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Are Indian High Schoolers Manning Your IBM Help Desk?
theodp writes "IBM CEO Virginia M. Rometty's Big Blue bio boasts that she led the development of IBM Global Delivery Centers in India. In his latest column, Robert X. Cringely wonders if customers of those centers know what they're getting for their outsourcing buck. 'Right now,' writes Cringely, 'IBM is preparing to launch an internal program with the goal of increasing in 2013 the percentage of university graduates working at its Indian Global Delivery Centers (GDCs) to 50 percent. This means that right now most of IBM's Indian staffers are not college graduates. Did you know that? I didn't. I would be very surprised if IBM customers knew they were being supported mainly by graduates of Indian high schools.'"
...the problem is, they're not allowed to think for themselves. Education is completely irrelevant - they have to follow the scripts they have in front of them, and not deviate or they get dinged. I know, I've had to write some of these scripts for them (not IBM, but another large multinational co that does outsourced helpdesk work). The last step in any of the scripts is to escalate to Tier 2/3 - which 90% of the time is an actual employee of the company and not part of the outsourced help desk.
So how is having a college educated phone bozo any better than a high school educated one if they're not allowed to deviate from the scripts they're given?
You don't need a college degree to know how to work a phone. I know the HR hysteria in the USA would have you believe otherwise, but trust me! It's not that hard...
But one of the big justifications for outsourcing call centers to India was that you could get college-educated workers for cheap. If you're going to be staffing the call centers with people who have just a high school education, then you might as well do that in the United States and not deal with the language/accent barrier.
You're missing the cheap part -- highschool grads in India are cheaper than high school grads in the USA. That's why they deal with the language/culture/accent barrier.
Workers without a college degree are cheap enough in America as it is.
Pay range for entry level agents in India is $200 - $350/month. Where are these cheap Americans that will work for $1.75/hour?
Moreover, it's strongly implied that IBM is misrepresenting the educational level of the employees in these outsourced call centers. Regardless of whether workers in call centers should need a college degree, it's not kosher to say or imply that your workers do when in fact they don't.
Where is this implied? I never assume that first level tech support agents will have any kind of relevant college degree - they all seem to follow a script (and I wish they'd just publish the scripts online so I could follow them myself).
"High Schoolers" says that the people manning the help desk are kids who are still in high school. "High School Graduates" implies that they've finished high school but don't have college degrees. There are some help desk jobs for which that's really just fine (as long as they've learned enough English that they can understand the concepts and get some practice with speaking it), and others for which you need a lot of specialized training, much of which depends on concepts you'd learn in college.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You wouldn't do that, not because US high school graduates are too expensive, but because a US high school degree isn't a good indication of literacy. Maybe in India a high school degree means something (I don't know one way or another). But in the US, a BS is the new high school diploma.
Except that is exactly what IBM is doing in the GDF centers (Fishkill, Dubuque, Colombia)
They are hiring high school grads and putting them in first line jobs. If they stick with it, and get their certs/education (certs are provided by IBM) they can move up in the system. (I joined with no degree, although I have one now. I was not a entry level position either)
The pay is somewhere in the $10 to $15 range, and yes, it is hard to get people to sign on at that wage.
These resources are replacing India resources as those resources are getting harder to get. Not surprisingly, years of outsourcing to India has built an in country demand. The best and brightest head there because the hours are better, and often the pay is better too.
As for the Indian work quality... it varies. I have worked with some that were as good as any US tech, and some that are mere chair warmers.
It definitely takes 2 to 4 to match a quality US resources, but you can afford to do that.
Any customer can demand US only resources if they are willing to pay for it... but they are willing to do so.
The GDF centers get US resources in close parity, a 15 to 25% premium. Many customers are opting to use those resources in place of overseas resources. Work is still shipped over there in "backoffice" type support of the US based teams, such as provisioning of disk, etc, but the customer is not in contact with them.
There is also a growing need for "US Only" based on regulations. Governments are expanding regulations to require data and systems are handled by US citizens only because of the nature of the data. That is a fast growing quarter.
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra