[QUOTE=Sameer]kev
I do notknow what company you deal with because customer service calls tend to be FREE OF CHARGE. The call centre which I supervised had call times of 2 minutes, surely generalizations are for the…

I’m not sure who you worked for, but calls to a lot of customer service numbers in the UK are NOT free, key examples of numbers I use:

HSBC 0845 National Rate (is that 4.4p/minute?)
O2 25p/min (even though I’m on wopping contract!)
Wanadoo 0845 National Rate
Npower 0845 National Rate

As for 2 minute call times, I very rarely make calls to customer service numbers which last 2 mins, and my example of the efficieny difference between talking to someone who can spell ‘farm’ and somebody who needs it spelt 2/3 times illustrates that most of my calls to indian call centres have never made it under the 20minute barrier!

Anyway, It is as simple as companies making more profit in India and China in human resource labour than being sensative to people saying they have to spell out there name these many times to make them understand. Face it, the average person in an Indian call centre gets about say 7000-8000 Indian rupees. That is roughly 200-300 pounds a month. Now why would a company have there call centres and employ hundreds in developed nations where even the minimum wages are higher than what companies pay here. They would rather listen to your compltains about you not being able to communicate with the eprson sitting in India than change the whole system the other way around.

On a personal note i dont mind these call centres in India as much as people compltain there English is bad and what not. They are generating employment and thats the biggest pro of this.

I fully appreciate their reasoning behind this move, and as I say generally I support globalisation, why not share the wealth! BUT what I’m not sure you’re aware of is the growing tide of people in the UK who are getting fed up with these centres, and on so this is why companies should consider paying a little more and keeping it in the home nation. So from a profit point of view it will soon start to come down to people choosing companies with good customer service, and I’m sorry to say it but Indian call centres do not provide good customer service. I personally have already left one company, and 80% of the reasoning for taking my custom elsewhere was the call centre experience.

It may also save the companies money, but for me it costs me in 2 respects, firstly there is the cost of a call, in my example given from Wednesday evening I spent over 20 mins on the phone to India and achieved nothing…all at ‘national call rate’, then I spent 3 minutes on a call to a UK call centre and all was complete. Secondly there is the time issue. My time is worth in the order of £500+ per day to my company, if I have to make a daytime call to a centre and it takes 20mins then that is £23 of lost time to my company.

I personally have a very neutral accent without any heavy regional acent, yet I have to spell the most basic of words, I cannot imagine how frustrating this process must be for soembody with a thick accent.

I hope this doesn’t come across from my point of view as a race issue, I do not feel it is at all….I’m sorry if it does, but I’m not racist, and if the language/culture issue was imporeved then I’d be fine with it.

So Whalebone…is it not possible for your organisation to create a simple web page highlighting which firms use Indian call centres. I know that if somebody created a comprehensive link and promoted it well then people may get in the habit of checking it out….I know I would now. I’m sure there wouldn’t be a legal issue because you would simply be stating facts.

indeed. I’m sure United would’nt let too many planes get re-possessed as most long haul routes for most American airlines are lucrative

Indeed, long haul routes for all airlines are extremely lucrative. The problem is that under Chapter 11 United ahs not been paying their full rate for aircraft leases. Then a bankruptcy judge determined that they should revert to paying the full negotiated rate. The only way for United therefore to reduce the rates was to renegotiate them. The problem is that they don’t have sufficient funds for paying the full rate (or even renegotiated rates probably) for these aircraft and so they will be repossessed, they do own about half of their 767-300s.

I thought you chaps were all in favour of letting market forces decide things? :diablo:

As you may know from many of my posts on Commercial, I am theoretically in complete favour of the market shaping itself, and even globalisation is a friend of mine generally. And then this happened………outsourcing call centres…arghhhhhh!!!!!!! “And how are you spelling ‘farm’ sir??”