Stated simply; where can I find a comprehensive list of companies that have outsourced their call centers? URLs most welcome.
Thanks in advance,
Binarydrone
I assume you mean offshoring, not outsourcing. You can offshore to a subsidary on another continent, or you can outsource to a company in the building next door.
Companies that offshore their labor do not want this to be known in general, especially for call centers. Any list of companies that do it would be mostly conjectural.
When it comes to call centers, I’m pretty sure he means outsourcing. Unlike manufacturing jobs, it’s cheaper for American companies to keep their call centers within the country to minimize telephone costs. I would imagine that the expense of routing all your calls to India would be greater than the savings in labor. Add to that the fact that call centers necessarily rely on verbal communication to operate, you’re better off hiring Americans to answer the phones when you know that other Americans will be calling.
That said, you’re probably right that most companies that outsource their call centers wouldn’t be eager to advertise that fact.
D
I take it you haven’t been reading the papers or calling for tech support lately. Well educated, English-speaking Indians work for between one tenth and one quarter the price of their American counterparts. Many major companies have laid off hundreds or thousands of middle-class American workers to move their jobs to India. Furthermore, our Congress has actually been giving companies tax incentives to encourage this behavior.
Minimizing telephone costs? Are you kidding? With VOIP (voice over IP), the cost of routing calls to India is minimal. But, contrary to your assumption, even if that weren’t the case, you can spend more for phone calls if you’re paying workers a buck an hour instead of $5 - $10.
I manage call center outsourcing from the US to India, Phillipines, and South Africa.
It’s about 1/5 of the cost. Getting calls overseas inexpensively is routine.
As for lists…hmmm, I’ll check some call center magazines. It’s hard to find a comprehensive lists of just call centers.
Want a short list?
All three national credit bureaus
Household Bank
Amex
ATT Universal Card
IBM
Dell (yes, still there)
I was thinking more along the lines of customer service in general, not specifically technical support. I’ll admit that I haven’t been following the news closely enough to take inventory of the specific services involved, though what I have read left me with the impression that it’s mostly technically-oriented positions that are finding their way overseas.
I won’t even attempt to defend my take on the telephony costs. VOIP…duh…
Considering that I work in a call center for a customer service-oriented company, I must have overestimated the job security of others in the same type of position as mine. Thanks for the info, disturbing as it is. 
D
I saw 60 Minutes or Dateline or one of those news shows do a special on this a couple months ago. From what I saw, companies are saving a fortune by “offshoring” their call centers. I used to work for a company that outsourced much of the call center I worked in. Fortunately, my job was still specific enough that I didn’t have to worry. But if you work any sort of general customer service job and you’re in a call center, I would say it’s just a matter of time before Apu is doing your job for 20% of what you are making.
Actually, most employees of offshored call centers are being asked to use Western names (in the somewhat optimistic hope that people will be fooled into believing they’re in, say, Trenton, rather than Bangalore)- so it’s actually just a matter of time before “Charles” is doing your job for that 20%.
Given the massive turnover most of these overseas call centers are experiencing, it’s only a matter of time before costs will start increasing to the point where India becomes a less attractive option. I predict Eastern Europe will see the next big foreign-outsourcing boom, although finding mass quantities of workers with both the excellent grasp of English and the minimal pay requirements of Indians is going to be a toughie.
An interesting article, from a journalist working undercover in an Indian call center: http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1183552,00.html
IBM have a very large call center in Dublin.
IIRC it covers Nth America and Europe.
There are many call centers in Ireland as the country tried very hard to get these companies offering them tax breaks etc.
We’ve also got huge IBM(I used to work in the microelectronics division testing and scanning chips. Trained in the States and then back home), Intel, HP and Dell manufacturing.
I’ll have a look to see can I find a list.
Oh and we were told by the head of IBM in Ireland the main reasons IBM chose Ireland were the tax breaks and 20% less in wage costs.
Speaking English and a very high number of 3 level educated workers also helped but it was $'s as usual that mattered.
I actulaly work for a call center that is specifically outsource. We deal with mostly smaller firms, but we are based in Regina, Canada. The reason so many Americans hire us is the cost is lower.
I know people working call centers for American companies in India.
From their accounts, the average salary is about US$160 to about US$240 per month. Varies depending on the nature of customer support offered and the BPO company or client you work for. More as you climb the ladder. Turnover rate among employees is extremely high, so they’re coming up with new retention schemes all the time. Some are even asking new employees to sign bonds.
Some, if not most, companies ask employees to change their first names to american sounding names while taking calls.
They are permitted to reveal their location if asked by the caller. They are first asked to say South-East Asia, then India, then Bombay if pressed.
I’m quite certain Citibank’s customer service is in India.
Yes, Citibank is big in India.
Our call centers are in Mumbai. When we need 100 extra people, 1,200 show up for the job. The company that we contract with picks up the employees by shuttle every day and returns them home at the end of the shift. We rotate 2-3 people there for a month so we always have an onsite presence.
Most of the companies that outsource had plans to send even more stuff over there, but a common theme has developed: You still need a significant US presence, because only basic call handling can be done there. We can only send one fifth of the work we wanted.
Call centers are not the only things that have been outsourced:
radiology (a tech in the US takes the images, but a doc in India reviews and diagnoses)
legal services - a core group of corp. attorneys are kept in the US, but they get all the legal prep and write-ups done overseas
accounting services - do you really need the math done in the US for five times as much?
billing services - typical back office paperwork (all mail is scanned and imaged, put into work queues and processed overseas.)
My favorite: The family physician has been outsourced. *How does it work? * Walk into med center in U.S. where a nurse tech asks some questions, takes vitals (just like today) and punches in the data. In the room is a TV and webcam, the doc walks in on the webcam, asks some questions and orders a prescription. When you visit the doctor, most of your visit involves waiting, seeing an aide or tech. Since the family physician has become nothing more than a pill pusher, family physicians have basically made themselves extendable. And people mostly want a magic pill to make them better. When my Inidan neighbor showed me this, my head almost exploded. It was so brilliant that I just shook my head…and still do to this day.
Not to mention all the comp programming done overseas…
Someone mentioned the specter of Indian wages rising, and making this kind of thing less feasible.
While that hasn’t happenned yet for call centers, I was reading an article in (I believe) ZDNet’s CIO Insight publication that basically argued that the software development market in India has experienced such rapid growth that it has stopped being an attractive option for some software firms.
They mentioned an Indian living in the US, trying to farm out his development work to a company in Bangalore. He had two project managers in India quit on him in 3 months, and apparently there’s a problem there with programmers leaping from firm to firm anytime they get offerred a raise.
Offshored development in India was being compared to Silicon Valley in 1998 in the article.
So… yes, the same thing could happen in call centers, although it’s less likely due to the lower skill requirements.
I remember reading an article in Time about how Indian Call Centre staff are getting burnt out very quickly; expected to work twice the standard 8 hour day, with little sick leave/holiday leave.
They’re having problems with staff turnover etc.
Commasense is right. And you can both “outsource” and “off-shore” at the same time.
Circuit City is one that has at least part of it’s operation overseas. The language barrier was such that it took me 45 minutes to order a box of CDs.
They all need to die…
Our Medical software company recently did this - I called support because I was having a problem with our Medicare electronic claims. The man I was speaking with was very hard to understand, and had no idea what I was talking about. Called again the next day- got a lady this time, couldn’t understand her, and she didnt know what I was talking about either. She transferred me to someone else, still didnt get it. I don’t know what part they didn’t get- claims, Medicare, electronic billing= but they kept telling me to fix things that had nothing to do with the problem. I sent a scathing email to our software vendor, and got a call the next day. This was an apparently American lady, who INSISTED the calls were not being outsourced, but was able to fix my problem in 2 seconds. (now I have her phone number haha i wont be calling the support line again) One of our doctors is from India, and he has promised the next time he visits there he will find them and teach them about Medicare billing!
Do you have a cite for radiology being outsourced overseas? I have a relative who’s chief of Radiology at a medium sized hospital, and I asked him about this once. None of their stuff is outsourced - according to him there would be serious liability issues involved in getting a diagnosis from a doctor who is not licensed to practice in the USA. They do at times transmit the images to a doctor, but that’s normally the on-call radiologist reviewing a late night/weekend ER MRI from home instead of driving in to look at the screen for 10 minutes.