Call centre jobs outsourced to India or Phillipines - any thoughts...?

Question

Some Australians feel their jobs are being 'snatched away' by 'foreigners whose accent is difficult to understand' and far from quality customer service...

This is a pretty huge overgeneralisation, but just going by what has been written up in the mass media....

I, for one, have had been serviced very well by our Indian friends at Telstra... However, at the same time, it has been frustrating to understand them clearly (as there is the distance causing poorer sound) and ofcourse thick accents can be hard to understand...

I'm sure there are same, if not more strict recruitment processes in say, India or the Phillipines (ie - need uni degree etc)..

What are your thoughts on this...?

Are companies getting too greedy and trying to take (I hate to say) shortcuts - taking away jobs from valuable local employees..?

Perhaps we are so set in our ways that we're just being a bit closed minded on the matter..?

Answer 1

If the company can save a lot of money by doing that, they will go for it. From the business perspective, it's a smart approach. From the people's perspective, it's a bad choice as it will leave many people jobless within the country. But in terms of quality of service, I don't think they lack the technical quality to do the job. Yes the accent is thick but that's something we have to live with, even as part of multi-culturalism. There are different kind of people in the world. Everyone doesn't have English or Australian or American accent. And non-English accent is not same as incompetence. We have to open up a bit. As part of globalisation, we'll be having more of this kind of business trends in the future.