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Listen to the podcast: Outsourcing Tech
Support - Good, or Evil?. 
Transcript
If you call the tech support lines for many major companies these days, you can't really be sure that the person you're talking to isn't a few miles away or on the other side of the planet. We've all heard of technical supporting being outsourced to overseas companies, often in India, to reduce costs. The current state of technology allows us to communicate anywhere on the planet cheaply and instantaneously, so it does make a certain amount of sense that, all else being equal, companies would be foolish not to consider it.
But is it evil? Many think so.
I don't.
What I believe that most people actually find evil isn't where their tech support representatives might be located ... it's the quality of that tech support. They may believe that they're seeing a lower level of expertise when they can detect that the call has been routed off shore, and it's certainly possible that that's the case. But it's not the location that's the problem - it's the incompetence.
And incompetence knows no geographical boundaries.
I truly and honestly don't care if the person I'm speaking to on the phone is in my neighborhood, my country, or half way around the planet, as long as they can help me. That, typically, can be summed up in two measures: can we communicate, and do they know what they're talking about?
You don't have to be overseas to blow it. I've nearly hung up the phone on U.S.-based support reps because their regional accent was so thick that I could barely understand them. I left my former ISP because their technical support staff was incompetent and could only follow the script that they had been given.
I would have been quite happy in both cases if I could understand them, and if they could actually help me - even if they'd been overseas.
My bottom line? Don't blame overseas outsourcing, per se, it's part of what's keeping your costs down - but do hold companies accountable for the quality of their service, regardless of where it's coming from.
Article C2510 - January 4, 2006
Here are the facts.
Posted by: fastfreddie1959 at October 28, 2008 7:56 PMI do desktop support all day long.
Like leo i do it for free.
The one major complaint is the fact that 99%
of the people from india do not speak english
very well.
Plus they read stuff out of a manual supplied
by what ever company hired them.
I personally would never waste my time calling
them for this reason alone.
More times then not the answers are not
in the supplied manual.
I deal with thousands of people on a daily basis
and even i don't have all the answers.
I say that if your gonna sell a product in America
then keep your desktop support in America.
All HP & Dell are gonna do is push customers away
from buying there products-simply because
there support leaves a lot to be desired.
EVIL. I buy American I expect to hear someone speak good English if I call support. I hate it when I give detailed information on a problem and I get a canned response that doesn't make any sense then wait 5 minutes for them to come back with a response that has nothing to do with the problem. I no longer use customer support unless it is to get money back they shouldn't have take out. I work on the problem until I figure it out or find someone or a site like Leo's for the help. Makes live easier and better on the heart. Now if I can just figure out how to fax from Vitsa like I can in Windows XP home without buying a dedicated fax program. That one has me stumped. Good luck to all.
Posted by: Jim Vetor at October 28, 2008 9:27 PMI don't think it's "evil", although it DOES take away jobs from Americans (many of whom badly NEED jobs). In that sense, it is perhaps bad for the American job market. (But then, so are lots of other things.) And, let's be fair -- you can't entirely blame the companies; this $%$%!#& economy is hurting THEM, too! What do you do when your Customer Support expenses skyrocket? How do you cut costs? If the choice is between outsourcing or ceasing to offer Customer Support at all (arguably the best option of all in terms of cost-cutting), which would the user prefer?
But more to the point, as a User, I CAN'T UNDERSTAND THEM! Their accents are too thick. I honestly cannot tell what they are saying to me! I have had to call twice, or even three times, before finally getting someone I could understand.
Once THAT little difficulty is solved, generally speaking I've found them to be reasonably competent. But companies do need to take care that the people they hire can be understood by the average caller, or all their effor is for naught!!!
Posted by: Glenn P. at October 29, 2008 9:33 PMI pay Dell $13.00 a month to talk to someone in North America when I call for support. I did it so I would be able to understand them. Until this last computer I bought from Dell I didn't need it but this one has been a pain in the ###.
Posted by: Gary Adsitt at October 30, 2008 1:53 PMIts true, that if you cannot communicate there is no point calling to support center, But believe me as a tech support engineer I have seen most of the time the person calling support center is impatient, and he expect all the answers are with the support executive, Not forgetting that the guy trying to help you without seeing the problem himself or resolving it himself, his eyes and hands are you who do it on his instruction., many time the customer give them half information, he need to pull out more inputs from you and without irritating you..
It is not the matter where the support engineer answering from , if the company outsourcing it to Phil or India the cost benefit is passed on to we customers., to bring the product more affordable, same time we call the customer support without even bother to read the manual or have a google check., which increase the number of calls to the support center and they need to accommodate more staff and only way to control that costing is outsourcing.. So please read before you dial..
Also the companies outsourcing to Phil or India , is many time not taking care of the quality, if the problems can be limited to FAQ the agents has , then the life would have been easy, the guys need hands on experience to support rather than reading out from a script or FAQ database., you need to spend time and efforts to train your agents after all they are your face to the customer and if they cannot respond to the customer, you the company who loose the credibility
Regarding the American accent or British accent, or phil-english ot Indian English it is not that hard to communicate , we already grown beyond the Geographical boundaries, America is in Iraq or Kuwait today is not that Americas’ concern is only with in its geographical boundaries., If American believe it as world leaders then speak like that, don’t shrink your thoughts so small, Do you know there are civilization and languages before English had its alphabets..
Posted by: Steven George at November 18, 2008 3:12 AMI am wondering if anyone knows of a US company you can outsource technical support to. I have a small company and I am either looking to get technical support for off hours. I want high quality support, I don't mind paying more for better support for my customers.
Thank you
Posted by: Ken at November 22, 2008 2:18 PMAll i want to say on this discussion is, not all the five fingures are same.Price always pays you quality, If you go for the right one you will never face such problems.On other hand every company providing support should work on two aspects i.e quality support and assigning technically skilled staff.Have come accross many big whales in this field who themself prefer the Tier 1 staff to use canned responses and then escalate the issue to Tier 2 or Tier 3 staff.The reason for same is huge number of requests on the live chats and helpdesk support, the other reason is some major issues of hardware failure or hacks or the time span needed to fix the issues.These are the main reasons where canned responses are used to let their customers know that the techs are working on things and will be back to normal soon.Rest if you pay a good price to a company for support i am sure no company would like to loose such a client :)
Posted by: Navinder at January 12, 2009 7:38 AMI do not think that it Evil from any possible angle. I work in TAC (Technical Assistance Centre) for a reputed US company & I believe we are doing a tremendous Job. When we talk about Quality and competency please let me know why India is highly recommended for outsourcing. Let me tell you couple of points:
1. Cost Cutting
2. High Quality
3. Neutral Accent (That Can be modified)
& several others.
Think about it. We are the future....
Posted by: Ashish at July 30, 2009 12:03 PMOutsourcing Tech Support is a great thing, specially on time of emergency. I don't see any evil thing there.
Alric
Posted by: alric at September 28, 2009 1:12 AMhttp://myglobalstaff.com
Most of the time they are incompetent. They read from scripts of the most basic troubleshooting without acknowleging your own experience and things you've already tried even after you tell them.
Most of the time, I sense that they don't even fully understand what my problem is before they are start troubleshooting, as they'll often tell me to do something completly outragesous that has nothing to do with my problem. For example running a system restore is not going to fix a hard ware failure. As a matter of fact they can be completly oblivious to very common problems that can be easily Googled.
With todays delining job enonomy in the US, with hunreds of thousands of Americans getting laid off, it serves best to keep as many jobs in the US as possible. There are plenty of Job starved communities hear that could use whatever opportunites are availible.
Posted by: Tim Turner at September 29, 2009 10:39 AMOnce America gets itself on track, then they may outsource but until then we need the jobs here.