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BUT WHY INDIA?
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StormCrow
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StormCrow
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CloseI'm aware this is a very global/international website. That said, this topic is being created from a distinctly American perspective. In spite of that, I just want to acknowledge that I know not everyone's experiences are the same all over the world.
ANYWAY:
India is the seventh largest country in the world by area, and the second most populous with a population of 1.324 BILLION-with-a-B people as of the 2016 Census (which obviously means there are millions more Indians born since then).
I just had a relatively wonderful experience with McAfee customer service. I was pleasantly surprised. As it almost always is, my call was transferred to an Indian operator/customer service rep at a phone bank I'd bet my left ovary was in India. In this case, my representative was conscientious and competent and the problem, a simple refund, was easy to unsnarl. This kind of miracle happens about once a year, whereas I find myself talking to customer service and get to experience first hand what it's like to spend an hour or two in hell.
Virtually every single large American corporation outsources its customer service to India or at least the Indian subcontinent. They do this in spite of the fact that Indian non-native English speakers are the people least suited to the task of providing customer service and/or tech support for American English speakers for the following reasons:
So what you have here is a cohort (fancy anthropological/sociological term for "group of people") that has almost entirely filled a position/role which they are are probably some of the least suited people on Earth to fill.
Why?
Here is what I can come up with:
("Americans are unwilling to work customer service phone banks" is not on the list because once or twice a year I do get a non-outsourced native English speaker (they also usually do a shitty job for their own reasons) and there are a few entire companies I can think of that don't outsource to India that I know of.)
Is there anything more to it than the bullet points listed, or am I just being naive? Is there any kind of explanation beyond "American companies are cheap and don't care about their customers so they outsource customer service to India where they can pay Indian phone workers the lowest amount possible because again, they don't care about the customer experience"? Or am I looking for a way to overthink this that really, really, really all there is to it?
In any case, this is a terrible system--poor people being paid exploitative wages to do something they are uniquely unsuited to do in service of customers that their employers don't give half a shit about--and I hate participating in it. And that's from my end, as a relatively privileged American (I am really, really, really fucking poor right now, easily the poorest I've ever been, but I have a feeling that American poverty doesn't stack up to Indian poverty). I'd imagine on the Indian end of the phone lines, it's even worse.
ANYWAY:
India is the seventh largest country in the world by area, and the second most populous with a population of 1.324 BILLION-with-a-B people as of the 2016 Census (which obviously means there are millions more Indians born since then).
I just had a relatively wonderful experience with McAfee customer service. I was pleasantly surprised. As it almost always is, my call was transferred to an Indian operator/customer service rep at a phone bank I'd bet my left ovary was in India. In this case, my representative was conscientious and competent and the problem, a simple refund, was easy to unsnarl. This kind of miracle happens about once a year, whereas I find myself talking to customer service and get to experience first hand what it's like to spend an hour or two in hell.
Virtually every single large American corporation outsources its customer service to India or at least the Indian subcontinent. They do this in spite of the fact that Indian non-native English speakers are the people least suited to the task of providing customer service and/or tech support for American English speakers for the following reasons:
- In general, their thick accents make basic communication of anything very difficult.
- In particular, these interactions often involve repeating and confirming long strings of alphanumeric characters. This requires precision that customer service's accent strongly tends to muddy. It's also possible that they even hear the American pronunciation of numbers and letters differently, making it a two way problem. They resort to some bastardized version of the NATO phonetic code word alphabet for this, but an Indian customer service representative saying "R as in Roger" or "P as in Peter" is harder to understand than an English speaker from most everywhere else just saying "R" or "P" so this is a non-solution.
- While their English is usually very good, their understanding of American idiomatic English is very poor because they live in a mostly-non-English-speaking country. And most native English speakers rely heavily on their idioms. What this means is that any figure of speech or expression you use frequently in day to day conversation (for instance, I frequently use the phrase "Nah, you're good" to mean "Don't worry about it, it is not a problem, you did not do anything wrong in this instance, please proceed with whatever we were doing") will inevitably sail right over the head of an Indian customer service representative. To communicate effectively, you will need to train yourself to speak in a way that no one speaks.
- Finally, if you live on the East coast of the US, the time difference between India is fully 9 hours. If you live further west like I do, the time gap is EVEN bigger. Sure, maybe it's 2:30 in the afternoon for you and you just woke up from a nice afternoon nap and are ready to tackle the challenge of "LET'S GET MY ROUTER WORKING" or whatever, but over there it's 1:57 AM and the person you're talking to is 11 hour shift and just wants you to leave them alone so they can drag themselves home and feed their 16 kids. White American xenophobic racist thinking on my part had me thinking that these Indian phone bank operators are just crabby people by nature, but then I thought about the time difference thing and how fucked that is.
So what you have here is a cohort (fancy anthropological/sociological term for "group of people") that has almost entirely filled a position/role which they are are probably some of the least suited people on Earth to fill.
Why?
Here is what I can come up with:
- There are way too many people in India and far too few jobs.
- Ergo, your average Indian citizen can and will take any job they are offered.
- India's enormous overpopulation leads to widespread poverty...
- Ergo, Indians will work for very cheap, much cheaper than Americans...
- International megacorporations are absolute heartless bastards.
("Americans are unwilling to work customer service phone banks" is not on the list because once or twice a year I do get a non-outsourced native English speaker (they also usually do a shitty job for their own reasons) and there are a few entire companies I can think of that don't outsource to India that I know of.)
Is there anything more to it than the bullet points listed, or am I just being naive? Is there any kind of explanation beyond "American companies are cheap and don't care about their customers so they outsource customer service to India where they can pay Indian phone workers the lowest amount possible because again, they don't care about the customer experience"? Or am I looking for a way to overthink this that really, really, really all there is to it?
In any case, this is a terrible system--poor people being paid exploitative wages to do something they are uniquely unsuited to do in service of customers that their employers don't give half a shit about--and I hate participating in it. And that's from my end, as a relatively privileged American (I am really, really, really fucking poor right now, easily the poorest I've ever been, but I have a feeling that American poverty doesn't stack up to Indian poverty). I'd imagine on the Indian end of the phone lines, it's even worse.
I've never had my customer service rewired like this, so it might well be an American corporation system thing, combined with the fact that India has a strong affiliation with the English language. Having people who are able to
converse in a second language without any special education or focus on it is pretty neat and isn't the case for a lot of countries. (let's be honest, big American corporations don't give a lick.)
It's not necessarily just the lack of jobs either, but also just that currencies tend to be stronger comparatively. There are a lot of jobs, but a lot of them simply do not pay well in international competition (similar to how lower-paid regions usually also have a lower cost of living). This concerns various countries and people. In Germany you see a lot of Polish workers for temporary jobs such as harvesting, for example. Often these people have full-time jobs back home additionally that they work in off-season, but make less of their financial cut than the time abroad, or so I hear. This even concerns street musicians who often are incredibly skilled and possibly part of orchestra or sth back home. (Though recently more and more climbed the ladder enough to seek out better-paying places, too, avoiding Germany.) Living here permanently would not give them much of a boost, because the cost of living is higher in Germany, so seasonal work it is. This could ofc be avoided via jobs that work remotely. Pinning it onto the number of people alone is a bit hasty, I'd think (as is putting 16 kids as a humorous standard).
It's not as simple as saying these peeps live in poverty, either, tho certain areas certainly can be poorer, it's the fact that a HERE low-paying job can work as a high or at least higher-paying job for them due to different currencies and monetary power. (which usually does concern 'poorer' regions, tho)
This doesn't exclude the possibility of underpaying peeps, but it's not the only possibility and angle to examine. There are really bad low-wage jobs out there tho..
I never talked about this in-depths with the few Indian peeps I met. Now I wish I knew more.
Didn't hear anything about job shortages from my Bengali friend tho (I did hear a lot about opportunistic grasping for unconventional jobs though haha.) Said friend is expected to be more generous back home because he works abroad, btw. So the 'aspiring to get more moneyz' argument does apply.
converse in a second language without any special education or focus on it is pretty neat and isn't the case for a lot of countries. (let's be honest, big American corporations don't give a lick.)
It's not necessarily just the lack of jobs either, but also just that currencies tend to be stronger comparatively. There are a lot of jobs, but a lot of them simply do not pay well in international competition (similar to how lower-paid regions usually also have a lower cost of living). This concerns various countries and people. In Germany you see a lot of Polish workers for temporary jobs such as harvesting, for example. Often these people have full-time jobs back home additionally that they work in off-season, but make less of their financial cut than the time abroad, or so I hear. This even concerns street musicians who often are incredibly skilled and possibly part of orchestra or sth back home. (Though recently more and more climbed the ladder enough to seek out better-paying places, too, avoiding Germany.) Living here permanently would not give them much of a boost, because the cost of living is higher in Germany, so seasonal work it is. This could ofc be avoided via jobs that work remotely. Pinning it onto the number of people alone is a bit hasty, I'd think (as is putting 16 kids as a humorous standard).
It's not as simple as saying these peeps live in poverty, either, tho certain areas certainly can be poorer, it's the fact that a HERE low-paying job can work as a high or at least higher-paying job for them due to different currencies and monetary power. (which usually does concern 'poorer' regions, tho)
This doesn't exclude the possibility of underpaying peeps, but it's not the only possibility and angle to examine. There are really bad low-wage jobs out there tho..
I never talked about this in-depths with the few Indian peeps I met. Now I wish I knew more.
Didn't hear anything about job shortages from my Bengali friend tho (I did hear a lot about opportunistic grasping for unconventional jobs though haha.) Said friend is expected to be more generous back home because he works abroad, btw. So the 'aspiring to get more moneyz' argument does apply.
Used to work in a carseat manufacturing factory. Good work, good hours, but they decided to move the business overseas because not only was it cheaper for them to get the materials and closer to the main hub of the business, but also because they could hire more workers for less than the money they spent on hiring us.
That's it. The bottom line. It costs less for them in the long run, and they can hire more people, which means more hours of service.
Why pay $20/hour for one person to work 9-5 when they can pay $10/hour for two people to work two shifts - 9-5 and 5-12?
Add in differences in labour laws and shift hours and you have a much more efficient business, bringing in and putting out more work at the same cost or less than before.
It's crap, yes, but that's how big corps work.
That's it. The bottom line. It costs less for them in the long run, and they can hire more people, which means more hours of service.
Why pay $20/hour for one person to work 9-5 when they can pay $10/hour for two people to work two shifts - 9-5 and 5-12?
Add in differences in labour laws and shift hours and you have a much more efficient business, bringing in and putting out more work at the same cost or less than before.
It's crap, yes, but that's how big corps work.
Kaempfer
1932
Capitalism and colonialism.
India was a British, uh, puppet? colony? dominion? it depends on the year and the nomenclature, but it was under British rule for more than a hundred years. Much of the modernization of the country came under British rule, and so naturally English was pushed hard there. Britain also moved the Indian economy away from one based on consumption and manufacturing to one based on raw resource production and exporting raw materials, which laid the foundations for a weak internal job market once those sectors became less lucrative.
India is also a nation of many, many different peoples, cultures and subcultures, many of whom have their own language. It's not like in the US where everyone (nominally) speaks the same language. English is often the only common tongue in India, despite it not being native to the region. English is also widely taught in universities and secondary schools across the country.
So there is a huge, young population of widely-English speaking, often university educated people, all of whom are looking for steady work. Whether or not they speak English well enough to meet your standards, they speak it well enough to satiate the desire for dirt cheap overseas labour. Finding new sources of labour to exploit is a fundamental backbone of economic growth under capitalism, and so this huge population of English speakers was a perfect fit for corporations looking to cut costs.
It's not just megacorporations that have moved into the Indian IT market, either. Lots of small and medium businesses use third party vendors to coordinate their tech support overseas, as well. The Indian government heavily pushed for IT to be a growing market, "easing" (erasing) regulations on the industry in the early 90s, when it was really taking off globally. This meant they got in early and took a huge piece of the pie.
It was really the perfect storm for the IT and outsourcing industries.
India was a British, uh, puppet? colony? dominion? it depends on the year and the nomenclature, but it was under British rule for more than a hundred years. Much of the modernization of the country came under British rule, and so naturally English was pushed hard there. Britain also moved the Indian economy away from one based on consumption and manufacturing to one based on raw resource production and exporting raw materials, which laid the foundations for a weak internal job market once those sectors became less lucrative.
India is also a nation of many, many different peoples, cultures and subcultures, many of whom have their own language. It's not like in the US where everyone (nominally) speaks the same language. English is often the only common tongue in India, despite it not being native to the region. English is also widely taught in universities and secondary schools across the country.
So there is a huge, young population of widely-English speaking, often university educated people, all of whom are looking for steady work. Whether or not they speak English well enough to meet your standards, they speak it well enough to satiate the desire for dirt cheap overseas labour. Finding new sources of labour to exploit is a fundamental backbone of economic growth under capitalism, and so this huge population of English speakers was a perfect fit for corporations looking to cut costs.
It's not just megacorporations that have moved into the Indian IT market, either. Lots of small and medium businesses use third party vendors to coordinate their tech support overseas, as well. The Indian government heavily pushed for IT to be a growing market, "easing" (erasing) regulations on the industry in the early 90s, when it was really taking off globally. This meant they got in early and took a huge piece of the pie.
It was really the perfect storm for the IT and outsourcing industries.
sura_tc
1579
I can only speak from my personal experience and I am from Canada.
Indians speak good English. Their main issue is their accent more than anything else. Some have their accents so strong that it becomes an ordeal to listen to them.
Having said that, I've spoken Indian support reps from Bell Canada mostly. Though, as mentioned, Indian level 3 IT support is extremely common.
And, well, scam phone calls are either from China or India.
Indians speak good English. Their main issue is their accent more than anything else. Some have their accents so strong that it becomes an ordeal to listen to them.
Having said that, I've spoken Indian support reps from Bell Canada mostly. Though, as mentioned, Indian level 3 IT support is extremely common.
And, well, scam phone calls are either from China or India.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
Generally speaking, any time you're asking the question, "Why does a company do this thing that's obviously bad for customers?" the answer is "because it's cheaper than doing it well."
The true customers for most big companies are shareholders, who are less interested in long-term success for the company than in getting as much money as possible from it as soon as possible.
The true customers for most big companies are shareholders, who are less interested in long-term success for the company than in getting as much money as possible from it as soon as possible.
Some businesses are greedy. But sometimes they're not really, but simply being practical. Let's think of this from a game dev's perspective.
Say you can need to hire an artist to draw pictures for your game, and you found two, an American and an Indian . After looking at both, you know the American artist draws better, but maybe not incredibly better than the Indian artist. However, the Indian artist costs a tenth of what the American charges. Who do you hire? Especially if you need lots of pictures drawn with a limited budget?
Well, one solution would be you hire the American artist to draw the few critical pieces that need to be great, and have the Indian artist do the rest. This is very similar to how American companies outsource most of customer service, but perhaps keep a few American reps to handle difficult/high profile cases.
To clarify, "American" and "Indian" are purely for example purposes here. I am NOT saying Americans draw better than Indians.
Say you can need to hire an artist to draw pictures for your game, and you found two, an American and an Indian . After looking at both, you know the American artist draws better, but maybe not incredibly better than the Indian artist. However, the Indian artist costs a tenth of what the American charges. Who do you hire? Especially if you need lots of pictures drawn with a limited budget?
Well, one solution would be you hire the American artist to draw the few critical pieces that need to be great, and have the Indian artist do the rest. This is very similar to how American companies outsource most of customer service, but perhaps keep a few American reps to handle difficult/high profile cases.
To clarify, "American" and "Indian" are purely for example purposes here. I am NOT saying Americans draw better than Indians.
It costs less. The whole world works like this.
I live in Taiwan and a lot of factories hire workers from other Asian countries, so they can pay less and break more labor regulations. When I first came to Taiwan I dated someone in one of these factories and was surprised by their ridiculous rules and regulations.
Though being from a western country myself, I enjoy the complete opposite effect in Taiwan, and get paid more than double than a local person doing the same job.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
author=watermark
Say you can need to hire an artist to draw pictures for your game, and you found two, an American and an Indian . After looking at both, you know the American artist draws better, but maybe not incredibly better than the Indian artist. However, the Indian artist costs a tenth of what the American charges. Who do you hire? Especially if you need lots of pictures drawn with a limited budget?
This is kind of ignoring 1) the "budget limits" are almost always imposed because the people in charge of the budgeting are focused on maximum profit to shareholders, and 2) all the stuff listed in the OP adds up to less "good versus slightly less good" and more "adequate* versus not suited for the task at hand."
* Tech support generally sucks for multiple reasons, few of them the fault of the workers themselves
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