      --


      do() || do_not(); // try();
    3. Re:good news from someone whose job went to India by photovoltaics · · Score: 2, Informative

      Thanks for the support. If I could get unemployment now, I would quit imediately. They also cut everyone's pay by 28%. Because I average about 10-15 hours per week in overtime, they also tried to get me to sign something to switch to salary.

      It shouldn't surprise me this is happening, but it still does. When the executives looked me in the eye and said this wasn't going to happen for the past two years, I belived them.

      The interesting part is that I still have a decent amount of leverage as the systems dept. manager. I'm a geek, and I've never had to be a hardass.

      Any suggestions?

  8. Re:Thank Christ, by mfarver · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you're certain of the answer, the best thing to do is simple say you tried "a known good" AC adapter or whatever and it worked. Almost all of the Dell support trees have an option for "tested with known good" and the solution is, duh, replace the part. Calls like that we could wrap up in 2-3 minutes.

  9. Clark - Let them do the software in India by zoid.com · · Score: 2, Informative

    Wesley Clark's comments from the debate last night. "Let them do the software in India; we'll do other things in this country."

    --
    Zoid.com
  10. Submitter should RTFA by EmagGeek · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is only for CORPORATE customers. The article was very clear that other customers would still be stuck with bangalore, and that Dell had no plans to reduce their utilization of Bangalore.

  11. And Mormons! by CumInHerTaco · · Score: 1, Informative

    There is also a large Convergys call center in SLC, Utah. They have done support for Direct TV, Cisco, and MS just off the top of my head.

    --
    The only way to end war is for everyone to get a piece!
  12. Overseas call centers are a BAD IDEA! by Lord+Kano · · Score: 2, Informative

    When I worked for a certain Satellite TV Company that I will not name, they opened a call center in the philippines. I couldn't tell you how many customers that I talked to who hung up on the agents who could barely speak english and called back only to get me and bitch about it.

    "Where in the fuck are you people getting employees who can't speak English?!?!"

    We were not permitted to tell them that one of our call centers was overseas.

    So instead of saving costs, they were incurring costs because instead of having one incoming call to handle, they had two.

    Differences in dialect between different parts of one country are often hard enough to deal with. How can someone who learned english is a 2nd or 3rd language be expected to understand the idioms your customers are going to use and nuances that are a part of their speaking patters?

    LK

    --
    "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
  13. Re:Coming back? No. by Humba · · Score: 5, Informative
    Accurate summary. If anyone's interested, here's the full article. Interesting in that it was a highly respected hospital as well (UCSF).

    Link to article.

  14. Denied by Dell by gadwale · · Score: 4, Informative

    Apparently this has already been denied by Dell:

    http://web.mid-day.com/news/nation/2003/november/6 9623.htm

  15. Dell? by s0l0m0n · · Score: 2, Informative

    I used to work right next to a Dell support team, at Stream Int. in Beaverton, OR (oh my gawd, I think I just violated my NDA ;)

    They really weren't very good technicians. Stream mostly just hired people off of the street, and the biggest qualification needed was knowledge of a couple of dos commands. Level one calls were mostly scripted anyway, and they had managers on thier backs constantly about how long they were on their calls (15 minute average call time, or you are fired.)

    They were paid a shitty wage, about 10.00$ an hour, which is more than some of them deserved.

    That being said, I'm not any more hopeful for the quality of support that will come from the USA than I would be if it came from India.

    It's good to see jobs coming back, though.