Indian Call Centres

here’s my 5 cents worth

I’m a part timer in a 24 hr call centre in the UK. I sometimes have to deal with Indian call centres for UK insurance companies. The call centre that i work at, works for a very large number of companies who deal with vehicle insurance and vehicle breakdowns, some of which are the largest insurance companies in the UK – think ships, a white something, and a precious jewel, as well as many other very big vehicle breakdown service, and vehicle warranty service providers – we run the acutal brekadown service of behalf of these companies.

I can say with some confidence that this call centre is quite safe, and will not be moving to india. This is becuase, (and we are a call centre that answers calls, not one that makes those annoying advertising calls – want some windows?) the job requires knowledge of the country – specifically geographical knowledge – we answer calls to people who have broken down in their vehicles and we send out a recovery operator to assist clients – its not the AA or RAC, btw. I believe (like passengers wanting real pilots at the front, not computers), people who have broken down in the UK and are distressed as a result, will want to speak to a british person in the UK, and not someone 8000 miles away, or however far it is.

On the language side, iIfind that indian call centre staff are ok in what they do, but sometimes understanding each other becomes a slight problem. Over all, the worst problem with language and being able to understand the person on the other end, comes not from indian call centre staff, but from british people who can’t talk properly, or (without being racist) non-white British people who have a distinct asian accent. When I come accross someone with this accent, its harder to understand them than it is to understand indian people working in the call centre.

Also, i have to occasionally speak to people in one of the continental EU countries, which i think is the Netherlands, who are not english born. yet, they speak English wonderfully, and again, without being racist, much better than some British or British Asians.

i work in a relatively small call centre – stereotypically i think people believe, and in most cases quite rightly, that call centres are vast noisy places with hundreds and hundreds of desks, all with ringing telephones to go with them. It maybe, i think, be in these sorts of places that customer service is not up to scratch becuase the call centre is harder for the supervisors to control.

In the centre that i work in, we work for about 75 companies, (not just breakdown and vehicle insurance companies) and recieve about 7000 calls a week, yet there are just 20 desks. As a result, its more a controllable team, with a group of very good supervisors, who can provide the best of service. as a result of being relatively small, its cheaper to run than the big ones. The company that i work for is also runs its own vehicle breakdown policy service – we are not just a call centre operating for other companies.

Ok, economically, its cheaper to relocate some call centres to india, but i can safely say that some will remain.

Companies outsource to become more productive and provide goods at a cheaper price, this is the fact on the ground and outsourcing is actually a science now, you calculate wether you should or not based on cash flows etc, not on greed, unfortunately i fear that labor unions and the inefficient left has done a better job at portraying companies as evil capitalists than companies have at telling the simple truth. Harvard has a Masters in Outsourcing, perhaps some members should look into it and learn more about how outsourcing is but a financial tool.

If people do not realize the benefit of millions getting cheaper prices and the creation AS I POINTED OUT of thousands of jobs in other higher paying sectors but would rather want back the lower paying jobs? weird, then go vote for your local Marxist comrade. there are plenty of jobs in England, outsourcing and free trade has created morejobs in England than it has taken away, there will be 700000 jobs in London alone in 2010 that will not have enough people and they will hire foreigners. THE PROBLEM IS NOT THE LACK OF JOB OR THE GREED OF EVIL CAPITALISTS THE PROBLEM IS SKILL MISMATCH DUE TO IMPROPER RETRAINING WHICH ITSELF IS DUE TO A BASKET OF REASONS, THATIS THE FACT.

“IF these companies do not outsource, your BILL WILL GO HIGHER NOW, this is why they have to cut costs so that you pay less.”

Oh yeah Bt has been going through a sticky patch, (4th qtr results from their website).

Years end @ 31 March

Group turnover £18.623 billion

Group operating profit £2.864 billion

[So what you are saying is it would have folded or bills would be higher to the tune of £2,864,000,000 ? this year alone ? and ongoing ? 😮

My goodness I didn’t realise UK call centers were that expensive to run :confused:
Well all hail outsourcing then…Phew….£2.8 billion……….who would have thought that 8,000 Uk Bt workers cost £2.8 billion :rolleyes: .
Well they can sleep soundly knowing their sacrifice of reduced pensions and an uncertain future has saved the company from complete disaster 😡 .

That’s just Bt and yes a few years ago it had a huge £30 billion pound debt (brought about by corporate greed over the G3 cellphone fiasco, don’t worry the board members responsible have all left the company with very nice golden handshakes and pensions with many noughts on the end) and the debt has been reduced. Who paid for it ? the employees with their jobs.

Yet all the time, that debt has been serviced, and the company has still shown a profit.
Maybe not the £3.2 billion (debt free) per annum that it used to make but still in the black.
Of course back then it was up with the big boys the £3, £4 and £5 billion profit a year banks and insurance companies. Thank goodness all those have outsourced all their expensive call centers or then where would we be ?

It’s not a question of survival it’s purely corporate greed.

Flood

My goodness, in the US customer service calls tend to be free for the most part
you dial a 1800 number, its sad that its not the case in England, must be the bigger market in the US which lets US companies afford to do such things.

And as for accents, again, I think that as posted above, the problem that you mention is getting better, much better now, either an Indian call centre can accurately and efficiently do the job and I have pointed multiple evidence and surveys to showcase this or as I POINTED OUT 10000 times, Indian companies themselves are making sure that services continue under their contract by hirering UK workers. Its still cheaper for you and for the Indian company.

Finally people seem to have a misconseption here, when a company is profitable, its not that they are so greedy and so Uncle Sam like that they outsource anyway, companies outsource because they face long term competition, take long distance phone companies for example, there is a huge trend of internet startups, calling cards, other LD companies comming into the market after deregulation etc, long term profits and competitivity do not look promising, this is why companies outsource. YOU KNOW THERE IS A FINANCIAL CALCULATION BEFORE ONE OUTSOURCES AND IT IS NOT BASED ON CURRENT PROFITS BUT RATHER PREDICTED OR ESTIMATED LR PROFIRS AND CASH FLOWS. IF these companies do not outsource, your BILL WILL GO HIGHER NOW, this is why they have to cut costs so that you pay less.

A lot of the problem in the UK is that this all goes against the British sense of fair play.
Goods and public services are on the whole are pretty expensive in the UK compared to the US and the rest of the EU, and company profits reflect this.
Without exception all the companies that have moved jobs abroad were already making hundreds of millions and in some cases billions of pounds profit per year.
The general public know that none of these jobs had to go abroad in order for the company to remain financially solvent yet overall, we still pay a lot for our goods and pay the same as we did before for a poorer (by poorer I mean more difficult to use) customer service.

It’s not the case that people do not like conversing with someone whose first language is not the same as their own, far from it for the problem is not just confined to call centers as jobs in manufacturing are also being decimated, purely in the persuit of profit.
Globalisation is a wonderful term, it enables company bosses to sleep at night because it absolves their concience of any loyalty to their employees.

Just finished working for a callcentre (dutch language though) in Dublin, grrreat fun

I have a solution to the british problem of Indian call centres, what the companies should offer is the following introduction.

“Your call will now be forwarded to India, if you prefer to speak to an telephone operator in the UK, please press 9, you will be charged 1.10 pound a minute though”

So there you go, either 20 minutes on the phone with India for free, or with an English agent, but you have to pay……

Cheers

The last dealings I had with a call centre was over the poor and shoddy workmanship of a music system I’d bought just two months previously. Not sure if the call centre was in India (I have a poor faculty for accent identification) but English was definitly not the operators first language.
When it is the fault of the manufacturer why on earth should the customer have to pay to call the manufacturers customer services line – think it was an 0845 number – only to be treated to appallingly bad service from them as well? I am annoyed because something I bought in good faith from a supposedly reputable manufacturer does not do what it is advertised to do (the shop washes its hands and says that I need to deal with the manufacturer, of course) and all I get is some one who cannot even get their own employers name right, let alone mine. If that is the future then it is not something I look forward to.
Suffice to say that I had to pay to send the item back, and when it was returned they’d only gone and CoD’d it! Sod that – it went back with a nasty note impersonally addressed to the managing director (probably didn’t reach him/her though). It did arrive back again about a week later, delivery paid.
In addition has this new interest in phoning places to change details – say, loyalty card centres or banks/credit card companies – and having to give strings of identity numbers (longer than the average telephone number) every flaming time gotten on anyone elses nerves?
“I’ve changed my address.”
“What is the serial number on your card?”
“1234 5678 9098 7654 3210 xxxa.”
“Ah, I shall just put you through to the right department. Hold on in the queue please.”
(A few minutes of Vivaldi, interspersed with ‘you are number xx in the queue; we value your custom so please hold’ messages…)
“Welcome to thingy loyalty card, how can I help you?”
“I’ve changed my address.”
“What is the serial number on your card?”
“1234 5678 9098 7654 3210 xxxa.”
“I read that back as “1234 5678 9089 7654 3210 xxxa.”
“Yes – NO!!! 1234 5678 9098 7654 3210 xxxa.”
“One moment please… Do you wish to close this account?”
“No, just change the address.”
“Would you like the customer offers sent to this address or your new one?”
“Eh? What on earth would be the point of that?” (I swear this is true – I gave up on changing my personal information for the WH Smith card after this)

If only we could deal with people in the real world, and without any of those “press 1 for this, 2 for that, 3 for the other, 4 for something else, 5 for a patronising operator, or 0 to return to the index” phone line things. People who care about their job and understand what you are saying and understand that the letter ‘a’ is pronounced ‘ae’, the letter ‘b’ is pronounced ‘bee’, and the letter ‘z’ is pronounced ‘zed’…

Flood

gosh

really, you would suppose service would be for free, then again, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

I actually considered working in India for a callcentre for a while, I don’t mind the **** wage, and its a change from Dublin. There are certain human resource companies that hire westerns for Indian callcentres (how is that for outsourcing)

But here in the UK the majority of calls to callcentres – whether Indian or UK based – are not free, Sammie.

It may well be the case elsewhere in Europe, but not over here.

about the callcentres

Just finished working for a callcentre (dutch language though) in Dublin, grrreat fun

I have a solution to the british problem of Indian call centres, what the companies should offer is the following introduction.

“Your call will now be forwarded to India, if you prefer to speak to an telephone operator in the UK, please press 9, you will be charged 1.10 pound a minute though”

So there you go, either 20 minutes on the phone with India for free, or with an English agent, but you have to pay……

Cheers

That should end all this bruhaha, if accents etc are the problem, Indian companies have and will be glad to outsource this back to the Uk. That is the fact on the ground and that is helping Brits and Indians.

Since 2000, 12000 UK workers have ben hired BY INDIAN COMPANIES OPERATING FROM INDIA and as Indian companies become more competitive more jobs wil be created. That is called free trade. People do not tend to look at the big picture, I got my knwledge of economics ridiculed when I pointed this out a few pages agol, of course there is structural unemployment aka skill mismatch in the UK and that takes time to rectify but things are getting better, there will be a DEMAND FOR 700000 JOBS IN 2010 IN THE UK AND NOONE WILL BE AVAILABLE IN THE UK TO TAKE THEM, talk about free trade being bad. 😀

http://infotech.indiatimes.com/articleshow/899387.cms

While the US is still finding ways and means of curbing outsourcing of work to India, the UK government is inviting domestic IT companies.

Ian Hughes, deputy high commissioner, UK, says, “There are around 480 Indian companies which have invested in UK, of which 355 are IT companies. Moreover, these companies are investing across the country , not only in London.”

“It is much more easier to invest in UK than in any other country in Europe. We have shifted the European base for MphasiS from Holland to UK. Even visas are easier to get,” according to Jerry Rao, Chairman, MphasiS.

UK gives business express visa to companies, which have a subsidiary or branch office in the country. According to Mark Dolan, deputy director, British Commission, “These visas are given to existing employees of the company and help them in setting up their operations in UK. There is no upper limit on the number of visas, but they are related to the size of the company.”

For instance, a company like TCS, which has invested in UK for more than 30 years, will more or less get all the visas it needs . But a small eight-man outfit will get a lesser number, Hughes said.

According to Rao, “There is no public push-back to outsourcing in UK. British companies are more eager to outsource than even some US companies. The country has a good telecom infrastructure and the language helps.” Overall, it is a wise decision to invest there, he says.

There are some skill-based hubs also emerging, which are now being tapped by Indian companies. For instance, Reading has a number of accounting, auditing and consulting firms. Edinburgh is a good place to recruit financial professionals. Wales has a fairly large automotive design talent. In fact, HCL Technologies has been ramping up its call centre in Belfast, according to Dolan.

Outsourcing is unlikely to become an election issue in UK, as none of the parties are likely to raise it. The Conservative Party is unlikely to raise the issue, which is labour-related. At the most, politicians whose constituencies have seen job losses, may raise issues of data security.

“We have to be pro-free trade as it will only help the country’s productivity and economy in the long run,” Hughes says.

The beauty of free trade, Indian companies are also looking for UK workers

http://www.rediff.com/money/2004/nov/03bpo.htm

Indian IT major HCL said on Wednesday that it will add 300-400 more jobs during this fiscal at its business process outsourcing centre in Northern Ireland, making the country a hub for its European operations.

In a reversal of the trend of UK companies relocating call centres to India, HCL said its BPO in Belfast can garner more business from clients in Europe, who are reluctant to outsource works to offshore locations like India.

HCL BPO already employs 1100 people at the call centre in Belfast, an operation it took over from BT (British Telecom) in 2001, retaining the entire 290 employees.

“HCL is the largest Indian employer in the UK in the IT sector,” N Ranjit, chief operating officer, HCL BPO, told reporters in Chennai, after a meeting with a delegation from Northern Ireland, led by its economy minister Barry Gardiner.

Explaining the advantages of Northern Ireland, Ranjit said lower labour costs of at least 15 per cent as compared to other European centres and high quality of manpower, were the main factors helping HCL BPO in Belfast.

“Our Belfast revenues have grown to £20 million this year from £16 million last year,” he said.

Stuart Innes, British Deputy High Commissioner, said India and the UK were coming closer through better economic ties, as shown by the increasing investments by Indian companies in the UK and vice-versa.

“UK is now the second biggest investor into India and India is the eighth biggest investor in the UK,” he said.

http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=42293

Reflecting the growing bilateral trade, over 500 Indian companies have started operating in the UK during the last three to four years, Indian High Commissioner Kamalesh Sharma has said.

“The companies included an outsourcing unit
which I visited recently in Belfast which employs 1,100 people,” he said last night at a lecture demonstration by renowned Kathak exponent Gauri Sharma Tripathi at the Nehru Centre, the cultural wing of the High Commission here.

“Britain and India are natural partners in the new economy and the two countries could benefit a great deal in sharing knowledge in the fields of biotechnology, communications, Information Technology and R and D.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2004/jan/28bpo5.htm

Fast-growing Indian companies in the United Kingdom have pumped in about £300 million into the British economy to date and their investment levels may increase as India becomes more prosperous, Sunil Mehta, vice-chairman of the National Association of Software and Service Companies, has said.

A survey by Nasscom and Evalueserve indicated that the passage of jobs between India and the UK is not a one-way street.
Mehta believes that about 12,000 jobs have moved from India to the UK, mostly in the services and IT industries.

Among leading Indian companies in the UK is Wipro Technologies, which provides British companies with business processing operations in India.

Wipro has grown rapidly as British and American companies increasingly rely on its services to shift jobs overseas. The report states that Wipro employs 590 people in the UK and that its European revenue in 2002 reached £121 million.

Also highlighted are the operations of Infosys, another Indian IT company that has made rapid progress on the back of companies moving jobs to India.

Infosys Technologies opened in the UK in 1996. According to the company’s latest accounts, its European revenue reached £75 million in 2002. The company has 450 employees in the UK.

The third Indian company is the Tata Consultancy Service, which has been in the UK since 1975. Its clients include Bank of Scotland, British Telecom, and Transco.

Tata has 1,000 employees in the UK.

Despite the report’s positive outlook, there is still concern among the UK opposition parties that jobs being moved offshore will have a long-term detrimental impact on the employment market in the UK.

Unions, particularly those whose members work in the financial sector, are becoming increasingly anxious to curtail the job losses.

According to a research commissioned by Nasscom, Britain will face a massive skills shortage by the end of this decade.

Britain’s ageing population and slow birth rate will leave the country short of 700,000 workers in health and social care, retailing and financial services by 2010.

AS ONE CAN SEE FREE TRADE HAS NOT ONLY TAKEN AWAY JOBS AND FROM THAT LAST LINE AS I MENTIONED BEFORE THE DEBATE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ABOUT EDUCATION, THERE WILL BE SO MANY JOBS AND SO FEW TO TAKE THEM UP 🙂 but most people do not tend to read up on facts.

take heart, Grey Area

My mother-in-law lives in Dehradun, Uttar Pradesh, Manu.

Personally speaking, I don’t have a problem with any of this, other than the quality and cost issues we experience here in Europe. 😀

Gentlemen,
This is a Fear that haunts not just U.K but the entire west (more so the English Speaking West). To be fair, this is an era of Transition.

May I also add, that it was the US/UK combine that evangelized to a Socialist & Closed-Economy India about the benefits of Free Markets and Globalization?

I attach this link from NY Times for your perusal and edification.
A Race to the Top

Having said the above, British Consumers have a right to complain if the service is poor and nobody (anywhere in the world) likes to be called 10 times a day. If the service is poor, enough complaints from p*issed off consumers will bring those centers back to UK, it has happened with Dell (in the US) before.

It is not going to be a bed of roses for India, that is for sure (take heart, Grey Area) :diablo:

And if one examines more closely one will find that Indian companies have created jobs in the UK also: For example, many Indian Companies are top Employers in Belfast, NI. (infact, one is a Top ten Employer whch employs 1900 people – [all Europeans]. See this slightly outdated link ). It is not an equal give and take for sure, but will get better with time. In Australia for example, Indian Investment and job creation has outstripped Australia’s efforts in India.

Lastly, let us be civil to each other, even when we are disagreeing.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/42781.html

India Maintains Outsourcing Advantage

By Anthony Mitchell
www.EcommerceTimes.com
Part of the ECT News Network
05/03/05 5:00 AM PT

The Indian IT outsourcing industry’s advantages as an outsourcing destination include overall quality, good value, increasing domain expertise and increasingly sophisticated performance metrics and program management skills. India stands ready to maintain its position as the top outsourcing destination for many years to come.

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New information technology outsourcing opportunities are largely going to India, thanks to India’s long-standing advantages. Despite negative press coverage that India has received for problems at a few outsourcing facilities, India is set to maintain its lead as the high-tech outsourcing destination of choice for U.S. clients.

India has the advantage of quality, price competitiveness, infrastructure, economic diversity and a vibrant corps of Western expatriates embedded as managers in Indian information technology (IT) firms. India’s quality and price advantages are detailed herein.

IT Cultural Revolution and the Rush to Quality
The drive for market share in the global IT outsourcing market has produced more CMM Level 5 software centers in India than anywhere else in the world. CMM is the highest level achievable under the Capability Maturity Model, a quality system standard developed by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Indian managers realized that economic benefits would be gained by quality improvements and have energetically pursued those benefits.

The conception of quality is undergoing a sea change at Indian IT facilities. At non-Indian IT outsourcing facilities offshore, quality is often seen as part of a larger process, attended to and owned by the macro level of each organization. In those settings, as in government owned firms in India, the individual merely needs to follow procedures to comply with quality standards.

In a dramatic departure with old-style Indian management techniques, the IT industry has shifted the locus for quality down to individual people and individual actions. Ten years ago, Western clients would often complain that instead of merely having IT facility managers take ownership for the overall quality, Westerners simply wanted every individual in their offshore contractor’s organization to take ownership for each phone call, each e-mail and each trouble ticket that came their way.

Before the outsourcing cultural revolution broke out in India in the last half of the 1990s, when a problem or question came to an employee, it was considered proper for that employee to refer that problem to someone else for resolution. People would feel as if they had done their job properly if they made referrals rather than taking the initiative to fix a problem or answer a question themselves.

The IT workforces in India, particularly younger managers, are increasingly adopting U.S. approaches to quality and individual initiative. This makes the outsourcing process easier to launch and maintain. It has enabled Indian facilities to cross the trust threshold with many of their U.S. clients.

How Sub-Par Facilities Hold onto Clients
Even Indian outsourcing facilities operating at moderate levels of quality have been able to hold onto U.S. clients by establishing good long-term customer relationships. Once a call center or data processing firm has established a good track record with an American client, that client is likely to continue working with that firm unless their prices or quality takes a serious turn for the worse. This is true at both U.S. domestic and offshore call centers.

American clients of call centers will usually continue working with an outsourcing facility that is not always up to par with service quality — as long as such clients believe that the facility’s managers are quick to respond to client concerns.

Although it spent a few years floundering after a modest start in 1999, the Indian commercial call center industry has climbed out of its infancy. Clients with the patience to support their offshore contractor operations in India and to budget for adequate training and ramp up periods have often been rewarded by increases in quality and performance.

Increasing Domain Expertise
Call center and software firms in India are well positioned for continued quality and process improvements. This is due, in part, to continuing improvements in their domain expertise. Domain expertise refers to knowledge of the subject areas in which people work.

New software and call center firms starting up offshore often lack focus or domain expertise. Lack of domain expertise adds hidden costs to U.S. clients, who must spend time transferring domain expertise to their offshore contractors.

By specializing and not attempting to do everything, Indian software and call center firms have often been able to gain domain expertise, establish proven track records within those domains, and to provide both better quality outputs and better value for money for their clients.

Long-Term Price Competitiveness
Costs have been increasing in India and will continue to do so for ingredients such as labor, land and taxes. However, India will remain a cost-competitive destination because of high initial value propositions and because of unrealized opportunities for cost control.

Voice services and non-voice back office processing work (also called business process outsourcing or BPO) are more price sensitive than software development. Redirection of outsourcing work away from India would be understandable for cost reasons, yet the price per production (login) hour at many top-tier Indian centers has fallen from US$18 per hour four years ago to $15 an hour or less today. Prices charged to U.S. clients for training time at Indian facilities have also dropped.

There are opportunities for cost control beyond mere reductions in hourly charges. In 2001, when my firm began sending voice work to India, we could not find one call center there that owned an interactive voice response (IVR) system in the U.S. to enable the center to handle customer inquiries before routing a call overseas to a live agent. The industry at that time was not attuned to clients’ needs to reduce talk time and therefore clients’ costs.

Indian outsourcing firms have become increasingly sophisticated about using technology to achieve lower costs and better services for U.S. customers. Now completely automated inbound call handling solutions for domestic U.S. customers are cheaper and more seamless from Indian providers than U.S. ones.

The head start that India has over other outsourcing destinations has given its IT workforce a head start on building up a professionalism and competence that will enable that workforce to provide better value for money in the coming years, despite wage increases. Whereas the call center workforce in some areas of India has experienced annual turnover rates of 50 to 100 percent, the annual turnover rate at software firms such as Infosys has remained a staid 10 percent.

Sophisticated Performance Metrics
Indian outsourcing firms have become increasingly proficient at working with U.S. clients to reduce the average cost per call. Performance metrics such as average speed of answer, average length of call, first-call resolution rates, and customer satisfaction data are receiving increasing and well-deserved attention across wide sections of the customer service industry in India. The sophistication of metrics reporting now seen at Indian call centers often rivals or exceeds what is available from North American providers — many of whom are working with older and less sophisticated equipment than is in use at newer Indian facilities.

The quantitative focus on performance metrics is giving Indian call centers the ability to drive costs down for customers. It provides Indian call center professionals with skill sets that they are taking with them on international training and consulting assignments in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Dubai.

The proficiency and high-level capabilities that many Indian IT professionals are capable of demonstrating on a consistent basis is evidenced in the rise of Indian-based IT project management firms such as eBusiness India, who are my direct competitors. A few years ago I would not have paid much attention to them. Now their performance capabilities are equaling or exceeding what Americans can do.

Low Currency Risk
The declining value of the U.S. dollar has been a concern at offshore facilities in South Asia. Kurian James, who directs an InternationalStaff.net contract facility in South India, jokingly remarked that if the U.S. dollar loses any more of its value, then he will be able to afford an American chef. However, the U.S. dollar has not lost significant value against the Indian Rupee, particularly when compared to other currencies such as the Euro.

The U.S. dollar’s loss in value to the Euro has been fluctuating between 30 percent and 40 percent over the last three years. Both currencies have lost value compared to gold. Changes in the value of the Indian Rupee to the dollar have been comparatively mild, with exchange rate now at a little more than 43 Indian Rupees to the dollar. Two years ago the rate was a little more than 47 Rupees to the dollar.

All the outsourcing contracts from the U.S. to India that I have seen are in U.S. dollars. All the ones that I have written have provided no allowance for reductions in the value of the U.S. dollar. This reduces risks for U.S. firms from additional currency fluctuations and adds to India’s attractiveness as an outsourcing destination compared to destinations such as Canada.

In summary, the Indian IT outsourcing industry’s advantages as an outsourcing destination include overall quality, good value, increasing domain expertise and increasingly sophisticated performance metrics and program management skills. Other countries might challenge India’s IT outsourcing lead, but India stands ready to maintain its position as the top outsourcing destination for many years to come.

Free trade has benefited the world with more high quality jobs in both countries that are engaged in free trade, see East Asia, see the US high skilled jobs market etc for evidence, btw free trade is a British invention, Adam Smith.

Free trade does mean that your country has to be more competitive, that is not a bad thing, but if you cannot compete, it is your system that needs reform, those high skilled jobs are in the UK, problem is that many foreigners are working in them because graduate intake of natives in the UK is low for a whole basket of reasos and you should fix that problem and good luck to you on that front, I am sure that you will do fine. Everyone benefits when there are cheaper prices, but in everything there will always be some losers, the key is that there be many many more winners for every loser and free trade has done that. The fact that these low level jobs are leaving the UK is a good thing not a bad thing, it means that the UK had developed, eventually these jobs will leave India too (low level) and that will be a good thing too.

free trade makes sure that you produce the good in which you have a comparative advantage, meaning, the good that you can produce more efficiently than someone else at a cheaper price, people will now jump and generalize and say butoh gosh look Indian call centres are worse (do you even have statistical evidence), but INdian call centres are more efficient because they are cheaper and have decent performance times, the ratio is thus still higher than in the Uk, see Dr Sutton, LSE library, globalization.

India cannot take all UK jobs away, it is a mathematical fact, if i have a comparative advantage in basket of good x, you will have a comparative advantage in good y. So you will not loose everything, get over it. 🙂

Free trad makes goods cheaper and people have greater access to these goods, your phone bill etc would not be as cheap as it is if it was not for free trade, all goods would be more expensive and that would hurt the whole of the Uk not only the few low level workers who can’t seem to retrain properly.

To be fair there was a survery conducted by a British company Mitial I believe that talked about the existing problems of some indian call centres.

Remember, some are better than others

The problems were mainly concentrated at the lower end scale for the simplest things such as debit transfers, weather and train info etc, these jobs will no longer be in India anyway because automation is taking over these lower end customer support jobs, also internet etc…. This was the conclusion. Cost savings by the average UK customer was reported at 60%, pretty damn good. 🙂

Also its not like most of these jobs would have been held by Uk workers in the first place if outsourcing did not exist, there was already a trend of automation underway, people hated that so they said, ok well you can talk to someone then in India, companies cannot afford to maintain low rates and make customers happy while having UK workers doing lower level jobs for 10 pounds an hour!.

The UK still has one of the highest skilled labor force in the world, you need to fix that education system for the long term, there is no fear in competition, you will all be better off. I seem to have more faith in the British workforce than the Brits themselves. But the world is changing now, developed countries will not have jobs in customer support etc, they will have jobs in finance, biotech, robotics etc, retraining of the workforce is necessary. there are 100000 of jobs in London alone in such fields but the problem is that they cant find enough highly skilled British labor, look at the doctor situation and urse situation as an example, they are getting more foreigners to work because there is so much demand for a higher end field that pays more than those crummy customer support jobs.

I did not say that customer support in Asia was not upto scratch? I said that I am sure that some are not as good as others and that these are getting better and that THE OVERRIDING PREFERENCE OF CUSTOMERS REMAINS CHEAPER PRICES FOR MORE GOODS RATHER THAN PAYING HIGHER PRICES SO THAT A FEW LOW LEVEL UK workers can keep their jobs. Sorry but that si the truth. I am sure that some call centres are not performing that well and either they will change or they will switch back to another cal centre that is better or even back to the UK, FROM PAGE ONE I EXPLAINED THAT THERE ARE MANY EUROPEANS NOW BEING HIRED IN INDIA ITSELF TO COME AND PICK UP THE PHONE FOR THOSE MORE ETHNIC ACCENTS.

People often talk about a doomsday situation but if one were to take East Asia as an example, they embodied free trade, they took your manufacturing jobs in the 70s, the UK did not sink, the same thing is happening today, and btw those E Asian countries have high wages now and are still competitive and still keep their high end jobs.

But if i say the above i get accused of
(1) Mispelling generalization(s) by a ten year old kid.
2) Get called a troll
3) get my education questioned.

pathetic

Also when I mention art history all the time, its just mentioning the obvious, these arts degrees are dead now in the 21st century and do not get you jobs, people should not be studying such things anymore and if you do, don’t blame Indians for taking away your call centre jobs, these are low level jobs.

I’m sure customers will soon get annoyed and decide to move back to the customer services that can assist them correctly.

Sameer, you even say call centres in Asia are not up to scratch. That is disgraceful, before these companies transferred calls they should have made sure that all was well.

Plus, I hope I never have to pass a complaint to you. What will you tell me? ‘Oh, it’s O.K., you’re getting your laptop cheaper, now go away and stop annoying customer services’?

dme

From the link I provided before

What are the benefits of free trade for the average person?

The historical record is very clear that free trade bestows many benefits to the average person. Those countries that lower trade barriers and open their markets enjoy higher economic standards of living. Consumers have access to a wider range of higher quality products at prices lower than they would otherwise pay. The average person also benefits in terms of wages and job opportunities. When labor and capital flow freely to the most productive areas of the economy, workers are employed in better, higher quality jobs with higher wages. While there are inevitable short-term transition costs in some sectors of the economy, the long-term benefits of free trade for all far outweigh such costs..

Related Works:

Protectionism Hurts Consumers
WTO Report Card: America’s Economic Stake in Open Trade
Trade, Jobs, and Manufacturing: Why (Almost All) US Workers Should Welcome Imports
The Blessings of Free Trade
Also see the CTPS issue page, “The Benefits of Globalization.”

bw this is only a forum, you are not supposed to not make spelling mistakes and it is pathetic for others to call you 1) troll and 2) get personal.

You cannot teach such people the truth about the world, they are bitter and prefer not to blame their system but rather free trade. Goodnews is, noone really cares about them, free trade is ere to stay and is growing faster but thanks kev for your english lessons, it was really on topic.

Sameer.

“As far as paying for customer support, I suggest you contact your company, in the US, calls are free, how pathetic it is in the UK.”

Yes, it is pathetic. Pathetic that this Country ever tried to educate you. Or was it in fact you who educated the LSE?

“Also I am sorry kev but you again have generalized as all call centres not being as good as the ones in the UK based on your own experience and the ones of others, reality is that its not the case, they are as good, some are worse, some are getting better, a normal distribution. Only idiots generalize, I won’t bother debating with them.”

Arrogant prig! I have said that in my experience Asian call centres have been a problem. Generalise, as you will know having been educated in the UK, is spelt with an ‘s’. It is you who makes the sweeping generalisations and you have proved with your unparalleled arrogance and pomposity that it is you who is incapable of debate.

“But if you really want these jobs back then try to convince the MAJORITY OF YOUR POPULATION to pay 3 times the amount for a product because now it is being manufactured in the UK, well done genious. It seems that as outsourcing is accelerating and since companies max profits based on customer demand, people seem to care more about prices and outsourcing will continue, the few bitter arts students around here will complain and make non sensicle generalizations and then get personal and talk about your degree, let them be, from the sarcastic biased moderator to the so called knowledgable students of economics who seem to have no clue as to what comparative advantage means to the ones who tend to generalize as usual, by that logic based on what Ihave seen in England, all English people are drunks because I wet to 4 pubs and all they did was get drunk and puke on others! but my level of education permits me to be a bit more advanced than the lads over here. Its just simple, the world is competitive now, if you can’t comete you loose but don’t be a sore and bitter lad about it.”

Oh dear, the agonised rantings of a troll. Goodbye Sameer, next time you go out mind you don’t get your head stuck in the door.

Regards,

kev35