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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.'"
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...
Perhaps, that is all the skills that is required for the job. Just like car mechanics, IT support is becoming less and less of a highly skilled job.
What's the big deal about that? Tier 1 helpdesk doesn't need a degree. A high-school education (even a US one) is more than enough to understand and speak English at a high-school level and follow a script and checklist. You don't need to be a cordon bleu chef to cook burgers at McDonald's either.
...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?
Inflammatory title of course, it implies that the people manning the desks are in high school or of high school age not just adults that only went to high school.
Did you know that 10 years ago, if you called Dell, Gateway, HP, WellsFargo, Netgear, etc etc etc etc, that you spoke to someone making $10.50/hr, who most certainly did not have a college degree, and whom the technical skills test was "here, type this". The only difference now is, those people aren't in the united states, and they don't make anywhere near 10.50$/hr. Then or now, they never had any chance of actually helping you solve a problem.
NDA be damned, Dell had 5 solutions for ANY problem. Is it on. Check. Is it installed correctly. Check. Reformat, does it work now? Check. Does the rest of the computer work without it? Check. Replace it. DONE. This is essentially what all their scripts say. Oh sure, there are minor detailed differences, and some small portion of the people they employ to read the scripts even understand the differences. Most do not, never did and never will. They are paid to go through those scripts AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. They are not paid for your satisfaction, and in fact, you can't commend or condone them in any way, because you don't know if you were talking to 'joe' at Dell's Texas headquarters, 'Joe' at the Beaverton Oregon Call center called Stream, or some other third party call center. You can call to complain, and customer service will no doubt apologize, coddle you and then do absolutely nothing.
One customer always comes to mind when I talk about this issue. She called in over 50 different times. She spoke to as many different people. She went through every script, every troubleshooting guide. Her modem was replaced. 5 times. The motherboard was replaced, twice. The CPU, Memory, hard drive and case were replaced once each. Her ENTIRE computer (include the mouse and cables) was replaced twice. Nothing solved the issue. She called in, and got me. Now, it's 12:30am, I'm quietly handling technical calls for Dell, but I'm in Oregon at STREAM intl. She explains her story, and I look it up. Holly crap, they have done just about everything that can be done... well crap. Tell me what the problem is. "Well, the last tech said..." No lady, I want you to tell me the problem, not what anyone else said it was. "my modem won't stay connected, and often won't connect at all". OK I say... any other issues..."well yeah, I get weird lines on my screen when I try and call out, or if I walk to close while on the phone". Alright, please do something strange for me, just reach down and touch the computer, but watch the screen. "It flashed with snow". OK do you happen to have power lines in your back yard. "yes, how did you know". Lucky guess. I know this isn't reasonable, but I need you to move the whole computer to the opposite side of the house, and call me back at this number xxxxxxxxxxx. She did, and you know what, it fixed the problem. 51+ phone calls, and the problem was outside interference, which isn't on any of the scripts. This isn't a problem of language, or culture, or race, or which country your phone call goes to. It's a problem that "technical support" is neither technical, nor support. Which is why it's mostly called "customer service" now. I think Carlin best described what that means.
They don't want us to realize that the reason college is so important is because children in the U.S. are deliberately prevented from learning anything valuable in their first 13 years of "education".
My dad had a friend in high school who taught shop class. He helped me about 6 years ago with his shop tools. He was forcibly retired a few years later because the administrators decided that woodworking and metal working aren't important to people who are going to college, which is all that matters in a globalized society.
Apparently that's the feedback loop: Grade school gets you ready for middle school, middle school for high school, high school for college, college for graduate school, graduate school for unemployment.
According to a book from the 1970's I found at a thrift shop years ago ("The Screwing of the Average Man"), College used to be something that the upper class sent their children to, so they'd have a leg up on the un-credentialed proletariat. After WWII Congress passed the GI Bill to pacify all those ex-soldiers, and college became affordable for everyone. I was going to say that college is a waste of money, but the real waste is in K-12 - at least in College you mostly take only the classes you care about.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
"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
Separately, we have a saying in India, which is drilled into the brains of BPO trainees. It says; 10=35. The IQ of an average 10-year old Indian kid is about the same as the IQ of the average 35-yr old American. Reading the many infantile responses to this article, I begin to suspect this might not be far from the truth.
Your post is as immature and offensive as many of the posts seen on here and is, additionally, hypocritical to boot.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial