While we are on call centers...
think it impacts immigration, even though it's not taking away what we do, as 'skilled workers', since it's a fairly emotional topic, right now...
That said, my experience with calls connected to a call centers with India was completely unsatisfactory.
Nothing to do with the accent, off course, but it was like I was talking to a brick wall - those guys seemed to have a specific script to follow, and my responses seemed to be irrelevant - he would just go on reading from the freakin' script. If it had happened just once, I'd say maybe it was just that one person, but it happened on 3 separate occasions - and when you ask for a supervisor, they are all on 'a break' - not once, but again, over 3 separate occasions. Everybody is 'very sorry' about my inconvenience, but that's all they seemed to be capable of - being apologetic. We would just go round and round, in circles, without any resoultion. They just did not get it! I then stopped calling the toll free # and called a US # with a non 800 area code, got to someone in the US who got my point, understood the situation, and had my satisfactory resolution in < 5 mins.
Money saved, $440. Time taken, 3 unsatisfactory calls of 20-30 mins each with center in India, 1 call of 5mins within the US. If the offshore reps are not empowered to do whatever it takes to satisfy the customer, then the customer ain't coming back...not sure how many US businesses would like that.
I, for one, think that all the call center jobs are not going anywhere...outsourcing is fine for silo'ed work like maintainence, development, research, etc; anything that involves contact with a person, looks like it's coming back soon.
K