Following up on Supa's post on toxic toys made in China, I have been thinking a lot about outsourcing recently. Most of these thoughts manifest themselves when I must call the phone company or the credit card company. It seems that I, inevitably, end up talking to someone who is clearly not in this country, who doesn't speak English particularly well, and who is often unable to help me at all, especially when my problem deviates from the script the person on the other line has been given. My feelings about outsourcing are complex and varied. I really believe that many Americans simply do not want these jobs, and thus, as these are jobs that need to be filled, American companies have to outsource them. Outsourcing, of course, benefits corporate America in lots of ways--cheaper services + charging their customers the same prices=bigger profits. From their standpoint it is a no-brainer. From a customer service standpoint, outsourcing causes lots of problems.
Mr. M and I recently combined our phone, internet, and cable into one bill (yes, we decided to "bundle" all of these services), and I was told that the cable company would contact the phone company to turn off our phone line but I needed to contact the phone company to terminate our DSL service. I did all of this, but for months I continued to receive bills for DSL services that I had canceled and was no longer using. Every month I called the phone company and spoke with multiple people, each time my account was credited the amount they said I owed, and I was assured the account was closed. I was given confirmation numbers each time. With each phone call, I was bounced around the world, and I initially always spoke with some one who was clearly not American. Once this people realized I did not have a run of the mill problem they were wholly unable to help me. Each time I was transferred multiple times, and the problem was not resolved until I demanded to speak to a manager, who was then able to figure out the problem, put in the proper override codes (which makes me think that these companies intentionally make it difficult to cancel accounts), and cancel my account.
Here is my question: is outsourcing really so cost effective? My problem, which I would argue was aggravated by the fact that the initial employees were not prepared to deal with such a complicated problem and the fact that no one in these companies is cross trained (they have a separate department for everything, so I had to speak to someone about canceling the account and someone about crediting my account the amount the company said I owed), took over 5 hours during 4 separate phone calls to be resolved. Each time I spoke to at least 4 people. The $31 a month the company continued to charge me was barely enough to cover what these individuals earned in the amount of time they spent trying to correct this problem. Surely there has to be more cost effective way (and one that promotes better customer service) for companies to handle these sorts of issues.
2 comments:
My husband is a software engineer (from now until he quits to become an academic) so he deals with outsourcing a good bit. His company (you've heard of it) has an office in bangalore and he deals with those engineers a good bit. A few of them are really sharp and they're all able to code well enough but as far as the higher level work like systems design, they just aren't able to perform at the same level as their american counterparts. I suspect that has to do with understanding the specifications, so it might be more about linguistic and cultural misunderstanding than about technical skill. Anyway, the point is they ultimately work more slowly and what they produce frequently has to be cleaned up by american engineers.
so while my husband's job could be outsourced in theory, the more he actually works with the engineers in India, the more secure he feels in his job. He's just better able to understand and execute what his boss is looking for.
As far as cost effective, the outsourced engineering jobs end up creating more work for my hsuband. cleaning up their code becomes part of his job. At that point, it starts looking like hiring a good american engineer might be worth the extra money.
from what I know about the outsourcing debate, is that the debate occurs on many different levels.
First, it is a dominant paradigm in the business community, which means that some companies move jobs out because consultants tell them they will be more successful.
Second, it depends on the job level. Anastasia's description is very apt for the high level jobs. But this may change in the long run if American students do not study engineering, math, and science.
Third, for lower level jobs that require less skill, such as call centers and even some assembly-line manufacturing jobs, it makes more economic sense to send jobs overseas because workers receive smaller salaries and companies receive greater tax benefits. These last two aspects more than make-up for any other form of problems that develop.
One of the problems you address is a trained incapacity whereby companies train employees for certain tasks to meet division of labor requirements. Usually this strategy is cost-efficient.
In some cases, the $31 may be more than any person earns in a day or two.
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