Another national ISP ships all calls to outsource

ldyguique · #1 (**permalink**) 01-09-2004, 07:35 PM

Extreme paranoia is causing me to remove the content from these posts and move them off-forum to a non-spidered blog. Robots.txt will be in place until after March 17th.

ldyguique · #2 (**permalink**) 01-10-2004, 08:13 PM

Extreme paranoia is causing me to remove the content from these posts and move them off-forum to a non-spidered blog. Robots.txt will be in place until after March 17th.

ldyguique · #3 (**permalink**) 01-11-2004, 06:11 PM

Extreme paranoia is causing me to remove the content from these posts and move them off-forum to a non-spidered blog. Robots.txt will be in place until after March 17th.

mikmik · #4 (**permalink**) 01-15-2004, 04:22 AM

This is interesting stuff, ldyguique. Very important, as well.
Thanks for your efforts here, I am learning lots.
I also think that you and your co-workers got severely mistreated. There is to much BSing going on with surprise announcements etc. for this to be kosher.
One thing I do want to add, though, and that it may be the harbinger of a 'spreading out' or leveling of wealth amongst the have's and the have not's of the world.
That is to say, the middle and lower classes will merge across international boundaries, and the Big Corporate Structure will control even more wealth.

ldyguique · #5 (**permalink**) 01-16-2004, 04:50 PM

Thanks for the support. I've spent this past week researching, reading, and creating a structure of where I want to take this. I will spend most of my time over the next day or so finishing up my article(s) with the primary focus being just how pervasive this issue is becoming and how it's being perceived in the U.S., Australia, and the UK.

I've been doing a fair amount of yelling and cussing as I come across particularly notable quotes. The statistic used for years was that 5% of the people controlled 95% of the wealth in the U.S. I know that this particular statistic has narrowed during the past couple of decades; however, I've not been able to find the "current" stat -- I believe that it's closer to 4% control 97% of the wealth. The wealthy are definitely getting wealthier.

The lower middle class took it in the shorts during the 1980s and 1990s -- and now it's rapidly moving through both the middle class and upper middle class, where the predominantly college-educated are grouped. Now, it's the college-educated taking the hit. Many of those who are moving into the permanently unemployed in their own field-of-choice and training still owe on their college loans.

I think that one of the grimmest issues to come out of the research is the misuse of the Visa program, which was designed to NOT replace working people, but to supplement them, where there were not enough trained and skilled people. We now have 7.9% unemployment in the IT industry and over 1 million visaed people working in those displaced workers' jobs from out of country. Additionally, most of these people will return to India, China, or the Phillippines, and will work to expand the further offshoring of jobs as they apply their expertise in not only the industry but in marrying the cultural differences into their paradigms. Some Indians are openly stating that the only way that offshore outsourcing could have been deployed this rapidly was due to the H-1b and L-1 visas.

There are several outsourcing companies who are seeking to buy American companies, just so they can bring in plenty of L-1's that they will place as "transferred" employees, who will in fact be working as contractors to Corporations and businesses at other sites.

Quote:

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SATURDAY, JANUARY 17, 2004 01:47:23 AM ]
HYDERABAD : VCustomer is scouting for an acquisition in the US to add to its service delivery capability from the North American shores.

“We are looking very seriously for an acquisition, which will not be less than $25 million in size and should be carried out within the year,” Mr Sanjay Kumar, CEO told ET. The BPO space is maturing fast and a consolidation of sorts is already happening in the industry with companies in the size of 400-500 seats selling out to the larger ones that are growing bigger, he explained.

This apart, vCustomer is also scouting for locations for opening a fifth process centre in India with 1,000 seats. The company currently operates three process centres in the national capital region and has recently opened a fourth in Pune, which will be operational by March taking the total strength to 4,300 seats. VCustomer will be adding a total of 2,500 seats by the end of the year, Mr Sanjay Kumar added.

“We are looking for a place where there is no larger BPO located,” he said stressing good infrastructure, reliability and administration support were the primary criteria. Manpower was not an issue as the company sourced its people nationally, he said. VCustomer processes close to 3.5 million calls per month making it the largest non-captive voice contact support services firm in India.

Anyway, I'll be back :)

geoffreygag · #6 (**permalink**) 01-21-2004, 08:35 PM

ldyguique,

I've been out of work four months. I just enrolled with AOL's new $10 per month offer under the Netscape brand. www.netscape.com

If you need customer service help, you will be charged $10.00 on your credit card. Guess what, Netscape had a technical problem so I had to call customer service. My tech assisted my call from New Delhi. AOL has also expanded their business abroad. The CSR did a great job with my call. It's a catch 22.

ldyguique · #7 (**permalink**) 01-21-2004, 08:57 PM

Geoffrey --

Yeah, I know. I hear both sides of it all; as not only are our customers dealing with some of the outsourcing that we've been using now for over a year, but many also have Dells, etc. The biggest complaint(s) that customers have is either can't understand through the accent and/or scripted replies that don't fit their needs. From inside the organization, the lack of full support is easily apparent in logs. Some will be cured by ongoing training. Some will be cured by expanding the list of adamant "unsupported." Some will be cured by timeNgrade, i.e., experience.

When I started these articles, I was enraged. I went into deep research mode. The more I learned at a certain point, the more I descended into a deep blue funk; hence, the reason that I've not written the backlash article(s) yet. I've now moved into a more contemplative mode and see some other issues that I hadn't before. Now, I'm struggling to find the right balance as there are bigger issues than I'd thought at first.

And, I do think that full genuine support is going to be a "paid" for thing in the future. It's simply not possible to supply the level of support necessary for the inexperienced who hose their machines with viruses and spyware.

Anyway, more will come.

webweaver · #8 (**permalink**) 02-05-2004, 01:26 PM

Great GREAT information there ldyguine!

One of the vendors I work with has also switched all their support calls to a call center in India. :-(

NAFTA, WTO, FTAA they are all responsible for this corporate windfall. No offense intended here, but when the majority of people who are being serviced by these call centers in other countries are English speaking, it's very difficult to get quality customer service when there is a language barrier.

The large multi-national corporations are opting to find cheaper labor outside of the US, how patriotic is that? I am getting so fed up with this capitalistic fascism in our country. There is no checks and balances on Bechtel, Haliburton, AOL/Time Warner/ GE/Viacom/Clear Channel/FOX/CitiCorp,e tc.etc.etc...Corporations should not have more rights than individual people.

We all need to wake up and start doing something before our whole country (U.S.) is owned and operated by some treasonistic corporation. (not like it isn't now...)

These ofcourse are my opinions...

ldyguique · #9 (**permalink**) 02-07-2004, 10:37 PM

Thank you, webweaver

I've been doing a lot of research on the issue and while I'm hardly a full expert, I've learned enough to know that offshore outsourcing is nothing like the hype that's being spilled, bucketful by bucketful, over us.

I want to report on it, newspaper by newspaper, glorious spin by spin, and will. However, I don't think it's appropriate to continue this particular thread here and will be moving it over into my own blog. It's a beginner's work in progress as I try to figure out what I need to do to make the blasted program run right! I'll send you the link when it's ready.