This comedy video sums up what lots of people think about being served by call centres situated overseas. It may not be big or clever, but it is quite funny. There is no moral to the story, but it does raise the question of where to draw the line in off-shoring services…
To balance things up a little here is a promotional video for call centres hosted by the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company.
Prejudice against overseas outsourcing can often be irrational. There is no doubt that some of the resistance stems from more base aspects of the human psyche: racism, xenophobia, and nationalism. On the political level, protectionism is also a factor, though I am of the opinion that cutting costs and investing in jobs in developing economies is a win-win in the long run. I can sympathise that creating the global village of people talking to each other from opposite sides of the planet challenges our instinctive understanding of community. The risks are significant: the reduced operational costs have to be balanced against both the transformation costs and the potential adverse reaction of customers. The wise business will proactively manage these risks during any offshoring exercise. Which means they need to maintain excellent communication between the people who understand the customers and expectations and the people who will be supporting them overseas. Which, rather ironically, means flying those people backwards and forwards so they can work together in person. That it in itself tells us something about the difficulty of creating a community of people who are geographically distributed.
