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Have you had a complaint about a product? A problem with your brand new computer? A question about a perplexing corporate policy?
It’s likely that your search for answers has spanned continents and traveled thousands of miles, sometimes without your even knowing it. Foreign call centers are not just a part of our everyday lives they have also occupied a prominent place in the cultural lexicon.
From the USA Prime Credit commercials with “Peggy” the not-so-helpful customer service representative, to the Oscar winning movie “Slumdog Millionaire,” Americans have come to believe that even when they’re told they’re speaking with “Sherry in St. Louis” it’s more likely “Baruni in Bangalore.”
In the 80s and 90s, a stunning number of American companies began outsourcing their call centers. As many as 600,000 American jobs evaporated — moved to the Philippines, India and elsewhere, where operators learned English as a second language, and chose their “American names.”
American companies were saving a lot of money, but now, many of those same companies are bringing their call centers home.
Eight thousand miles away from the call centers in India, there’s now a call center in Fort Worth, Texas, one of five NOVO1, a company that runs call centers, has in the US.
The Fort Worth center employs 800 American workers and is growing.
What changed NOVO1′s business is the answers Americans are looking for when they seek help from live operators. Americans used to need to call a representative for a password reset or an account balance. Now all that can be done online.
The answers that are not available online are much more complicated, especially for those overseas operators to answer.
“Is it really cheaper if it takes two calls to handle that customer,” Mary Murcott, CEO of NOVO1,told ABC News. “I can do the math very quickly and tell you it’s more expensive — that job offshore.”
A call center job in America starts off paying anywhere from between $20,000 and $40,000 a year, while in India the same job would pay just $2,400 a year.
It is a price many say is worth paying for the higher productivity achieved with American workers – and the ability to never have a customer ask to be connected to someone in the United States.
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Attention: David Muir
We have listened to ABC, d.Muir. extolling “buy American” and bringing manufacturing from abroad back to the USA. You miss that our jobs are going also to Mexico. Trane Co. of Tyler, Texas has much of its product made in Mexico and Carrier Corp. in the last month announced all Tyler, Tx manufacturing is going to Mexico, stating, even if this plant worked for minimum wage it was still moving manufacturing to Mexico. FYI
Posted by: Jerome Murphy | February 23, 2012, 8:50 pm 8:50 pm
I tell you what, its about damn time!!! I worked for a company that serviced GMAC and National auto finance accounts. When I first started there, there were ONLY offices in the states and I was proud to work for them. About a year and half later they opened a call center in the Phillipines and thats when the frustration started. It seemed like every other customer would complain that it was the 4th or 5th time they were calling about the same problem and that the foreign agent was unable to answer their question either because they did not understand what they were asking, or because the foreign agent simply did not want to help them!!! I honestly believe GMAC lost a HUGE customer falling because of their outsourcing. No one buys an AMERICAN car with AMERICAN financing to speak with “Apple” who does not know the first thing about car financing. You cannot expect a person who does not even understand the language to explain something as complex as a flexible finance plan. I really hope companies learned their lesson!!!
Posted by: Amber | February 23, 2012, 9:16 pm 9:16 pm
I do agree it is about time. This is a way to put many Americans back to work. People are always talking about the job rate …. well if the jobs stop being outsourced things would be different. Not only call center jobs but the manufacturing jobs also. Those jobs are the bread and butter for middle town USA …. these small cities and towns need these type of jobs that the company is willing to pay nickels across seas to do.
Posted by: shanna | February 23, 2012, 9:26 pm 9:26 pm
I used to be a network engineer. I used to spend a lot of time talking to call centers. I one particular call I was being instructed to type in a complex code into one of my servers. The call center guy told me to type in the letter Oht. What? Yes yes the letter Oht as in Ohtel . Or in english H as in Hotel. The guy spoke a mile a minute and would not believe me about how to pronounce the letter H.
Posted by: Richard Neilsen | February 23, 2012, 9:57 pm 9:57 pm
J Murphy, of course not all jobs are staying here. Every company has to do what’s best for them and their shareholders at the time. But, when you look at the numbers, for the first time in a long while the number of US manufacturing jobs is growing. Apparently manufacturers are learning that quality is more important than quantity. This article isn’t about manufacturing, but the meme is the same. It’s becoming cheaper, and better, to do things here.
Posted by: matyra | February 23, 2012, 10:06 pm 10:06 pm
Dear David,
I used to work for Blue Cross of California for several years. All the time, I ran into out of country calls who tried to confirm eligibility and claim info on members. As soon as their own info was verified, I proceeded to handle the calls. What galled me was local doctors and hospitals went out of country to verify members who was instate, not out of country. I couldn’t count how many times HIPAA was broken, but, because provider info was verfified, I was to proceed with the calls. We mutually parted ways a few years ago.
There was much conflict within my unit about the call centers put abroad, due to the calls from our customers. One thing to note: oversea providers who try to use other names other than their own, already had a black mark on them. No one wanted to talk to India who tried to use Latin names as identifiers for their call care agents. Same thing was said about the call centers in the Phillipines. Our customers would call our center in the states to complain about our surrogates.
Unfortunately, since being out of the loop, I have no idea what they’re doing now, or their business practice. I only hope HIPAA would not further violoated by out of country callers who tried to verified members instate.
Posted by: jcweaver | February 23, 2012, 10:15 pm 10:15 pm
Any jobs that come back to the USA are great. Companies should come back and they will have loyal and very good workers who are thankful for work. So bring jobs back to America for our nation and our people.
Posted by: Vicki | February 23, 2012, 11:06 pm 11:06 pm
But does this mean they will actually communicate any better? I’m very skeptical.
Posted by: glacia | February 23, 2012, 11:18 pm 11:18 pm
@Vicki – You may or may not be right about the loyal workers however that isn’t why jobs are outsourced. That comes directly back to us the consumers. We as consumers look for the lowest price. And American workers cost a premium when compared to foreign workers. My own company does a large amount of assembly work in Malaysia and it’s done as well as anyone here could do but at a significant lower cost. Would we have kept the jobs here if there were any possible way at all? Of course. But it was absolutely impossible to compete and pay 3500 people 10-15 times as much. It truly would have and put the company out of business to keep assembly jobs in the US and it nearly did because every competitor in our field was doing it already. And our customers right here in the US were moving to the lower priced products. Know what interesting thing I noticed while I was in Malaysia…. Malaysians buy Malaysian made products with pride. We in the US do not.
Posted by: glacia | February 23, 2012, 11:29 pm 11:29 pm
Mr Muir,
What about IT jobs? Our IT jobs are now outsourced to India and lots of companies prefer recruit Indian people to work here eventhough they don’t have greencards. These companies will give them greencards and they can bring their families too.
Posted by: davalias | February 24, 2012, 12:40 am 12:40 am
The fact that the workers in India, China and other countries are starting to ask for more money is the telling story in the idea of bringing jobs back to the US. It was only a matter of time. I saw David Muirs report about the Chinese asking for $3.00 an hour (soon to be $6.00). This plays a big part in the decision to bring jobs home. Now they have figured out that the American worker is 3 to 4 times more productive than the Chinese or Indian workers.
Posted by: howdymo1 | February 24, 2012, 6:18 am 6:18 am
I think most of us can tell stories of frustration with foreign phone reps. The worst case I saw was when my sister got a Dell computer when that awful Windows Vista operating system was full of bugs. The phone rep got the problem entirely wrong and sent a Dell tech to the house for the wrong reason. The Dell tech got on the phone to straighten it out and even he couldn’t get the Indian phone rep to understand what he was saying. The frustrated tech solved the problem by shipping my sister a new computer.
Posted by: The_Mick | February 24, 2012, 10:35 am 10:35 am
@ JCWEAVEAVER, I often call BCBS of California and get routed to an overseas call center. Alot of times I hang up because I have a difficult time asking questions in a manner that can be understood by these overseas agents. Since it’s behavioral health, it often involves diagnosis and exclusions, serious mental illness vs non serious mental illnesses. They just get confused when i go into details like that. I just ask for a supervisor before I lose it.
Posted by: Thoughtyouknew | February 24, 2012, 11:59 am 11:59 am
Healthcare providers who think they are HIPAA compliant but call for medical claim information should be concerned about oversea call centers. We all need to deman the location of the customer service rep. or to speak to someone in the continental U.S. And you can no longer rely on foreign accents as some call centers are in Nova Scotia Canada. It is not HIPAA compliant to provide any information to these overseas call centers.
Even though the representatives in these centers will assure you that they are HIPAA trained, unless you know that their country provides relevant legal protections and regulations you may be violating HIPAA.. India and the Philippines do not have these protections which include data breach notification and data protection laws, or they exclude the call centers from these laws.
Apart from the obvious impact on unemployemnt and the risks of giving protected information to call centers outside of the U.S., we are also allowing the Companies to avoid the related Federal and State taxes, Social Security and Medicare contributions, jeopardizing these as well..
Posted by: dennis fliegelman | February 27, 2012, 7:22 pm 7:22 pm