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Offshoring

How Tech Support Moves to India and Other Foreign Shores Will Effect You

Authors preface: remarks within are strictly confined to efficacy of tech support and have no prejudice or malice intended to anyone.

An explosively growing trend by US computer firms to outsource US technical help and other high tech jobs is upon us, and it will effect the quality of your service. According to and new CNN report:

"Roughly 27,000 technology jobs moved overseas in 2000, according to a November study by Forrester Research. It predicts that number will mushroom to 472,000 by 2015 if companies continue to farm out computer work at today's frenzied pace."

A Quick poll on their website confirms that 86% of Americans believe it will hurt our economy in the long run.

But to listen to the US computer companies doing the outsourcing, they say the foreign worker is better motivated, more loyal, will work for less, and equally qualified.

Well, my encounters in the short run, as I'm sure you'll soon experience, show it's really going to hurt. Admittedly, my three incidents (two with Dell, and one with Comcast) are only a small sample, but they have been hands down the worst experiences I've had in years with any companies, so they tend to stand out. My discussions with my customers tend to follow the same lines, too.

What I've encountered:

1.) horrible language and cultural problems. People were very hard to understand, and even simple problems required Herculean efforts to communicate to them. And, IMHO, the techs I dealt with quickly became surly, and in every occasion actually boldfaced lied to support their positions. This, of course, then causes a whole host of new problems.

2.) A zombiesque affinity to follow "company procedures" that obviously had no relevance either to a.) cover up extreme lack of technical ability. or b.) to expend only what the company feels it will provide, whether it solves the problem or not, or c.) both of the above. There is some kind of weird logic that if you follow the procedures, you've solved the problem. they are not the same thing.

3.) Much less tangibly, I never experienced any willingness to own the problem, or pride of ability to extend themselves to fix it.

A quick look at what makes America different will see why outsourcing to foreign workers spells productivity doom when it comes to tech support:

Essentially we are the greatest problem solving people on earth. We think outside the box - entrepreneurially even - and take great pride in that. My worst Dell encounter illustrates this perfectly: It started in India with Dell Indian support, and would have ended there twice, had I given up (their solution) and buy a new Dell. But once it was transferred to Dell in Austin, the tech there simply said "that's crazy". did a little research and the problem was solved for free.

The sad part is that Dell Corporate knows their Indian support guy can spin his wheels (and mine) like that all day and still make more money for the company than paying the American. He might sell me a system I don't need, to boot.

The net result for America: all those lovely productivity gains finally being realized for business zeroed out as a result of trying to save a few bucks. It's still the same story. You get what you pay for.

UPDATE: Dell to stop using India call center for corporate customers. (Full Story)

The skinny on this is that if you bought one of their (vastly more) expensive Optiplex series, tech support is moving back to the US, for exactly the reasons I cited above. If you are like most dell customers, and bought a cheaper dimension series...well, that's staying in India.

Same story, different day: you get what you pay for.