I must admit that I never expected to hear this kind of thing from an Indian newspaper. If it came from an anti-outsourcing website, then it would have been totally normal. I just finished reading a report in the website of Times of India titled, "Sorry, wrong number! UK trying to hang up on India". It seems that an anti India sentiment is growing among the UK consumers. I am quoting from the report here:
"A recent customer survey in this country produced a raft of figures calculated to worry the big boys of the Indian off-shoring industry and bosses of British companies alike with overseas call centres emerging as a major figure of hate for thousands.
They unkindly cited incomprehensible accents, mispronounced names and a lack of familiarity with Britain's geography as the chief annoyance of having an Indian at the other end of the phone."
The concept of call center originated as a part of CRM (Customer Relationship management). Call centers are supposed help to satisfy the customers. I feel that Indian call center industry has been too much centered on America and Indian companies had not given enough attention to UK. India had experienced nearly two centuries of British rule and even the education system in the country was modernized by the British rulers. The close historical relationship should been the key advantage for Indian companies to serve the British market well as well as call center services are concerned.
Powergen has already decided to close its call centers in India and recently HSBC suffered a security breach. On the one hand, customer satisfaction in UK is degrading while the HSBC incident has caused a hugely negative impact among everyone in UK. So, the pressure is now growing on UK companies to bring back call center jobs from India to UK itself.
Now let us come back to our original question of whether it is the beginning of the end. India is still too cheap to ignore. If a UK company wants to take back its call center jobs to UK, it may get customer satisfaction back but it will suffer the risk of increasing production cost significantly. UK customers may be unhappy about talking to call center staffs in India but I think they will be even unhappier about the prospect of buying products at a more expensive price. Because of this reason, call center jobs rushed to India in the first place.
Well, I do not think that it is the beginning of the end but I feel that the signs in the walls are not so good for the Indian call center industry. In the recent weeks, in Internet, I found some negative attitude towards western consumers about the service of call centers in India. If this dissatisfaction of UK consumers spread among US customers in high level then it may badly hurt the call center industry in India. I wonder what Indian companies are thinking about this matter.
I'm sorry, but you just don't get it. Customers want to speak to people who they understand, and who understand them. Why can't UK companies and Indian BPO companies get that into their heads?
How would Hindi or Urdu speakers in India like to deal with Hindustani speakers in Mauritius, Fiji or Guyana, who speak very differently, and probably throw in words their customers in India won't understand?
Indian English is, at best, a quaint throwback to the 19th century, at worst, long winded and pompous. It's a different language.
Indians can write English better than many native English speakers, but this is about answering a question quickly, not about reciting poetry by Rabindranath Tagore. Why use fifteen words to answer a question when you can use five - and still sound polite?
By the way, it's 'the UK', not 'UK'. OK?
Posted by: Ken Westmoreland | November 1, 2006 6:18 AM | Permalink to Comment