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  • AADD Moderators: swilow | Vagabond696

So i'm visiting an Indian Call Centre

um, don't include my name in the 'bravo' list frissk, i just lost my 'shitty call centre' job due to outsourcing.
 
Frisk - I can tell you that from working for 2 of the companies you mentioned and in rostering training, that majority of the employees are FULL time, not students as you stated, and are Australian born or citizens. Occasionally some students would be hired for outbound campaigns, but these would be very few & far between because for the most part the full timers would rotate doing this work. It was a shitty job, and yes for the most part the full timers hated doing it, but at the end of the day it was part of their job.

Also, working under the Call Centre managers, again at the companies you mentioned, you would not believe the amount of times we would get praise from customers, saying that it was so good to be able to understand what our reps were saying (which is probably the main reason that so many people are churning away from the bigger ISP's and supporting the smaller ones - because they have limited staff, but they are employing Australians).

Preacha - I got what you meant the first time, I just don't see the relevance to this debate. I an an Australian, I am employed by a company in Australia - so my job was created from someone moving on from the company. This does not mean that I am taking the opportunity away from anyone, it just means that I was the best person for the job. I am also sorry that you lost your job to outsourcing, maybe it will make you look a bit differently at the bigger picture now...

Recently (3 days ago actually) over 300 of my friends & ex colleagues lost their call centre jobs to outsourcing. These are people that had worked for the company for up to 10 years, who all have families - wives, children, husbands and in some cases parents to feed & mortgages to pay... luckily I caught wind of what was happening and knew it was only a matter of time before this happened so I jumped ship months ago. Had I have stayed, i'd be unemployed now too.

By the way, these people are not all "spring chickens" - most of them are over 35 - which, unless you are in management, most Call Centres won't even look at hiring you because they want younger people that are happy to be paid low wages rather than older people who now have to settle for the same pay due to the few inbound (and I stress inbound) call centre positions that remain on the market. So how exactly is it fair that people overseas are given these jobs and hardworking Aussies are given the boot because of it?

By the way, 5% of the population is still a very high amount of potential workers that do not have jobs. If only we kept our jobs in Australia, then maybe that percentage would drop further.
 
keystroke said:
they probably hate Australians as much as we hate receiving cold calls
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You know what you are an ignorant moron.

Who made this guy a Moderator ?
 
Let's not forget that unemployment includes students, stay at home parents, people who retired young and lazy deadshits who don't want to work. One could safely assume that the actual number of people who can't find a job even though they're trying is a fair bit lower than 5%.
 
BREAKaBEAT said:
You know what you are an ignorant moron.

Who made this guy a Moderator ?
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you obviously forgot to read the above post where it was said,

chugs said:
What do they think of Australians?
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Insecurities over Indian outsourcing

A case of bank fraud involving an India-based outsourcer has rekindled debate about using overseas contractors for tasks involving sensitive data.

Some say there's little risk, while others warn of serious hazards, including a threat to America's national sovereignty.

In the incident, former call centre employees of Mphasis are accused of taking part in a theft of US$350,000 from US consumers' bank accounts.

In the wake of the theft, some observers have voiced concerns about the security of data being handled by outsourcers in India, including worries about weak procedures for checking employee backgrounds. According to this school of thought, the Mphasis breach could dramatically dent the amount of call centre work shipped to outsourcers operating offshore.

"This was not a lapse of judgment or an issue of poor customer service: The incident was an organised and systematic plot to steal customers' money," an analyst with Forrester Research wrote recently. "Forrester believes that this breach, coupled with recent onshore disclosures of sensitive customer data, will have far-reaching negative connotations for the offshore BPO (business process outsourcing) space."

Not everyone shares this view. But even the perception of danger could hurt the market.

A report from rival researcher Gartner said the risks in India were no greater than they are elsewhere, but it made no bones about the seriousness of the situation. "The entire Indian offshore industry ecosystem -- including...the Indian government -- must act quickly and decisively to counter the perception that Indian BPO poses a severe security risk," the report said.

Business process outsourcing, or BPO in industry parlance, refers to farming out tasks such as customer service and transaction processing to a separate company. The work could be done in the US, or completed in lower-wage countries such as India or Mexico. In addition, some organisations have set up their own operations offshore. Shipping tasks offshore has become a controversial issue for US labour advocates.

At the moment, US organisations devote only a small fraction of their budgets for information technology services -- including BPO -- to low-cost countries, according to a recent Merrill Lynch survey of chief information officers. But that share of the budget is expected to grow over time, from 0.9 percent in 2004 to 1.6 percent in two to three years.

According to the Merrill Lynch report, security fears are the main reason CIOs aren't moving IT work offshore faster: The "key inhibitor preventing companies (from using) offshore outsourcing remains data security," the report says.

Earlier this month, news broke that police in India arrested three former Mphasis call centre employees who allegedly stole US customers' personal account information and transferred about US$350,000 to fake accounts in Pune. Among other people arrested in the case was a current Mphasis call centre worker, said Mphasis Vice Chairman Jeroen Tas. He said the perpetrators may have persuaded bank customers to disclose their account passwords.

A Times of India story cited unnamed sources in pegging Citibank as the bank in question. Citibank did not return a call requesting comment. Mphasis declined to comment on the identity of the bank. Mphasis, which has operations in India, China and Mexico, is led by former Citibank executives.

The Indian arrests come during a period of heightened anxiety about data security and identity theft.

In one of the latest examples, LexisNexis revealed that an intrusion into its Seisint databases may have compromised personal information on about 310,000 Americans, a tenfold increase on a previous estimate.

In 2003, The San Francisco Chronicle reported that a woman in Pakistan doing clerical work for the University of California at San Francisco Medical Centre threatened to post patients' confidential files online unless she was paid more money.

But most of the criticism of so-called offshoring has focused on other matters such as service quality and communication problems.

Data security at companies providing call centre services offshore is indeed an issue, however, according to industry observers. Checking into the credit and criminal backgrounds of employees is not as reliable in India as it is in the United States, said Vail Dutto, chief executive of InTelegy, a California-based consulting firm. Among other services, InTelegy helps clients choose call centre outsourcers in India. Dutto said Indian methods for tracking a person's past are not as mature as those in the US, where an individual's misdeeds in one state are likely to turn up when the person applies for a job in another.

"What you did in Bangalore might not as easily follow you to Mumbai," Dutto said.

Mphasis' Tas agreed that checking the backgrounds of employees in India is more difficult than in the US. "It is harder to track that," he said. But the background-checking process for call-centre employees and other business process outsourcing workers in India could improve, Tas said, thanks to plans by the country's National Association of Software and Service Companies, or Nasscom, to set up a national registry of BPO workers.

Another concern is employee attrition. Thanks partly to the perception that BPO work amounts to a dead-end job, attrition rates have been increasing in India. Higher turnover works against efforts by call centre companies to run a tight ship, argues Forrester Research analyst John McCarthy.

"Forrester expects that the rising attrition rates in the call centre space -- 50 percent to 100 percent -- undermine suppliers' ability to adhere to processes and sufficiently check backgrounds," McCarthy wrote in a report earlier this month.

McCarthy also suggested the Mphasis breach will seriously hurt the offshore BPO business. "Call centre BPO growth could drop by as much as 30 percent," he said in his report.

Tas called the Forrester report "sensational." He said Mphasis' annual turnover among BPO employees was in the range of 30 percent to 40 percent, and he said that level is not unusual for call centres worldwide.

In a statement made on April 13, Mphasis said it "highly values data protection and data security of its clients. It has proactively instituted elaborate systems which are constantly reviewed, to ensure and protect client confidentiality."

Among its rules, Tas said, are that mobile phones aren't allowed in call centres, given the ability of some of them to take pictures. In addition, between 2 percent and 5 percent of calls are monitored at Mphasis BPO facilities. This is consistent with the norms in the industry, according to the company.

Tas said the alleged fraud is not a sign of security problems specific to shipping call centre work overseas. "We believe this is something that can happen anywhere," he said.

But losing control of sensitive data abroad is particularly worrisome, argues Peter Gregory, chief security strategist at consulting firm VantagePoint Security.

"Outsourcing America's corporate business processes to overseas countries not only makes accountability difficult to enforce, but it puts our national sovereignty at risk," Gregory said in a statement. "In this, the Information Age, a country like India could disconnect itself from the Internet and hold America hostage -- a provocative action that would be tantamount to an act of war."

In its report earlier this month, Gartner offered a much less grave assessment. The idea that offshore business process outsourcing presents special risks is a "largely incorrect perception," the firm said.

But Gartner and others seem concerned the perception alone could torpedo the industry. In a statement earlier this month, Mphasis appeared to acknowledge the fraud could have a potentially large impact on India's BPO industry.

"We have instituted our own internal inquiry and taken necessary short-term and long-term measures in consultation with Nasscom and the bank concerned, to protect our clients and their customers, and safeguard the security and integrity of the BPO business in India," an Mphasis spokesperson said in the statement.

Some see a silver lining for offshoring in the fraud case. Tas said the response by police in India shows that the system of laws and law enforcement in India "works well, and it works swiftly."

"India is fast becoming the outsourcing capital of the world, and this kind of incident, while unfortunate in itself, when successfully dealt with, highlights and reaffirms the existence of an effective framework of laws and a commitment to enforcing them in India," Nasscom President Kiran Karnik said in a statement.

Nasscom has set up an Indo-US security forum to make its members aware of security and privacy issues when they handle sensitive information from foreign companies. Nasscom also recently launched a security initiative in Pune with local IT companies and police.

That may not be enough to satisfy the public, however. Earlier this month, Senator Dianne Feinstein, introduced legislation to ensure that Americans are notified when their most sensitive personal information is part of a data breach putting them at risk of identity theft.

Politicians in India as well would be wise to act, McCarthy argues. "To bolster its offshore credibility, India will also have to tighten its data protection and privacy laws," McCarthy wrote in his report.

He also suggests that companies sending tasks offshore take an active role in managing their remote work, even going so far as to mandate pencil-free offices: "Customers are going to have to implement their own aggressive requirements, such as eliminating writing instruments in their offshore centres."
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lazy deadshits who don't want to work
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I take offense at that anne - why should i slave away for the rest of my life - work is self-imposed slavery (forced upon us by being socially ostrisiz - its a shame not enough people can see that.
 
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can we stop blaming the foreigners and see the real culprits
those asshole corporate types many of whom ARE AUSTRALIAN and are FUCKING OVER THEIR OWN COUNTRY FOR A BUCK the indians have just been offered a nice paycheck every month so they cant refuse how can u blame them we have a much better standard of living in this country

so can all u racists out there stop being such fools and pull the wool off ya eyes and blame the real culprit CAPITALISM

its your fault for letting it happen without doing anything about it apart from having a little whinge
 
Just a couple of quick points

Unemployment figures don't include students, stay at home parents, and retiree's. They only measure the people actively looking for a job so they are generally skewed downwards as they don't include those people who would like a job but aren't looking for a variety of reasons (such as age or disabilites), and those people who are in part time work but want full time work. Australia has recently has also had a glut of part time work which has altered the unemployment rate downwards. On the otherhand a 5% reported unemployment rate is still amazing by most standards.

The other part is the glut of call centre jobs etc we have at the moment. Its a generally agreed on perception that economies run in cycles. While at the moment we have a massive number of jobs, what will happen if we encounter a recession and find that many of our service based industires no longer have the same number of jobs available for people to fall back into? As time goes on we're going to find that more and more services are going to be able to be done overseas, where are the jobs for juniors going to go so we can train them into managers and entrepreneurs? The issue is really not with right now, as we are thriving with the idea of outsourcing right now, but what will happen in the long term?

Back on the topic the thread was about, I would love to know what ambitions the call centre workers have, and where they think their jobs will lead them later in respects to a csreer.
 
I love chugs and Hater. Seriously. Lets have a threesome and make some red babies !!!
 
Quick update - due to excessive rains (flooding) in Mumbai my trip to Bangalore has been postponed. I hopefully will get there later in the week.

:)

F
 
this isnt really relevant to frisk going to the call centre, but anyway, this was my pride and joy yesterday.

One of the telemarkerters rang me up, and instead of me hanging up, he ended up hanging up on me.

i kept and asking him 'excuse me', 'what was that', he was trying to sell something with telsta. so i started to talk about my phone and how it has a camera and so on.
until finally, he had enough of my questions and hanged up.

the best part is i said nothing rude or bad to him, just annoyed him.
 
sorry, i normally dont make mistakes like that. im normally perfect
 
^ Great call :)

I totally agree with Hater.

Keystroke it's this system that you so willingly love and adore that makes shit like call centres being outsourced to India a reality.
 
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Has anyone iced a cake?

You start with a huge mound in the middle. Those spatula's are tricky to use, and with chocolate icing being very sticky, you have to push it round a bit.
What you find you are left with is a patchy surface. Some of the cake has a thin layer and is a little dry as a result. The rest has a really thick layer, and while it is enjoyable at first, you find it a little sickening after a couple of slices. Especially when you see your guests silently choking to death looking for a glass of milk.

If you rest for a moment, the icing softens from the heat of the cake and you can attempt spread it more evenly. Not everyone is happy (especially the diabetics and the gluten intolerant) but you win more blue ribbons in cake contests.
 
Ok - Got back from Bangalore yesterday evening.

I'll write up my answers this weekend...
 
preacha said:
um, don't include my name in the 'bravo' list frissk, i just lost my 'shitty call centre' job due to outsourcing.
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Dude, I''m really sorry you lost your job....

But when you write something on your website like this:
-----

i haven't updated in a while because my life is incredibly dull. funnily enough, it's a comfortable sort of dull as opposed to the uncomfortable sorts of exciting i went through 8 months ago.

still working at TPG, answering calls with the NB1300+4 modem router screenshot burnt into my eyes. i've quit giving a fuck about the client; doing the absolute minimum necessary to make them realise that everything has been done. i realised that if you continue saying 'yep' after you solve the problem, they get exasperated by the lack of conversation and terminate the call.

'now if you'
'yep'
'configure this so'
'yep'
'so then'
'yep'
'...'
'well i guess that should be all, don't hesitate to call back with any further issues'
'...'
'bye'
*click*

my ability to deal with people is getting smaller by the hour, especially those who haven't made any attempt to assimilate themselves into a basic westernised way of life. by australian way of life, i mean having a basic grasp of the english language and being able to conduct a simple conversation with someone who isn't from your niche of society.

'where did you install the filter that came with your adsl package?'
'uh......eh........sorry, can repeat?'
'the small white box, where did you put it?'
'um.......hehe.......can speak mandarin?'
'i apologise, i do not, the only language requirement for my job was english'
'i do not understand?'
'i'll find a mandarin speaker, please hold'

YES, i'm ALSO looking at you international students. learn some vocab, some tact and maybe some education that was supposed to be included in your pathetic mail order degree. how the fuck can someone be doing a masters and not know how to put DNS settings in Windows XP? FUCK THEM.



------------------

Well - you draw your own conclusions....
 
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i'm in delhi at the moment, working on new warehouse and software for a major publisher. The guys I'm working with here are very very smart, incredibly well qualified by australian standards, and work longer hours than we do by a long way. Yet they are losing middle management people (ie good career people) to work as operators in call centres. This is just for the pay. They're not moving to management roles, they are the ones answering your complaints to the banks and the like.
Time for people in aus to wake up, you do not have a divine right to sit at the top of the global pay structure. What do you have to offer that someone else won't do elsewhere cheaper? Right now I'm consulting to them, but it's scared me enough that I will be looking to further qualify myself as soon as I get home. To make myself more valuable than an Indian who will earn a fraction of what we do.
 
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