Do you like Indian phone help?

my only problem is that, even after working for a man from india for a year, i still have a hard time understanding some words with their accent.

 

My experience is that they are polite and helpful. I do have a problem outsourcing our service sector to other countries. I'm not an economist but it seems to me that if we want to keep manufacturing and service sector jobs here in the States, the potential for outsourcing will lower our overall US average wages in these sectors. I'm thinking these lowered wages will reverberate throughout our entire economy with less money for overall spending, which will drive down revenues of domestic business, which may be forced to cut discretionary overhead and lay people off leading to further decreased earning power of the average US citizen. That's my take. Am I missing a positive aspect to outsourcing???

 

I am all in favor of outsourcing - as long as it's ONLY of the top executives. A CEO making $50,000,000 has a job you can get for a tenth the price overseas - save the company $45,000,000; think of how many U.S. citizens you can hire for that!

 

Maybe if they were required to read and learn from the American dictionary of cultural literacy, and were selected based on their ability to be understood without strain by the typical American, it wouldn't seem so frustrating talking to them. But try to explain your 'situation' to them and you can almost see the blank stare coming across the sea over your telephone. If numbers is all that's needed then I'd much prefer listening to a computer rattle off my statement situation. But if there's a special situation that needs attention I'd very much rather talk to someone who shares my culture as well as my language.

Imagine trying to explain a situation that the Indian is having trouble understanding, then asking to talk to a supervisor who is also an Indian who simply can not relate to your situation. After a while you just want to scream, "Let me talk to an American, dammit", but lo, you finally let out a sigh and resign yourself to the fact that 'the times they are a changing', and there's not a darn thing you can do about it.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SSimon @ Feb 22 2007, 10:13 AM) [snapback]394623[/snapback]</div>

Wait until thes politicians wake up to the fact that they don't pay any income taxes state or federal in the USA. Gee, wonder why the deficit is building.

 

I'm not exactly privy to sending our jobs overseas, but the fiscal help we're providing India with giving them all these jobs will, in the long run, help both of our economies and promote free-trade. The quality of life in India has substantially gotten better since we've been sending them our call-center jobs and such.

While I don't really like having a hard time understand what they say, it feels good knowing they're making a better life for themselves and not having to wash their clothes in the same water they go poopoo in.

 

There's really no stopping India, no matter what the West does. India will overtake China in the next 10 years as the worlds premiere manufacturing center. I just love the sound of an Indian womans voice, that accent absolutely kills me, so I have enjoyed my talks with them regarding my AMEX card.

Dave

 

Yep. Been talking to India recently, once on a credit card issue, once on my mortgage.

Seemed funny to me at the time that China (who most likely really owns the mortgage debt) would outsource to India instead of keeping it at home. US labor is even being marginalized abroad.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveLeePrius @ Feb 22 2007, 04:36 PM) [snapback]394755[/snapback]</div>

I love their food! It's my favorite. So, if our economy crashes 'cause they have all our jobs, I'll just move there.

I just ran a quick google and while it's not entirely sound, most evidence points to the fact that outsourcing is harming our domestic job employment rate. I say this evidence isn't sound as they can't be sure as companies aren't required to report this information. However, there's a movement to try to persuade companies to keep jobs domestically located. The other side of this argument is that domestic companies save wage rates on outsourced jobs freeing companies up to hire employees to fulfill other positions within the company. Logic prevails that these positions won't be "created" for no reason and that if a choice were present, this money would just wind up as a distribution to the owner (or as accrued equity)of the company, so I don't think we can bank on this dynamic to assist with growth of our economy.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Ken Cooper @ Feb 22 2007, 01:37 PM) [snapback]394661[/snapback]</div>

Amen. I had a problem with a new laptop two years ago where I felt exactly that way. After spending perhaps 30 minutes on the phone with a man who was quite difficult to understand (and who I wasn't convinced was terribly motivated to help me), I could sense that blank overseas stare. I finally gave up and said, "This isn't working," and hung up. I called back later in the hopes of finding someone more understandable and helpful. I got lucky; the young lady on that call was both. She diagnosed my problem in about 10 minutes (it was with the motherboard), and promptly arranged for a repair.

 

I always find it interesting when a assumptions are turned into fact. India, or any country for that matter, is not bleeding the U.S. dry on the scale assumed in this thread. Last time I checked, 4% of all US jobs were outsourced.

Sure that's alot of jobs, but a relatively smaller dink in the U.S. workforce than the media would suggest. And what kind of jobs are being outsourced? In Information Technology, mostly sustaining work is offshored. The biggest complaint the IT developers in India have, aren't the insanse work hours (9pm - 7am)... it's the lack of any real challenging work content. Same can be said about helpdesk and back office employment that is also offshored. All manegerial, enhancing, creative work is still kept mostly on US shores.

It will be a while before management positions can be sent overseas, but I see that happening as well. For now, If you haven't read Friedman's "The World is Flat", I'd give it a read.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Feb 22 2007, 12:59 PM) [snapback]394610[/snapback]</div>

I've had both with Indian CSAs, both the fabulous customer service associates, and the bad ones, just like here in the U.S. I must say, though, that it seems the CS level on the phone has actually gotten better in the US since the outsourcing started. I don't know if it's because the job force has been narrowed and can be more selective or that there's just renewed vigor concerning customer service.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Feb 22 2007, 12:59 PM) [snapback]394610[/snapback]</div>

Are your Indians from a reservation? The service we get from the Indian company we use is awful but it IS cheap.

The trade with India isn't free. The Indian government protects its turf. The Indians may be getting American dollars but American companies don't have equal access to the Indian marketplace. When the Indians leave the US their suitcases are full. On the return they are empty. I suspect lots of black and gray market activity.

 

I personally have a hard time understanding them. I wish they would outsource to Australia. Those blokes and sheilas have a damn sexy accent. So I would mind if it took long to "resolve the issue". LOL

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hjon71 @ Feb 22 2007, 08:44 PM) [snapback]394955[/snapback]</div>

I love an Australian or British accent. We need this guy on the help desk to solve all the little problems. http://www.dumpalink.com/videos/Harden_up_...ralia-9390.html

 

Boy, my experience is different from most of the above:

I have no difficulty at all understanding the Indian accent. However, I have mostly bad experience with telephone support whether the person is Indian or American. I want my support person to understand the equipment or service being supported.

Example: I was trying to sign up for an on-line service that required me to invent a password. The site was rejecting my passwords, saying that they must have at least one of each, upper case, lower case, and numeral, which my password did. I called support and was told by the first support person to clear my browser's cookies, which would have erased all the stored passwords (for sites where security is not an issue and I want to be logged on automatically). Fortunately, I had tried another browser (since Firefox does not work on a small number of sites) and so I knew this was unlikely to help. I finally got a higher-level support person who told me their site does not allow repeated characters within a password. (Nothing about this on the site itself, and the first person had made no mention of it, and probably was unaware of it!)

Item: I often get phone support people who do nothing but quote the manual to me. I read the manual before calling. I have no use for this kind of support.

It does not seem to matter whether the support person is a native English speaker or not. It does usually help if the support person is in-house rather than off-site.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(SSimon @ Feb 22 2007, 12:50 PM) [snapback]394772[/snapback]</div>

Good point. Indian food is my favorite, too. Problem is, if our economy crashes, we'll all be too poor to move anywhere. We'll be working from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. for two dollars a day providing phone support for Indians, on products made in India that we've never seen or used, and only have the owner's manuals, written in Hindi, which we'll have learned (badly) in order to get the job.