Is outsourcing to India a thing of the past?
(Photo Credit: UMass Lowell Sunrise Radio)
Finally many companies are realizing that outsourcing customer service to India is really a whole lot more expensive than initially thought. The cost isn’t in terms of dollars, but in terms of frustrated, angry, upset, displeased, aggravated, and unhappy customers.
The Globe and Mail has reported that Primus Telecommunications Canada will be abandoning most of its operations in India and in turn bringing more of its customer service back to Canada. Primus isn’t the only company leaving India as last month BCE said it will be cutting back the amount of calls going to India and Delta Airlines has already closed all of its call centers in India. Retaining customers is even more important in these tough economic times as every dollar towards the bottom line helps keep companies a float until the economy rebounds and money is easier to come by.
Many companies have seemingly only discovered now that customer service results from India are not exactly satisfactory. Apparently, customers do not like dealing with a customer service representative who for the most part doesn’t even understand their problem.
Outsourcing customer service to India, according to analysts, is roughly 50% - 75% cheaper than having customer service representatives in North America. But this is like buying a shirt from old navy. Sure, it’s cheap and looks decent, but after two washes the fit is no longer the same and you don’t even want to wear the shirt anymore. Whereas if you put up a few more bucks for a shirt from Banana Republic the shirt lasts a long time and fits the same after every wash. This is exactly like the trade-off between customer service in India or North America. It’s cheap in India, but customers become unhappy after a few calls. But in North America, customers are happier longer (although most people in the end hate dealing with customer service representatives).
I don’t know why it took these companies so long to figure this all out, but they finally did. I am sure happy that in the future I won’t have to call India and waste two hours explaining that Bell overcharged me.
