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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,
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!
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.
Dell is notorious for utterly worthless tech support. If you don't have standards, your location is irrelevant.
Every few support calls I get an email from Dell asking me to fill out a survey. On a recent one I complained about the poor quality of support I had received. After dealing mainly with the people from the server support division the complete lack of clue and ability was very, very obvious. Good to know companies still listen to their consumers. Seems obvious, but many don't.
I was talking with a woman yesterday who said she was getting very bad service from HP's support system. But she never complained to anyone. We as consumers must remember that if we just idly accept whatever the corporates throw at us this is the kind of treatment to expect. I can't speak for the rest of the world but here in America the desire for the absolute cheapest solution possible is slowly killing us. We complain about poor service, no help, etc. but then we go shop at the Super Mega Mart because their product is 5 cents cheaper.
Sorry for the vent. My point is, we need to vote with our money and complain to the management when things are not how we want them.
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. ..."
> 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...
Most companies I call give me someone in the USA that I can't understand. It's nothing to do with IT; it's the crappy pay scale and the sociology of who gets the crappy-paying jobs.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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 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
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.
>> 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".
>> '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?
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.