The wrong reason, but definitely the right move
Dell has announced that they are moving most of their customer support out of India.
I couldn’t help but get terribly excited when I heard the news. Maybe I’m jaded because I work in computer customer support and I know there are many, many Americans who would jump at the chance to work for Dell. I was pretty upset to hear that they (and several other companies) farm out their customer support to India. Hence my gladness to see they’re bringing some of it “home”.
Their reasoning, however, sucks ass. They’re not doing it to give jobs back to Americans. They’re doing it because the Americans can’t understand Indian accents. Don’t even get me started on my can’t-you-freaking-Americans-even-attempt-some-tolerance-patience-and-understanding rant.
November 26th, 2003 at 10:01 am
They are doing it because they couldn’t provide the level of customer service they wanted to, because they were harder to understand, but also because they were doing little more than reading from scripts provided to them (didn’t have enough skill to truly help troubleshoot the problems.) I don’t blame that on lack of skill of the people of India, though. I blame that on when you buy cheap labor in any country, you get underskilled workers.
December 3rd, 2003 at 12:42 pm
Tolerance, patience, and understanding are fantastic things. But sometimes you have to be able to understand the person you’re talking to, especially about tech support.