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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
I 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.
Wow... a lot of really interesting (and mixed!) views on outsourcing, years after the original post.
Leo I think you're spot on. Outsourcing is often assumed to mean "offshoring", where many companies can benefti from "onshoring" their outsourced services.
From an Australian perspective, much of our tech support is also sent offshore by the 'big boys' (not so much by the smaller players, in my experience). However, this is really not smiled upon these days - and "offshoring" in some circles is a bit of a taboo topic!
In reality, an inadequately trained person in India or China is just as inadequate if they are sitting in the same office as me. However perception is everything. I know many Australians who will hang up if they hear a long delay between the phone ringing and the answering of the phone; knowing it's going overseas.
I also believe culture plays a huge part in tech support; an Australian using "Aussie slang" with someone in India or China, usually results in silence on the other end of the line.
Truth is, for technical support - outsourced or in-house - the best solutions come from conversations, not scripts.
Evil? No. Good? Depends on MANY factors :)
Take care.
Glen Parker
Posted by: Glen at February 21, 2010 10:03 PMSydney, Australia
OmniSupport.com
Outsourcing per se as the article states isn't evil. However if you can't understand the person or the person competence level isn't up to par then forcing your customers to indulge this lack of customer support is evil. Customer support in most companies now adays seems to be an after thought and that's a real shame.
Posted by: Anthony at March 10, 2010 5:45 AM