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Dell Moves Call Center Back to US
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?"
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?
For call centers, perhaps, but I wouldn't bank on having the IT jobs return from cheaper lands. If the IT geek doesn't have to deal with the end user then the language barrier is virtually nonexistent, at least as far as the masses are concerned.
Does the primary language of the person who programs your dialog boxes really matter?
Trolling is a art,
This is only for their business lines of computers, not for the consumer level, and has nothing to do with accents. They were getting a lot of flak from their corporate clients for outsourcing. Dell simply does not want to alienate their corporate (read: where the real money is) customers.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
It's really anoying when people with very little english answer phones, and work in places where they deal with customers (fast food is a big one).
I'm tired of paying money, and having to call several times to find someone who I can "somewhat" understand. I've more than once called, to get someone who I couldn't understand.
It's not just Dell whose done this... many companies have.
And it's annoying.
I couldn't care who is on the other end. I have the following requirements regardless:
- Good English skills - must understand and speak WELL
- No scripting - must be knowledgeable on the topic and products/services offered
That's all I ask. Someone who can be understood, and can understand... and knows what they are doing at their job.
American call stations can be just as bad. I remember calling Verisign (yea them) and getting someone who didn't know what "DNS" stood for. Yea! That was helpful.
our company was one of the dissatisfied customers, we've been pushing for this for the past six months as its been just unbearable.
the worst part about it was that they knew the problem existed. if you somehow magically got somebody in the US that could help you, they'd finish the call in 5 minutes, no prob. if you got India, not only would it take an hour, but then they would have to transfer you to a 'quality control agent' who was basically a US operator that would repeat the entire course of the call to make sure they did the right thing!
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?
Is this the end of a trend in which Slashdot submitters conclude with a supposedly pithy question that is indecipherable/meaningless?
I wish.
1. The quality offered doesn't result in better quality? Huh?
2. I doubt companies were ever under the impression that moving call centers overseas would result in greater "customer appreciation." They were hoping for "customer tolerance."
We hired a guy with a PhD in education to teach us how to work with the Indians and to help the Indians understand us. I've got a copy of one of his papers and it makes good reading.
The largest problem is the difference in education systems. In the US we stress problem solving above all else, in India and other parts of Asia memorization is king. Our problem with our Indian employees became that if we gave them a procedure they could follow it easily but they couldn't develop the procedure on their own, thus everything must be scripted because the typical call center agent can't think on their feet.
As far as communication differences we employed an American accent program to help smooth out the Indian accent. For the guys we put on the phone in outbound situations it worked great and they were easily understood. Some of the other folks needed a lot more help.
It all comes down to how much you're willing to pay for good equipment and good training, both for the Indian employees and the Americans responsible for supervising the overseas call center.
A friend of mine who runs a fairly succesfull accounting business was nearly ready to purchase a brand new software package to repair that years returns, when he discovered that the tech support was out sourced to india. Now, my friend has no more technical knowledge than the average Joe (and sometimes less) but he knew that he did not want to deal with people in an different country every time he had a problem. He eventually got the CEO on the line and told him exactly why he had lost a sale. Needless to say I was quite impressed. The CEO's excuse: everyones doing it.
Dell is notorious for utterly worthless tech support. If you don't have standards, your location is irrelevant.
This is but the beginning of the backlash... Customers are going to make companies who do not employ English speakers who are easily understood pay for it in the wallet...
Dell would not have done this unless they had been scared into doing it...
It really pisses me off when I have to open a Novell or Microsoft support incident (which cost $300 each) and they give me someone in India who I can't understand...
Corporatism != Free Market
The question on my mind is -- how many of those companies that complained about the quality of the customer service themselves have offshored their tech support or other operations? Will they see the irony themselves, or will that little bit of cognitive dissonance be swept under the rug?
It wasn't until I literally offered to email her manager my resume to prove I knew what the hell I was talking about before they decided I needed a new adaptor. Then it was another 20 minutes for them to try to spell my address.
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for SEGA. ..."
Corporate customers of Dell (of which I am one) REJOYCE! I'm a tech monkey for a big-10 university and I personally support 60+ machines, all but a handfull are Dell's. It's bad enough that we fork out bou-kou bucks for tech support but we use it much more frequently than standard home users. Usually we are technically competent, much moreso than the Indian at the other end of the phone line. So when we are VERY SURE that a memory stick is dead or a CD drive needs replacing, we still have to trudge through about 3 levels of "esclation" until we get to either a technically competent person or someone who speaks English well enough to send us a replacement part.
Comparing this to the older America-based call centers, we had about a 60% chance of getting some college CS major making a few extra bucks at a Dell Call Center. These people were able to realize when they were talking with someone technically competent and address the questions appropriately.
"One touch of Darwin makes the whole world kin." George Bernard Shaw
It's just myopia
The internet is one of the best forums for discussion (look around you), and potentially to unify many different cultures and viewpoints. The myopic attitude is to limit technology to the rich, which will built up hatred. Clearly teaching people in other countries good English (as any company trying to avoid Dell's mistake will do), and the skills to communicate, will bring cultures closer. Only by doing this can we move together to a more peaceful, unified world.
Exercise your right not to vote. thinkoutside.org
I was averaging an hour and a half to two hours on the phone with Dell to get replacement parts for computers covered under warranty. I check out the computer thoroughly before calling them so I know what the problem is, but they still insist on going through an obscenely long script, putting me on hold, etc.
Me: "Look, when I start the computer, the hard drive makes a loud banging noise and won't boot from the hd. Hear that? That's it banging."
Them: "Okay. I want you to boot up Windows2000, then look on the back of the tower and tell me the pattern of the little green lights..."
Companies may be able to successfully outsource coding, etc., but any job that requires heavy interaction with people should stay States-side.
It's a major pain in the ass to deal with the Indian tech support. There are accent issues, but that is only a minor point. The real issue is the training and scripting. Typical experience (of many) I had a little while back from when I had to replace a screen and hard drive on an Inspiron. Even though I had done extensive testing ahead of time, told the tech what I had done I still had to go through 2 hours of hell before they finally acknowledged that I in fact did have failed hardware.
The scripting is bad, the fact that they can't operate outside the script is abhorrant. But what really ticks me off is when they keep trying to trick people into stating something that would void their warranty. When I had to get the LCD for the laptop replaced I was asked no less than 10 times if I had dropped the notebook. The question was varied from "did you drop it even a little bit" to "now, you said you recently dropped it, right".
The reason they got so much hell from corporate customers is that they have dedicated IT professionals who've already done all the testing and can't afford two hours on the phone to get some replacement hardware sent out. The IT dept will simply switch to a new vendor if that kind of crap persists.
Since the call center people work for the call center, and not the company, they have no incentive or access to institutional knowledge - you know when you tell someone about a certain model and they don't have to look everything up? The Indian support centers also pretend to be located in America, practice American accents, have sports teams they pretend to watch, and otherwise try to fool you into thinking they are in the US. All of which to get around the issue of supporting local jobs. If we farm all of our jobs out to India, who will be left to buy anything?
I've been pulling contract jobs away from companies in India and some guy in Brazil because none of them were able to communicate effectively with one of my clients. The nice part is that I not only get more work, but my client is planning on sticking with U.S. workers from now on. The Indians cost him many thousands of dollars when they blew a deadline and he came to me for emergency service on his web app. They blew the deadline because they didn't understand some of the text in the manual for the software they were configuring. The guy in Brazil was clueless about why adhering to internet standards is important and he was failing to get the content to the end users in a format that they could use. I'm Brazilian my self (it hurts not to use an "s") but I'd rather not export U.S. jobs there, particularly if this guy is going to be making Brazilian tech workers look bad.
If you can't compete on the up front costs, compete with your computer and communication skills. If that doesn't work, remind them that your taxes pay for the U.S. to run and your spending improves the U.S. economy, while offshoring improves the economy elsewhere.
t'nera semordnilap
as a native english speaker, of the american "dialect", i would have considered any of the "odd" uses of english in the http://www.rajiv.com/india/humor/langusa.asp article as absolutely normal and understandable. I would have understood everything the Indians had said without hesitation.
I can't imagine any town or city in the U.S. were they wouldn't know what a "bill" is in the context of a meal at a resturaunt or a "ring" in the context of a getting in contact with someone. it was rediculous.
I wonder sometimes that whole of America is undergoing "walmart-ization". Here is my theory about dell call centers (complete theory pulling out of thin air):
:)
(1) Dell pays prevaliling wages to call center people
(2) Dell wants to cut costs, so moves to India
(3) Dell employees get shafted big time
(4) Dell ex-employees (or new kids) realize no new jobs are there
(5) They are ready to accept much lower wages
(6) Viola, Dell moves back the call center
Welcome to the walmart-ization
S
In the US we stress problem solving above all else
No you don't.
Most education up to the lower levels of an undergrad degree is simply memorization.
Times tables, memorizing formulas and plugging them in.
Why do you think so many people complain about "word problems", they just don't cleanly fit the formula the person has in their head.
We test this way, we check facts, or provide a simple problem (that was answered in the textbook) then have them regurgitate it.
That being said, it isn't evil, I don't think it is very easy to teach people to relate these facts into a usable knowledge base.
Even if we could teach it, we don't test this way.
Sure...but the truth is the specific issues that surface can happen locally as well. All it takes is patience, persistence and constant communication between both sides. This approach will result in the remote specific issues fading to the background.
:)
Remote administration is routine, and it's not going away. Best to learn now how to deal with it. Find and buttress the strong points while weeding out the weak ones. Visit the remote site at least once and dig into the culture. Learn to train your ear to deal with different accents. Put yourself in the other side's shoes and don't forget to consult a calendar so you know when their holidays occur
For one, you're ignoring time differences. There's also more to working with foreign teams than accents. Not being able to walk down the hall and grab some people to hash out an issue and get some face-time is important too.
The person on the other end of the phone has a procedure she has to follow. She has to follow that stupid script. The calls are randomly monitored to ensure the phone monkeys are following their scripts.
It sucks, but everything about a call center job sucks.
That girl isn't going to risk getting in trouble for not following procedures, no matter how much it pisses off the customers. She's not being paid to provide good service and make customers happy, she's being paid to read the damn script.
Does that suck? Damn straight. I don't know how to fix it, short of burning down every fucking call center in the world. Hmmm, maybe we only need to burn all of the call center MANAGEMENT!
It is going to cost them less to hire Americans to staff a call center, than to lose the sales to corporate America that they were obviously threatened with.
cat
>> Did it cost a coder a job here? Not really we're hiring
You can't possibly be serious. How many people worked on the project in India? How many people were employed in the analysis, design, development, documentation, management processes in India? So you're hiring a coder or two to handle the maintenance and production support phase of the project. That's no consolation to the tens or hundreds (depending on the size of the project) who lost their jobs or couldn't get the jobs in the first place.
I'm very happy that your project worked out for you. Now, please be so kind as to tell us what company you work for so those of us with a conscience can avoid your products/services.
Oh, and before someone mods me as a Troll, consider this: outsourcing has nothing to do with the quality of the job performed but with the (mythical) cost savings involved. The decision to outsource overseas is a short-sided financial one that is doing harm to the local economy and will eventually come back to bite the outsourcer in the ass. For if you don't pay people to work, they can't afford to buy your product. This, of course, forces further cost cutting measures, which only hurtles the company into a death spiral. Hilarity ensues.
This has nothing to do with isolationalism, either. Notice that I have made no mention of my home country, as this is happening in many countries. The simple fact is that these decisions are being driven by short-sided, amateurish stockholders who have no comprehension of base economics and lack the ability to look beyond the figures for Next Quarter.
I wish I could remember where I read the article , Robert Kiyosaki maybe, but one of the major problems with the current economy (US, EU, whereever) is that stockholders don't care to look at a company's 3 or 5 or 7 year plan anymore. It's all about Next Quarter. It's this pressure that is causing outsourcing, as well as the unusual barrage of accounting scandels.
Until investors and corporate shareholders return to a sensible economic approach to investing in business, this trend will only continue to increase.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
The fact of the matter is that call support requires as a basic skill clarity of communication. If the people being hired don't have this they ought not be hired! So to me the problem is far beyond these recent experiments with India. It is a fundamental problem with the industry.
I'm not ignoring anything. I've done this very scenario for years. 'face time' can be a Western concept. Offset hours are no different than swing shift. You seem to be stuck in a box, and that kind of thinking risks you being left behind. Jobs have been moving abroad for years and they will continue to do so. You can learn to manage remote or go with them...adapt or die.
As a 10 year occupant of a call center (no longer on the phones, thankfully), I'm amazed at the Slashdot crowd. The call centers I've worked in, visited and called where English is the native language often contain "native" speakers who cannot complete a sentence.
As a trainer, any time someone sounds like they're reading from a script, it's because they don't understand the technology they're supporting.
People who know technology won't take entry level jobs, at least, not for long. People who don't know technology will, but they don't make good technicians.
I notice no one is offering to pay more for their software and hardware so that good quality people can be hired and retained. You (don't) get what you (don't) pay for.
One thing I've learned from working with Dell for the past few years is that they don't give a flip about their home users... But then again, why should they? They make money off corporate/government contracts, not supporting grannies who don't know where the any key is.
After having such good experiences with Dell in the Office, we started recommending people buy Dell for their home, too. Oh boy BIG mistake. The hardware is substandard, just about every default installation is munged somehow or another, and the things generally stop working within a year. *NO ONE* I know has gotten a good Dell home PC recently. Meanwhile we noticed a definite decrease in quality of customer support in the past year...
Me: Here's an article from Adobe that says there's a known issue between this motherboard and Adobe Acrobate 5.5, what's the solution?
Faceless E-mail Tech: Here's an article on how to troubleshoot Windows 2000 startup problems.
Me: Argh!
Ad infinitum.
On that note, is there any big name manufacturer that still makes/supports good home machines? People always ask me recommendations but I'm out of them, other than "Just buy a Mac".
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
>> 'face time' can be a Western concept.
Face time is not a 'western' concept. Since when is human interaction and body language 'western'?
Since when is grabbing a sheet of copy paper and a pencil to draw a diagram 'western'?
I don't think that these concepts keep me in a box. As a matter of fact, the teams of people that I'm working with in India and Japan agree that the lack of face time is a serious problem with the offshore model.
How to reduce the problem? We're spending more time up front making VERY precise functional requirements documents. Now that we're into tech design, this has helped. Now we're looking for precise technical specs. Trying to replace body language and "you know what I'm trying to say right?" with precise english.
And even though it's hell for my personal life (my wife is a saint), talking to these guys every day at midnight and 7:00AM keeps the communication flowing.
Personally I hate the offshore model. But I have to learn to work with it, somehow. Either the model will stay, and I'll know how to package work and manage it. Or it will fail horribly(my preference) and I'll still have better management and requirements gathering skills to continue my career.
wbs.
Huh?
Sometimes the customer is obnoxious and abusive, with a holier-than-thou I'm-always-right attitude, laced with a heavy dose of threats and profanity.
Sometimes it's okay to give up on the sociopaths. There are some customers that you just don't need. Quite frankly, they cost more than they're worth.
I am by no means suggesting that there aren't some examples of truly appalling technical support out there, nor do I mean to suggest that the vast majority of callers aren't polite. However, whenever I see the adage "the customer is always right" I have to say...it just ain't so.
~Idarubicin
if you somehow magically got somebody in the US that could help you, they'd finish the call in 5 minutes, no prob. if you got India, not only would it take an hour,
The problem here is Dell neglected to account for the customer's time. It's easy for them to overlook, since they don't think they are paying for it, but in a way, they are. Every minute the customer is on the line, they pay a minute of opportunity cost. Thus, while the customer time is free to Dell, it is not free to the customer, and they perceive themselves are paying for the call, in the form of productive work they could have done that is not being done.
This is a very common problem, and it is exacerbated by the number of people who don't realize their time is valuable and hold entities like Dell accountable for the time they take to handle their problems. Indirectly, Dell will pay for wasting their customer's time, as they have learned. I hope this lesson propogates around the rest of the business world too.
(As in everything in life, a balance is required. One should not go through life seeing time solely in terms of money, because there are many things money can not buy. But by the same token, you should not value your time at "zero"; the "productive work" I refer to above may not be monetary, it may refer to time spent with family or something else you find beneficial.)
Dell didn't properly handle a pilot project to asssess what would happen when they moved operations to India. When the Dell management invested other people's money this way, they should really have understood the risks/benefits involved up-front.
This is yet another example of quality problems on the part of Dell. I own a Dell-it has been rebuilt-3 times in 3 years(I'm glad I got the warrenty!).
Major changes in business practices are risky. The software business is one where 200-1 productivity differences in organizations aren't uncommon. It is short-sighted to disassemble the highly productive software organizations-or to cast off highly productive workforces-whereever they might be. The pool of folks with 150+ IQ's in the world just isn't that large and may not be growing despite a world population boom--and the pool of such people inclined to do technical work is another issue. The productivity differences simply swamp any cost of living differences. If we have organizations that are ceasing to be optimally productive-they need to look at their business practices.
My own guess here, McManagers with McMBA's are a major part of the problem. The Dotcon era attracted a lot of slick operators that understood money well-but didn't understand much else and offshoring is a last desperate attempt on the part of these guys to avoid the chickens inevitably coming home to roost.
Soon we will all be living the lifestyles of third world countries (except for the economic elites of course). Global equality will have arrived!
Seriously, you get what you pay for. I've talked to PC companies on the phone for support before and it is painful.
I called Apple last Friday about my powerbook (white spots in the screen). I got a nice guy in Austin who had a box on the way to me in 5 minutes. He even made a joke about Walmart.
Worth a couple of extra bucks every time.
I can't imagine any town or city in the U.S. were they wouldn't know what a "bill" is in the context of a meal at a resturaunt
I can't speak for this particular circumstance, but I think there are a number of factors that can turn an understandable statement like that into something completely incoherent. I have worked with a lot of foreigners and sometimes my brain is going overtime just trying to understand what they are saying, let alone what they mean. It's like in order to understand the speaker, you need to back way off certain speech cues and you end up losing a lot of your ability to process what they mean. When they say something a little off that would make sense coming out of a native speaker's mouth, it still doesn't make sense because you can't pick up on those cues.
Another related possibility is that when you start talking with a non-Native speaker, your brain loads up an alternate meaning interpretation engine with a reduced set of colloquialisms and meanings. For example, if my brain were in non-Natve speaker mode, I might not expect someone to use a phrase like "give a ring" to indicate calling a person or calling on a person. This is a kind of advanced phrase I might only load up for a native speaker. Instead, I might be inclined to take it literally, at least at first.
I find it amusing that in reality there are more people in India that speak English (think former British colony) then there are in the U.S. that do. So do you define English by where it started (England) or the largest number of speakers (India) either one is not the United States. So refer to it like it is. You want people to use an U.S. accent which in itself is also a valid request; but not by saying that they are not speaking English.
I don't know about Dell, as I've never had to deal with their customer support. Whenever I've called American Express, however, I've found that the many customer support people who had very slight Indian accents were extremely curteous and helpful. On the other hand, I've spoken to some women with Southern accents who were real bitches. I'm just saying you can't generalize.
I just spent 4 hours on hold with these guys... When I called, I knew the SCSI controller was shot. I have a hard time believing that all the disks in a system would start failing simultaniously.. Sure, it could happen, but... Anyhow, back when the tech support was still in Round Rock I could get past the BS pretty quickly... These guys just kept giving me the same scripted crap.. After 4 hours, they agreed to replace it.
BTW, did I mention I'm running FreeBSD on this system... Apparently, they've never heard of that in India.. Not that I care..
tech: What OS are you running?
me: FreeBSD..
tech: Windows 2000?
me: FreeBSD..
me: UNIX!! Give me a new #$%@!*# motherboard!!
Grrrr.....
So, my question... Is the PowerEdge stuff coming back to the US?
Exactly!
My friends and associates have had to deal with this a lot. Our biggest prediction is that in the rush to save money companies are cutting their own throats by creating the next wave of competitors. Yes, programmers on the other side of the globe will work cheaper then here - but then THEY get the knowledge and experience in creating those products.
In 5 years or so, when those programmers have cut their teeth on the project, there will be new Indian/cheap labeor country companies selling their own software - why let the US company get all the profit?? They will start their own company and sell directly to us.
When it comes to "Intellectual Property" (ugh) it seems idiotic give that property away.
Training your replacement? Screw that - just walk.
"A company that will go to the ends of the earth for its people will find it can hire them for about 10% of the cost of americans"
Despair.com
Other engineers are licensed professionals, why not software engineers? I think as the public continues to experience the adverse affects of crappy software, we actually have a shot at selling ourselves as professionals. This might mean more education or dicipline and it may raise the bar to a level where many of the existing developers can't attain licensing, but so what - they shouldn't be writing code anyway. I think licensing would be a great solution to the continued outsourcing of developers, and yes I'll continue to say so as long as slashdot keeps posting stories about it :)
and the boss is upset because the stuff comes back just like he said it, but it sucks.
If only more bosses would be made to listen to themselves. Of course, instead of realizing that they suck, they instead fire the team.
--
$tar -xvf
That's as much as a problem here in the good 'ol USA. It's called "micromanagement," where the "knowledge workers" we've now been conditioned by management consultants to view as "internal customers" of our cost-centers are so impatient with their own incompetence that their "internal vendors" become so sick of their constant imperiousness that they start producing exactly the quality of dog shit they have specified so that fault lies entirely with the moron who couldn't effectively communicate a functional specification for toilet-paper, with the desired result of that idiot being terminated in the strongest sense of the word.
Unfortunately, this same culture has produced the budgetary language of "man-months" and "FTEs" with the result that anything below executive management turns into a collection of interchangeable proles, thus until every "internal vendor" is outsourced with the same result, not much will change. Hopefully, the failures of transnational outsourcing will make it a bit more obvious where the lay-offs, outsourcing and salary slashing should really be taking place before the oldspeak is speedwise upsubbed fullwise to doubleplus crimethink by the current blackwhite bellyfeel duckspeak.
Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree
--George Orwell, 1984
YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR!
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They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
I'm just mystified as to how you believe that we would EVER be able to compete without becoming a third world country ourselves?
It's what marketers and sales people call your "Value Proposition". If you offer more value than they do for the price you're bidding, you should expect to eke out a living.
I am a business owner of a startup business that is growing and doing web marketing, and I have a hard time believing the times are as rough as they say. Adapt, organize, and put together your own value proposition. Root, hog, or die. It's your choice to make.
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