Indeed. I did not know if Ravi was joking, as in working a call center is worse than selling your kidneys...
I ran the IT component of two outsourcing projects last year. One was two connect the company to a BPO (business process outsourcing) provider, the other to a different IT outsourcing provider. The actual job transition projects were run by other people. Even though my focus was completing a project to provide infrastructure between the three companies to enable the transition, I had a lot of exposure to how the actual process worked.
What I saw was a lot of over commitment by the BPO and ITO managers and company managers, with the burden of the agreements falling on the folks staffing the facilities in India. They were under-trained and under-prepared for what they would be expected to do. Turnover is incredibly high. All this on top of the incredibly high morale and commitment the folks in India were displaying to be "part of the team" and feel part of the company they were contracted for. They couldn't get enough of company posters and t-shirts, stuff that most of of us here stateside laugh at when it is given to us, due to being generally cynical about the notion that we are some kind of "family" since we all work for the same company (what sort of family cuts pensions and increases health care costs...).
It has to be incredibly frustrating and disheartening that when these folks actually start getting calls they receive more than the normal call-center abuse since they have accents and are 'foreigners who took American jobs'. I doubt I would last a week.
For their part, our IT department did hire an Indian company to come and give us a mandatory half-day session explaining some things about Indian culture and some different notions of workplace etiquette we may experience. They also covered some aspects of how English may be used a bit differently. But it was only for IT.
Matt
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We don't know if it was a case of international terrorism... or road rage.
-FBI Agent Frank Perry, commenting on the three-state alert regarding a car containing 'middle eastern men' which alledgedly tried to run a fuel truck off the road.