Since I used to work for HP (through Sitel), I have some familiarity with outsourcing. First off, no one wants to talk to someone with an accent so thick you can’t tell the difference between on and off. Be it Indian or someone from Newfounland. Clear communication is key in any client service centre. Fine, out of the way.
Back when outsourcing was the “in” thing, companies just shut down local business and shipped it out overseas (or to Canada for a while). Made sense, it cost 50-80% less to host it elsewhere. Of course, the main problem is that you’re now “exporting” money into another country, reducing the amount of cash available in yours, which is where your product is sold. Moving on…
Outsourcing is bad for a few reasons. First, technical expertise != client skills. You have your engineers working for the company and you have to hire people off the street with no knowledge of your products or client needs. All of the people with those skill sets are in another country, working for another company. You’re fine for about 5 years but when people start retiring or finding another job, you have no one to replace them and become “top heavy” due to the sheer amount of managers you have compared to regular workers.
Second, there are haves and have-nots. Think of it this way, every country is a cup. The americas are a full cup, India (for example) is 10% full. India will do a lot of work in order to fill their cup. Eventually however, their cup fills up and the benefits diminish. People have higher education, more expesive lifestyles and therefore require more money. As long as the money out is less than the money in, you win. This range is shrinking daily.
Third, expectations. We live a life of first world luxury. I mean it, even the poorest Canadian is 1000x richer than most other people on the planet. A panhandler makes more money than a doctor in Africa. As we outsoruce money, we are in fact increasing the third world expectation to live in first world luxury. Plain and simple, the world cannot handle that. We don’t have enough resources. I’m not saying we need to keep other countries down, what I am saying is that it took us 400 years to reach this point. You can’t expect an entire country of near billion people to do that 400 years in 15 and NOT have huge consequences.
What I’m really trying to get at is that it’s a very complicated system. Companies do not excel at quality, they excel at quantity. If their products were more reliable and intuitive (Apple support is local for example) they would need 50-75% less staff for support and be able to keep the local economy strong. Outsourcing is at best, a temporary solution and one that in the long run, hurts everyone in a company.
Leo's Life 