Why Do Customers Hate Your Offshore Call Center So Much?

• Why do customers hate offshore call centers so much? Probably because of ill-informed articles like you are printing here.
  “Your customers know that the only reason you offshore customer service is to save money” This is not true. Many companies are finding that by outsourcing to experts in contact center management and offshoring to countries where contact center jobs are a valued career, customer experience levels significantly improve. In Australia Telstra CEO admitted that NPS scores in outsourced centers in the Philippines were significantly higher than those in inhouse centers in Australia. And due to the unpopularity of call center work among Australians, they struggled to hire anyone other than immigrants, meaning most of the language complaints came not from Manila but from Perth.
  Outsourced contact centers, whether off shore or on shore, if run well provide the same level of training and support to agents as in house so your argument that outsourced customer service cannot produce the same standards is nonsense. And offshoring can assist this, as cheaper labor means more time can be assigned to training and coaching.
  “many companies are actually bringing their call center back home” – why is it every time I hear this nobody can give me a list. There are rare exceptions where offshoring has not worked and has been rethought – but presenting it as an increasing trend is simply dishonest.
  “Companies try to hire offshore agents with neutral accents to hide the fact that they are offshoring.” Again this statement is for the most part untrue. I work with many companies that outsource Call center operations to the Philippines. Not one of them is ashamed of the fact or tries to hide it. Agents are hired based on the ability to speak English effectively to the customer in question – but I am not aware of a single company that instructs agents to lie about their location.
  The real reason companies do not use video in contact centers is a simple matter of the bandwidth required. Delivering millions of calls a year to a center is expensive. You are arguing companies should spend even more just to prove they are not trying to spend less – not exactly a value proposition I would pay much attention to. Whats more – your suggestion that video conferencing would prove you are not offshore assumes that you will hire no agents who have an Indian, Filipino or Latin American appearance.
  Finally, to go alongside the falsehood that outsourcing or offshoring automatically means lower quality you would seem to be suggesting that customers will not benefit from the lower costs the company faces. Lower costs create a competitive advantage that allows a company to lower costs and increase market share. To believe that the company in question will not pass some of these savings on is to believe the company faces a vertical demand curve – something any economist will tell you does not exist.

  • Sorry James although you make some good points I can tell you that every single person I have ever talked to that has had to deal with an offshore call center has the same complaint. They all have felt that the company cares more about the bottom line and saving money than supplying quality customer support.
    Like I said you make some good points but that is not how it’s viewed by people that are forced to use them. When I review a company for recommendation or purchase I will ask this question every time and it definitely weighs heavily on my decision to use a company that offshores their support. I will almost always recommend against using them

    • You are mistaking perception with reality. I gave you hard data examples, and you responded with “people I know think that….”. People can have misconceptions – as indeed in the case I mentioned where a majority of complaints about offshoring came from calls answered by onshore contact centers. If people such as you continue to state as fact that offshoring creates these issues, and when challenged use as proof that people believe you that is hardly a strong argument is it?
      It is also notable that you have completely ignored the gaping flaw in your logic that I pointed out regarding video calling being proof of onshore contact centers – unless you intend to hire a workforce with zero cultural and ethnic diversity, your argument falls to pieces.

      • It works both ways. I have Tmobile and the person from India messed up my entire case and was charged double. And Sony, American call center forget it. They are criminals. I sent my phone during a warranty and they lied and said it had corrosion so it doesn’t fall under warranty. I had my phone physically checked out by 2 reputable phone places and they found no corrosion. I never bought another Sony product again in life. But other than Sony a foreign company of crooks. When I deal with an American company and speak to American call centers. I have gotten 100% positive results. Philippine’s, most of those people are ignorant, as well as their supervisors that received no results. Same problem, results are handled better in the US with American companies.

      • Looks like James is mistaking business perception for reality and totally ignoring customer perception of what’s really happening on the phone with an outsourced call center. Not good business, Jamie-boy.

    • I agree with RD, offshore call centers are a nightmare. Before a person even attempts to help I, as a client, already know I am going to struggle with basic communication and robotic cut and paste responses. It can be incredibly frustrating.

  • I am a seller with Amazon and I have been trying to resolve an issue for days now. I guarantee, had I conversed with a person capable of passing a first grade English test my issue may have been resolved by now. The frustrating back and forth emails and phone calls are a giant waste of my very limited time. I would gladly pay a premium of 1 or 2 extra dollars on every transaction just to never have to speak to someone from an Indian call center.

  • Yep same here she is spot on in this article. I choose all of the above as my answer!

  • Obviously you never used one of those annoying script service that are wasting your time with irrelevant answers.

  • Sorry James, but what universe is anything that you said even remotely true!? Laughable.

    • Indeed! In fact, I’m able imagine only two reasons for James’ response, the man either has a motive for being, to put it mildly, less than perfectly disinterested in the subject, or, is simply is one of those all-too-common folk who take pleasure in demonstrating her, or his, contrarianism.

  • How about this: I hate the thought of calling an American company that refuses to hire Americans? I’d like to think I’m supporting homegrown business, not taking jobs from my fellow citizens.

• Thank you for taking the time to write this long comment. I learned a lot reading it and I’m glad you decided to react.

  I wrote this article a while ago. I still stand by most of it but have to admit you make some good points. I actually read quite a few articles on Filipino call centers after writing this and I have to say I feel like they are changing the face of outsourced call centers. Filipinos speak english fluently, they have the same pop culture references as americans. In that case I have to admit the quality of service from offshore teams is a lot better than what it was few years ago.

  Lower costs are sure beneficial for the company but higher customer service costs don’t mean the company is just spending more blindly, just to say they are. Companies providing in-house (quality) service often do it as a strategic choice and rise the prices of their services or products in return. Customer looking for this more personal service are just paying for it by going with a more expensive product. We know a lot of businesses will benefit from offshoring but a lot of them also choose not to because that’s the way they choose to differentiate themselves from the competition.

  I definitely agree that I didn’t do my best work on this article but I am still learning (thanks to your comments I’ll work even harder).

  • Phillipino call centers are just as bad if not worse in my and most everyone I knows opinion.

    • I posted much the same. They are arrogant, obstructive, imperious, obnoxious and useless.

    • Searched Google to find others that don’t care for the Filipino call centers. It’s a few things: their voices are decidedly gender neutral so if it’s a guy, he sounds mealy-mouthed and whiny, which drives me nuts, AND/OR you state your issue and they totally get it backwards or only catch part of it out of context. So frustrating!

  • Aurelie, I enjoyed your article and agree with it 100%. I am not a business owner, just a customer who HATES outsourcing. I am interested in finding out if there are lobby groups organized to prevent more outsourcing. I have never had a good experience with an outsourced customer service call. Never.

• As a customer, I really hate offshore call centres and the companies that use them, not just because of language difficulties, but also because I am very aware that jobs have been exported from my country to somewhere else. I even feel ashamed to use an offshore call centre.

  If I have a choice, I will always pick a company who offers onshore services,

• Your article is spot on! Don’t let the first commenter discourage you. I personally HATE dealing with foreign call centers. The miscommunications and accents make me so irritated and I get off the phone feeling pissed off that it took me 40 minutes to have a simple problem solved.

• You forgot a couple of important points about Indian culture which makes their call centres especially frustrating.
  1) Indian’s who are schooled in English aquire a false perception that their English pronounciation is perfect and fail to understand why English and Americans can’t understand them. This is especially frustating for non-native English speakers, and even “native” English speaking Indian’s from other parts of India.
  2) Indian culture has a lot more respect and obidience to the company policies and so they will dogmatically adhere to an illogical rule, no matter how much you try to convince them of its absurdity.

  • I wholeheartedly agree. Not to mention the Indian accents are so hard to understand, and the person at the other end of the line NEVER seems to have a personality or sense of humor AT ALL. I have spoken with a Phillippines call center and it was a great experience but the Indian ones are nothing more than robots that I can barely understand. Sometimes I think they are costing their companies money because I just sit there and agree to whatever they are saying instead of actually discussing the issue.

    • Filipino call centers have worse English than Indian ones.

      • That twangy pseudo-American accent is like someone grating your nerve endings with a metal vegetable slicer. BTW Australia thankfully is NOT an American state.

• If only it was simple to stop using a company because they outsourced their support. In my humble opinion. You are saying to your customers we care much more about saving money then giving you good support. There is nothing more annoying then having to ask the poor technician on the phone to repeat themselves 10-20 times because you can’t understand or vice versa having to repeat yourself 10 – 20 times because the technician does not understand english well enough to understand your problem.
  Salesforce farms theirs out and it’s extremely annoying. Not only are they in another country and hard to understand they work Pacific Coast Times and we are on the East Coast making matters even worse. They will however gladly charge us a big premium to get English based support. Once again this is Salesforce telling me they care much more about increasing their billion dollar profit margin then giving us good support. I would view this much different if they weren’t posting record profits

• Yes, the perception is most definitely a company cares more about the bottom dollar than customer service when you receive an overseas call center. Anytime I have ever had an issue, an overseas customer service representative has been unable to resolve my problem. 100% of the time my issue had to escalated to an American call center. By the time I finally reach someone who can actually help, my frustration and anger level is very high. How is this good business?

  • Your complaint is the top complaints from US citizens. I can physically agree with that. Only when its a foreign company like Sony do I have problems with most supervisors and managers in the call centers in the US. All other US companies. Like Tmobile, I refuse to speak to other countries any more. They have never resolved my issues. Never. If I cant get someone from the US I wait until I can.

• After another challenging call outsourced to the Philippines I decided to look online and see what else was going on. The overuse of Ma’am about 30 times per call drives me insane. The lack of ability to address issues, that even though they speak english but they don’t comprehend the challenges or what we are talking about. Foreign Call Centres work and are cheaper because they exasperate the client to never calling them!

  • I agree, I’m a 65 yr old female, and quite frankly I’d rather fix the problem myself than call a Phillipino Call Centre. Useless, timewasting, disrespectful, condescending “up themselves” as we say in Australia wankers.

• I truly hate that companies that are in the United States outsource customer service to other countries because we need the jobs here and if I’m receiving a product that is in the U.S. I resent speaking to people getting paid with money made here and going there. Very cut and dry. Plus all the shareholders, CEO’s etc. probally live here. The dollars are needed here let foreign countries employ their own

• You complain about americans not being loyal to american prodcts.Then I have a problem with a FORD vehicie.Was told by the deler to contact ,as Clark Howard refers to it as,cusomer no service.Though I had no problem with your customer service.The lady was pleasent and helpful, but when ask said shein the Phillipines.If you are not loyal to U.S.how can you ask me to be loyal t

• I have worked for many startups and have seen how offshoring doesn’t work in the long run. It was a train wreck and now another client of mine is taking the route and hopefully they see it soon. I don’t think outsourcing is bad when it comes to things like research, data mining, etc but when it comes to speaking to customers and handling customers accounts, I think American’s should do it.

• Thanks you for your article. You articulated the issues perfectly. You hit the nail on the head when you stated “A lot of US customers will now actually hang up if they hear that they are being transferred offshore or spot a foreign accent when the representative answers. Your customers are not being racists, they are just looking for a quick solution to their problem, they don’t want to struggle” – I completely agree with this and every other part of your article.
  Thanks again!

• Just had issues with virgen mobile in canada
  On a Canadian mall
  Had to customer service in the philisbine Asia… with all my personal info… including address!!! Sin # and all…
  this people needs a visitor visa tô came to Canada!!!! Why give to much info to them !!!

• I really do like the fact that Americans hated offshore customer service. Don’t you all agree that the World would rather learn Mandarin as the international language instead of English?

• For the most part offshore call centres result in me simply disconnecting when it’s clear they have no idea what I’m talking about. “Do you download lots of things?” is not the beginning of an answer, it’s buying time.

  I had an hour long call with a female rep for Dell who was wonderful. We determined my HD had crashed. She was professional and friendly. I am not put off by accents other than American English. Anybody who worked in offices during the 1990s onward worked with all sorts of accejts and cultures [& the pot lucks were outstanding!].

  It’s the reps who are in over their heads to answer a simple question that cause me to disconnect. I have only once said F*ck no! to a Microsoft rep who wanted remote access to my laptop because they were too lazy to give me the necessary commands.

• Nothing steams me faster than the unnecessary and constant overusage of the word “already”. Hello, Sir, I already pulled up your account. Did you already look at your online statement? Okay, I already checked the notes…” etc. I struggle not to correct them constantly. It’s a filler word. It means nothing the way they use it. HOW is this misuse of “already” so widespread?

• Customer service reps especially in the Philippines undergo a series of tests and preparation before they can even handle a live call. I don’t see anything wrong about English speaking foreigners handling an issue unless the person at the other end is a racist.

  • It’s not racism. It’s their disrespectful, obnoxious, imperative commands, passive aggressive obstructiveness, in a nerve grating pseudo-American twang that makes me want to run out of the room screaming! BTW Australia is not a US state and our culture is much different. Any American who spoke like that and behaved like that in Australia might find themselves on the receiving end of a fist or spring kick to the groin. The rest of us would be cheering and clapping.

• Agree 100%. Phillipines Call Centres are the worst. Grating pseudo-American accent, why not just grab my nerve endings and use a vegetable slicer! Obnoxious, imperious staff, useless, go out of their way to be obstructive and unhelpful. Maybe it’s a shared British heritage but as an Australian I find the Indian Call Centres much better, though you have to listen hard to what they are saying. But the problem is resolved quickly, they know their Tech stuff, are patient and act and treat you like a human being, not like something they did not want on their shoes, which is what you get in the Phillipines. SO glad these “people” will soon be out of work!

• While I agree with most if not all of what you said, you missed my biggest concern, which is security.
  These corporations are sharing our personal information with these off-shore call centers. Which irks me when they get to know all this information about me, and I don’t even get to know their first name. Starting out with an obvious lie or deception in the least (false name) does not build trust from my perspective. In fact, it builds distrust. Why should i trust someone with my personal information when that person is lying to me before I get in a single word? I personally did not agree to share my information with an outsourced company, and it is my information.

  I think that’s a big problem today, I can choose who to share my private and personal information with, yet that does not mean that the person or company that it is shared with has the same right to share my private and personal information without my approval, and I do not approve.

  • James, you’ve made an excellent, excellent point; one which, I’m embarrassed to admit, I hadn’t even considered.

• According to the law, it seems that this sharing of information is illegal: Information privacy law or data protection laws prohibit the disclosure or misuse of information about private individuals. … Information collected by an individual cannot be disclosed to other organizations or individuals unless specifically authorized by law or by consent of the individual.

• Why no one is talking about the costumers information that is ending up on a list for sale to local scammers. Every time I do get Indian costumer service I get different scammers calls for weeks after that. Sometimes I will get a scam call as soon as I put the phone down. Very often the scammer call will be very relevant to the call I made previously. This is how I figured it out. I nearly fell for that the first time. Bring the costumer service back to US, please.

• When i am having a problem with my computer or product, i am already frustrated, then i have to sit on hold for what seems like forever and then when i finally get a customer service representative, I cannot understand what they are saying, @#%$!!!!! I completely agree with you.

  They expect the US to buy their products but will not hire us!

  These people overseas do not get PTO, insurance, vacation time, breaks, and if their building burns down and people die, there is no compensation for their famlies.

  It is a crappy deal for everyone except the owner of the corporation and the people who made the deal with them.

• I completely agree with this article! And I’ll also say that accents PLUS time delays are a NIGHTMARE to deal with. It seems that everyone has stopped outsourcing to India and now uses Filipinos, whose accents are MUCH more difficult to understand that Indian, Chinese, etc. Maybe that’s because we have more experience with their accents, and Indian accents at least sound like proper English. Whereas Filipino accents sound like someone speaking with a mouthful of grits. I just got off a 2 hour, 20 minute call to Samsung and still don’t have my problem solved. The time delay is INSANITY-making! If I pause for 2 seconds trying to think of how to say something, they jump in and start talking, then I can’t hear what they said because they’re talking over me. SAMSUNG, are you listening?? Stop outsourcing to the Philippines! Stop outsourcing PERIOD.

• I’ve been called “dear” by offshore agents. I’ve even been called “babe.” Who addresses a customer like that in the U.S.? You would think that the call center coaches in India and the Philippines would have a better grasp of American and English vocabulary and usage and would pass on that knowledge to their students.

• Darn, that’s a new one on me. I wonder if I’m correct in assuming this sort of undue familiarity, is something encountered more frequently by women?
  I’m unsure if this is same thing, but more than once I have had, what sounded like, an American women with a Southern accent, refer to me as “honey,” but in each case it did not strike me, perhaps because it seemed the woman’s usual form of addressing a new or casual acquaintance, as being in the least over familiar. (I’m guessing that was conveyed to me, was altogether different “vibe” than what you’ve experienced .)

• The article seems to be spot on from both sides: No business can run in the red, and customers want service.

  My issue: I recently made an online purchase for home delivery. I received all the usual emails and texts telling me that my order had been received, shipped, etc. Then I received messages saying that it would be delivered by X:00 on Month, xx, day. (for example, Jan. 1, 1933). The package did not arrive by that time. At 1:30 AM the next morning, I received a text telling me it had been delivered. It had not. Later in the day I called customer service. Finding the phone number was a problem. Then a computer put me on hold, then told me that they would call me back in xx amount of time. 3(xx) amount of time later, I receive a call from a computer telling me that my call was being returned. 10 minutes after that I was speaking with a Live Human. But, the connection/reception was like talking underwater. The person had an accent, no problem. When I could actually make out the words, they made perfect sense. I kept telling them that the transmission was the problem, could they switch to a handset from a head set…all I got were adjustments in volume and the same underwater discussion.

  Then I received emails from the shipper telling me that their records showed it being delivered on the promised date, stating the wrong day of the week (Sat. vs. Weds.). Their records said 1:30 PM…their text came through at 1:30 AM. I get up for work at 3 AM, I know the difference between 1:30 AM and 1:30 PM. It was not on my porch, under my porch furniture, in the shrubs, behind the garbage cans, under the car…it had not been delivered.

  I received my product (2 days later). I am happy with it.

  My experience with Customer Service tells me that I am only a valued customer until they have my money. After the check is in the bank, all bets are off.

  “We’ll use an off planet switchboard to handle calls…We took your call. What is the problem? Who cares how you were treated, you got your product. What is the problem?”

  The Business Attitude seems to be, we got your money, you got your purchase. End. Of. Story. Thank you, come again.

  I don’t have a problem dealing with someone who speaks English as a second language (or 3rd, or 4th). Hell, many native English speakers that I deal with have a problem speaking coherent English. More than the immigrants that have learned to speak the language. I understand them better. They have learned the language in order to speak it.

  I have a problem with companies that offshore unpopular jobs in order to save money, not because they are going to use the savings to pay their employees more…

  I don’t hate offshore call centers. I hate companies that use them indiscriminately (and underpay their front line employees) so that the executives can pay for 6 ex-wives and vacations in exotic locations several times a year.

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