Time to Boycott Companies Outsourcing Customer Service

After a 25 minute hold, you're relieved to hear a human being on the other end of the line. The gentleman introduces himself as "David Smith", but his thick Indian accent and long pauses before answering you would seem to indicate that this is not his given name.

Okay, so "David" probably works in an outsourced Indian call center, but why hold that against him? He's probably a capable human being. Just because he's not American doesn't mean he can't handle what seems to be a relatively straightforward and easy problem to rectify. You give David a chance.

Hello, this is David Smith, I will be assisting you. How is your day today, my friend?

I'm doing great. David, I have a problem with my bill. My unlimited text plan somehow fell off my bill, and I was charged for each individual text message. Can you erase those charges and put it back on?

I understand your concern, and will be happy to assist you to solve your issues today. Please hold while I review your records. [2 minutes pass] Thank you for holding, sir. I have reviewed your records and see that you do not have an unlimited text plan. I can add that plan onto your bill for $15 per month, and you will not see such charges in the future. Would you like to do that?

I think you misunderstood. I already had the plan. You can look at previous month's bills. It fell off somehow, I don't know what happened. But I need to be credited back for the $235 I was charged for the texts I sent. Then you need to put the plan back on there.

Please hold while I review your records. [4 minutes pass] Thank you for holding, sir. I show that you did not have an unlimited plan in place as of October 3, 2011. It was removed from your account and that caused you to pay 10 cents per text. We can return that to your account and you will not get charged again after that.

Wait, didn't you listen to me? I know what happened, I just don't know why it did. I need the credit back for those texts. I never removed the unlimited texting plan. It just disappeared for no reason.

My system showed that you called in on October 3 and removed the plan.

No, I never did that... I never... ummm... Well, I remember calling about upgrading my data plan last month, maybe it was October 3, but I never mentioned wanting to remove my texting plan. I would have never done that. You guys can pull the recording of the call and you'll hear that.

We do not have recordings of the calls. You removed your text plan on October 3, and you may re-add it at this time if you wish.

Are you hearing me?! I did not remove anything! It's a mistake! I've been with this company for 8 years. I've always paid my bills on time. I've paid thousands upon thousands of dollars to you guys. Check my bill before that, and every bill for the last several years. I've always had unlimited texts. Why would I remove it and then text over 2000 times? Let's use some common sense here! Please, look at this logically and credit me the $235.

I'm sorry for your trouble. Unfortunately I cannot credit you the $235 for your text messaging, as you removed your plan on October 3. Is there anything else I can help you with today?

Let me speak with your supervisor!

I am sorry sir but my supervisor is not available. I can leave one a message for to call you back.

Needless to say, David Smith's supervisor never calls you, and you still have that $235 on your bill. You try calling back, wait on hold again, only to get Bangalore's own "Jennifer Williams" on the phone, who tells you the same thing as David. You feel trapped. You can't reach anyone with common sense to resolve the situation, and yet you're on the hook for this money. If you refuse to pay it, it will affect your credit. What do most people do in this spot? Sadly, they just break down and pay, especially if the amount is something like $50 instead of $235.

Many see the complaints aginst outsourced call centers as a form of racism or cultural elitism. They figure that people just have prejudices against accents or those with whom they can't directly relate. But it's not that at all. It's that these outsourced agents lack the ability and authorization to solve most problems. They are not given much training. They are not empowered to solve problems, but rather adhere to a strict set of rules which often defy common sense. They are not trained to retain angry customers. Basically, they are paid to be human voices that act like machines.

Large companies outsource customer service because it is expensive to hire American employees. It goes far beyond the salaries paid to American employees, which are already much higher than their third-world counterparts. There's also the costs of the infrastructure to support them, management expenses, HR expenses, taxes, and countless other things that really add up, especially when thousands (or tens of thousands) of customer service agents are needed. Thus, these companies save A LOT of money by outsourcing customer service to the third world. They definitely realize that they will provide very poor customer service after doing so, and will probably lose some customers as a result, but the tradeoff is still worth it. The money they save dwarfs the money that they lose.

There's one other hidden benefit to outsourcing customer service, and it was shown in the example above. A large percentage of customer service calls involve fixing some billing issues -- almost always something that was in the company's favor. If these things don't get fixed, and the customer just capitulates and pays because he can't stand the stress of fighting for his money back, the company gets money it never deserved. Multiply this by many thousands (or millions) of customers, and you're talking about a very large sum of extra (and very unethical) income.

All companies have a responsibility to the customer to provide proper resolution for billing errors. This is because the customer has something big on the line if he simply refuses to pay the erroneous charges -- his credit! Therefore, it is unacceptable, and should be illegal, for these companies to make resolution of billing errors difficult or impossible for the customer. There should always be an easy and painless way to discuss billing issues with a well-trained person that listens, without having to go through heroics.

Outsourced call centers have the following problems, which combine to make them virtually useless:

• Agents are not trained or empowered to make decisions. American companies realize that these agents are not very familiar with the product or service they're handling. They often lack the training and/or business sense to make decisions regarding when to give compensatory credits and when to deny a greedy customer. Therefore, thinking is taken out of the equation. They are given a strict set of rules, and do not deviate from them under any circumstances.

• They don't listen. It's not so much the language barrier. It's that they realize that they have a very narrow scope of what they can do for you, yet they are not allowed to admit that. Therefore, when you carefully explain your issue in detail, they pretend to be listening, when in reality are just tuning you out and just trying to catch buzzwords. (In the above example, the "buzzword" caught by the agent was "unlimited text plan", and he tuned out the rest of the story.) This is particularly infuriating, because they pretend to understand everything you're saying and claim they will help you, but in reality hear only about 10% of your story, and try to "solve" something you're not asking for in the first place.

• They are sickeningly polite, pretend that they really want to help you, but in reality know they can't. It would be refreshing, even though frustrating, if they leveled with you that they only have limited authorization and training, and for the most part won't be able to satisfy your requests. Unfortunately, every outsourced agent presents himself as the customer service hero that will solve all of your problems, which makes it that much more of a letdown when he fails miserably.

• They are passive-aggressive. This, of course, is a generalization, but rarely does an outsourced agent voice his displeasure with you. In fact, they rarely even will engage you in an argument. Instead, they sometimes solve your relentless demands for resolution with an "accidental" disconnect from the line, or eventually pretend to agree to give you the credit (or fix the problem) as requested, only to acutally do nothing. This is very common, because they suffer zero consequence for this, as it is very difficult or impossible to report a bad outsourced rep.

• They lack knowledge of the company, and lack access to do anything meaningful. These are not actual employees that can move up the chain of command to get a complicated or unusual problem fixed. They also likely take calls for many companies, and have very little familiarity with the actual operations of the one you're calling about. They're only as good as the automated tools they're given, which tend to be fairly simple, without much access, and are under strict rules that always err in the company's favor.

• They have no desire to retain customers for the company. These are third-party agents answering phone calls for many companies. They don't care if you take your business elsewhere, as they have no loyalty to a company that isn't theirs. Say you were a small business owner and provided 50 cell phones to your employees, all served by this company. Say you were asking for a $10 credit on one phone that was being refused. You could threaten to cancel all 50 lines and go to a different company for that service, and such a threat would hold a lot of water to an American actually working for that company. The outsourced agent won't care at all. He will not budge from the rules he was given to follow, even if 50 accounts will be cancelled over the matter of $10. To him, the only important thing is to follow his playbook to the letter, not to retain customers, no matter how big.

It has gotten to the point where I am trying as hard as I can to boycott companies that outsource customer service. I suggest you do the same, both to send a message and for your own sanity. Let's send a message to these corporations that intentionally making it difficult to resolve billing issues is a form of backdoor fraud, and we're not going to take it anymore. Let's make it clear to them that "saving" money in this crucial area is not acceptable, and we won't continue supporting them as long as they do.

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