December 12, 2008
Failure to Communicate Brings Call Centers Home
Dell has an answer for
customers who have been put off trying to communicate with call center
agents based in India. You can speak to an American – for $12.95
a month.
According to a report
by The Washington Post, Dell is running ads promoting customer service
“based in North America” for consumers who buy new PCs from the
company. For the monthly fee of $12.95 or an annual contract at $99, customers
are guaranteed to get someone to help them with technical issues in two minutes
or less.
Dell hopes that the Your
Tech Team service option will satisfy consumers while enabling it to maintain
its profits. The company, while declining to give numbers, said it is happy
to the initial response to the service.
Bob Kaufman, a spokesperson
for Dell, said, “We’ve heard from customers that it’s hard to understand
a particular accent and that they couldn’t understand the instructions
they were getting. This illustrates Dell’s commitment to customer choice.”
According to The
Post article, companies can save between 50 and 75 percent by locating
call centers to nations such as India. The tradeoff is that some consumers
have problems communicating with customer service staff and come away
unhappy with the brand.
David Inns, chief executive
of Jitterbug, a cell phone company based in the U.S. that has its call
centers here, said, “What’s missing from those estimates is what the
impact is on customer satisfaction and what is the impact on first-call
resolution.”
“This
is not a protectionist philosophy,” he told The Post. “At
the end of the day, my data and experience say that Americans are better
at providing customer service to Americans — that’s all.”
Sharmila Rudrappa, a
sociology professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a native of
India, said, “I hear people say all the time that people who complain
about call centers in India are being racist or nativist — but it’s not
as simple as that. If you need tech support, it already shows you’re having
a crazy time getting your Dell computer to work. And when things go haywire,
you want assurance, you want familiarity, you want someone to hold your
hand and say it’s okay. What you don’t want is to have to work at understanding
the person on the other end of the line.”
Discussion Questions:
Does relocating customer service overseas make business sense when serving
American consumers? Have American consumers resigned themselves to having
some trouble understanding the accent of support staff? Are companies
properly accounting for overseas call centers, i.e. quantifying the cost
of customers unhappy over communication issues?
BrainTrust
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
Poll
I recommended Dell to a friend of mine for her 1st computer. She had little computer knowledge. It crashed soon after purchase. She endured a week long nightmare before finally solving the problem.
I am appalled that a company would charge $99 a year to deliver quality customer service. Quality customer service should be included with the purchase.
From a practical matter point of view, Dell has placed as “value” on the right to speak to an American voice for customer service. From a “PR” point of view, it’s likely to be disturbing to some of the public, while it opens the door for a competitor to say, “We will let you resolve customer service issues in America without charging for as though it’s a premium.”
There are indeed issues for many consumers with trying to work with an overseas customer-service employee. For one, there is indeed a language barrier where some Americans simply cannot understand the person on the other end, and vice versa. In addition, overseas employees often are trained only to handle the most common issues without being trained to go outside the lines, or to make suggestions outside the box. The issue there is that these are usually technical consumer goods where the everyday consumer needs to converse with someone trained to deal with a lay person.
I agree that the last thing you want when having technical problems with any product is a technical help person that you have trouble understanding. If anything can raise an already stressful situation to even higher levels, that is it. I have a real problem though in being charged extra for American service after the sale. I will be shocked if this works out well for Dell.
Outsourcing call centers overseas has gotten so widespread that it is hard to believe. I called the billing service for our local hospital recently and after a long wait was connected with a very nice person that spoke flawless English. While we were waiting for her computer to respond, I asked her how the weather was where she was at. She asked where I thought that she was? Just to be funny, I said India and she answered that yes, she was in Bombay. I couldn’t believe it! She said she was an American that moved to India to keep her job.
This is really a strange situation. I have internet with Time Warner Cable. For $10 a month more I get an undetectable faster connection and I can call a support center, speak to an American, and get an instant answer. Otherwise I’m calling the other side of the world and talking with a poor English-speaking person reading cue cards. Then the final result is that I don’t get my problem solved. I’m paying the extra $10.
Dell has an obligation to provide customer service that its customers can understand. If they are charging extra for that, I hope potential Dell customers will take that into account when making the buying decision.
I personally would never purchase a Dell system based on that. Why not open a store, hire non English-speaking associates, and then charge an extra 20 percent if they want to do the transaction in English? That would never fly in retail and I would reconsider the entire scheme. Can Dell afford to lose potential sales right now?
Being from Canada–a very multicultural country–various accents are the norm and typically understood. That’s not to say that accents (including English ones) aren’t always a problem though.
I like Dell’s take on this. A “premium” offering will always appeal to many customers. It recognizes the reality of some consumer’s concerns and allows customers to make the choice themselves. Empowering your customers is always a good idea…and in this case, hopefully a profitable one.
Dell’s problems go beyond customer service, which is and has been increasingly poor over the past 5+ years. There is a big benefit of effective customer service which includes both clarity of communications and timeliness.
Is this worth $99 per year? It is all relative to what HP, Lenovo and other direct merchants do. This move will help Dell compete and deliver service but it might not be enough to overcome some of their other deficits relative to competitors.
All manufacturers and service providers who want to stay in business have an obligation to provide good customer service to their consumers.
I have to question whether Dell and other companies really understand the problems with many Indian call centers. Yes, there may be problems understanding someone with a strong “foreign” accent, but more importantly, from my experience, Indian call centers rarely can solve the problem. The call center workers are not well trained, do not have the technical knowledge and try to fix most problems through a series of preordained steps.
The thought of having to pay to speak with someone who is actually capable of solving a problem with my Dell computer will make me think twice about purchasing Dell in the future. Has Dell shot itself in the foot again?
Behind Dell’s move but not stated here is the nearly unresolvable conflict that has emerged and will get worse between base product and aftermarket support costs.
Just as a simple example, not long ago I bought a wireless network adapter for a home PC for $60.00. Let’s assume the retailer bought it for $30, give or take. So, that means $30 for the manufacturer too. But that’s revenue. If it has 50% gross margins (probably a bit generous) that means the manufacturer made just $15 gross profit on each unit sold at retail.
How many minutes of a support call does it take to wipe out every bit of that manufacturer’s profit? Just a few minutes for US based call centers, given fully burdened support center costs; a bit longer for India. And I did have to call, as it turns out.
What’s happening now is that the continued improvements in manufacturing efficiency and offshoring plus retail buying power drives down physical product costs or holds them flat as service and support costs rise. Most washing machines today, for example, are now disposable items–not worth fixing (with warranties down to 90 days in some cases). Soon, it will make no economic sense to repair flat screen televisions.
So, as PCs get down to a few hundred dollars each, as some are now and more will be soon, will consumers spend a third of that price on top to get call-in support? Hard to say. One trip to the computer shop with a problem will be a lot more than that and maybe even more than the machine cost to begin with.
This is just a strange scenario that is here now and will get more upside down, soon. The physical price goes down. The human cost goes up.
Meanwhile, consumers are caught in the middle, with technology stuff that often just doesn’t work right, but having no means to easily get help, and costs to provide the help that can kill the manufacturer. I have no idea what the answer is.
I am intrigued by this approach–does the $99 “premium” service guarantee that my problem will be solved.
I would rather pay $100 and get a guarantee that my problem would be solved in 10-20 minutes irrespective of where the problem solver is located than pay $99 for a chance to speak with a person who shares my accent but doesn’t guarantee me a solution.
I see this as a disaster in the making. I would feel ripped off if I paid an additional $99 per year and still didn’t get a resolution…but then what do I know?….
Let me see if I get this right. I buy a Dell computer. If I have a problem and need tech support I have to pay for someone I understand to solve my problem? If I don’t feel a need to understand that person, then it is for free? Are they saying that understandable tech support doesn’t come with purchase? Perhaps, they should just raise the price of the computer a bit and include domestic tech support? Dell’s logic is bizarre!
The success of a call center, no matter if it is overseas or in the U.S. is the training and personality of the service representative. If a representative must read from a script to solve the problem, they are not adequately trained, no matter what language they speak.
I have experienced very similar frustrations with US and foreign call centers. I call in. Get a tech and start to go over my problem. This tech can’t resolve it so I am transferred to the more experienced rep. Now that tech starts the entire process all over again and it takes ten minutes to get to where the first tech left off. My experience on this one is that the second guy can’t solve it either.
The other frustration I have experienced is when you go through the stepwise process with the tech and get to what he thinks is the end and then tells you the problem is solved, when it isn’t. And, he doesn’t accept the fact that you are looking at your computer and it still not working properly. Should we be working a bit on personality here?
Does poor tech support cost business? There is no doubt in my mind. As technology continues to accelerate, the layman will never be able to keep up with the ability to solve their own problems. People who buy technology products must have comfort that if there is a problem, there is someone who can fix it quickly.
When a shopper buys a product, they are not just buying a box. They are buying everything the name stands for including the company behind it.
This “offer” by Dell is wrong on so many levels. Not only does it de facto show that Dell clearly knows their offshore technical support is viewed as second class by many customers in the US, but it says to American customers that they are now required to pay extra for after-market service in a language they can actually understand. Offshore call centers have been problematic for a long time, both because of the language issue (on both ends of the call) and the script and cue card approach to problem solving which seldom works. As more and more workers in the US face unemployment the need and desirability to go overseas to hire call center workers to serve US consumers is less and less logical. These ARE jobs Americans can and will do!
A friend just took delivery of a new Dell laptop for her personal use. She has recently helped oversee the return of her company’s call center business back to the US after a failed experiment with an Indian call center. I can’t wait to see if she knew about Dell’s plan when she bought her computer.
This article is causing me pain. It is forcing me to recall the experience I had when the motherboard on my Dell computer failed. First let me say this was several years ago, I have not been willing to put myself through this experience again. Locating the problem took a week of repeated phone calls, disconnections, and reloads of software.
For the sake of self preservation, I have forced many of the details out of my mind, but as I recall it I was not able to get resolution until I called first thing in the morning. Instead of getting picked up overseas, I got someone in the United States. Things move quickly from that point and the problem was finally identified and I received the new board and installed it. Problem solved.
On the other hand, as a junior programmer many years ago I supported the installation of new computer systems in company offices where none existed. It can be a very frustrating experience from the help desk trying to get information from a user who does not understand what they are doing. Think about the number of operating systems, hardware accessories, and application software that are involved and the permutations are mind boggling.
The answer is better support technology. Fortunately I have not had to make any calls lately, but users should have a way to protect their data while letting the help desk have remote access to their computers. This way, many of the problems could be solved quickly. This might require special boot disks that would be included with each new computer or could be sent out overnight to the caller. With the disk loaded and conducting self diagnostics along with the remote access, problems should be easily resolved.
Point 1 – we are all assuming that any American hired is going to be sufficiently well-trained and computer-literate to problem solve. It isn’t ALL about language.
Point 2 – I am among those who expect customer service from a competent and well-trained adviser to be part of the package and would enormously resent having to pay extra UNLESS I knew about it upfront and could decide before buying.
Point 3 – having had difficulty understanding people from India who work for all sorts of companies, I resent the fact that being unhappy brands me as racist and/or protectionist. I am hopefully not deluding myself when I deny that that is the case.
Why won’t Dell and other U.S. companies supply flawless speaking assistance domestically as part of “their package”? Because it’s cheaper to do it from India, China or some other far-off place. This reminds me of the auto industry.
In my opinion, that extra $10 David is paying to enjoy his product should really be incorporated in the purchase price not be an extra to the purchaser. That’s so “airline.”
Job transitions across borders are an emotive issue at any time, certainly even more so during times of economic upheaval such as now.
But should the debate be about “offshore vs. onshore” or about management competence?
A management team whose effort isn’t structured well enough to deliver on their customer’s expectation of a good product (service included) could also find many things on which to pin the blame for poor service, including the geographical location of the support engineers, their native language or what they had for breakfast.
(Or, maybe we should reword the old saying, success has many fathers, but failure is the neighbor’s baby.)
My experiences of phone support around the world range from the superlative to the abysmal, sometimes within the same day in the same country. Painting in broad brush strokes and generalizations (“onshore is high quality and prompt, offshore is low quality and frustrating”) totally misses the point.
The best illustration is when you walk into two brick-and-mortar retail stores on the same high street, and receive dramatically different levels of service–in any country.
To my mind, it is senior management that drives service – vision, culture and the processes. Senior management is responsible for creating the environment, and for creating the hiring and training standards. If you are cultured for fantastic service, your location or origin on the globe is immaterial.
Remote servicing is challenging even without differences in time zones, languages, cultures. The lack of technical or any other sort of individual competence should not be added to the mix. And that goes for both (onshore) management and (offshore) support staff.
Lastly–Bernice and other BBC-followers may be the only ones with whom this might ring a bell–Fawlty Towers should be on the must-watch list for anyone who has anything to do with customer service. Especially if they are part of the management.
If Dell made its products more reliable and user-friendly, call center spending would be slashed and customer satisfaction would skyrocket. Shareholder satisfaction would skyrocket, too.
Who knows the value of the sales Dell has lost because they only provide overseas support? I know many people who will not buy from Dell because they know if they have a problem they will not be put in contact with an American call center.
The Indian support center employees that I’ve dealt with are very, very nice but they read off of a script card every time and inevitably you are forced to ask to speak to a supervisor and then possibly a manager anyway. Time spent is a huge consideration.
I also think that especially with the current economic conditions, there could be a backlash against American companies who outsource to foreign countries.
It is plainly (unpleasant) cultural bias to suppose that any one home-based civilization has a monopoly on accurate technology diagnostic expertise and support skills and also just a bit humiliating to watch empty arguments to ‘support’ this position.
I’d rather not wax parental on the matter either, but I lean toward the extra charges to support the worldwide support efforts of the technology company to keep the support organization sharp, able, and making expected cost points so *my* technology budget stays reasonable.
More Discussions
As Boomers ‘Age Out of Peak Purchasing,’ How Can National Brands Retain Interest With Gen Z?
According to a recent First Insight study titled “Is Gen Z Still Choosing Your Brand,” while…Is Supply Chain Volatility Here To Stay?
Can we expect an ongoing volatility to remain in terms of retail supply chain?Has Same-Day Delivery Become an Expectation Across Retail?
Are expectations around retail delivery speed in flux?
I recommended Dell to a friend of mine for her 1st computer. She had little computer knowledge. It crashed soon after purchase. She endured a week long nightmare before finally solving the problem.
I am appalled that a company would charge $99 a year to deliver quality customer service. Quality customer service should be included with the purchase.
From a practical matter point of view, Dell has placed as “value” on the right to speak to an American voice for customer service. From a “PR” point of view, it’s likely to be disturbing to some of the public, while it opens the door for a competitor to say, “We will let you resolve customer service issues in America without charging for as though it’s a premium.”
There are indeed issues for many consumers with trying to work with an overseas customer-service employee. For one, there is indeed a language barrier where some Americans simply cannot understand the person on the other end, and vice versa. In addition, overseas employees often are trained only to handle the most common issues without being trained to go outside the lines, or to make suggestions outside the box. The issue there is that these are usually technical consumer goods where the everyday consumer needs to converse with someone trained to deal with a lay person.
I agree that the last thing you want when having technical problems with any product is a technical help person that you have trouble understanding. If anything can raise an already stressful situation to even higher levels, that is it. I have a real problem though in being charged extra for American service after the sale. I will be shocked if this works out well for Dell.
Outsourcing call centers overseas has gotten so widespread that it is hard to believe. I called the billing service for our local hospital recently and after a long wait was connected with a very nice person that spoke flawless English. While we were waiting for her computer to respond, I asked her how the weather was where she was at. She asked where I thought that she was? Just to be funny, I said India and she answered that yes, she was in Bombay. I couldn’t believe it! She said she was an American that moved to India to keep her job.
This is really a strange situation. I have internet with Time Warner Cable. For $10 a month more I get an undetectable faster connection and I can call a support center, speak to an American, and get an instant answer. Otherwise I’m calling the other side of the world and talking with a poor English-speaking person reading cue cards. Then the final result is that I don’t get my problem solved. I’m paying the extra $10.
Dell has an obligation to provide customer service that its customers can understand. If they are charging extra for that, I hope potential Dell customers will take that into account when making the buying decision.
I personally would never purchase a Dell system based on that. Why not open a store, hire non English-speaking associates, and then charge an extra 20 percent if they want to do the transaction in English? That would never fly in retail and I would reconsider the entire scheme. Can Dell afford to lose potential sales right now?
Being from Canada–a very multicultural country–various accents are the norm and typically understood. That’s not to say that accents (including English ones) aren’t always a problem though.
I like Dell’s take on this. A “premium” offering will always appeal to many customers. It recognizes the reality of some consumer’s concerns and allows customers to make the choice themselves. Empowering your customers is always a good idea…and in this case, hopefully a profitable one.
Dell’s problems go beyond customer service, which is and has been increasingly poor over the past 5+ years. There is a big benefit of effective customer service which includes both clarity of communications and timeliness.
Is this worth $99 per year? It is all relative to what HP, Lenovo and other direct merchants do. This move will help Dell compete and deliver service but it might not be enough to overcome some of their other deficits relative to competitors.
All manufacturers and service providers who want to stay in business have an obligation to provide good customer service to their consumers.
I have to question whether Dell and other companies really understand the problems with many Indian call centers. Yes, there may be problems understanding someone with a strong “foreign” accent, but more importantly, from my experience, Indian call centers rarely can solve the problem. The call center workers are not well trained, do not have the technical knowledge and try to fix most problems through a series of preordained steps.
The thought of having to pay to speak with someone who is actually capable of solving a problem with my Dell computer will make me think twice about purchasing Dell in the future. Has Dell shot itself in the foot again?
Behind Dell’s move but not stated here is the nearly unresolvable conflict that has emerged and will get worse between base product and aftermarket support costs.
Just as a simple example, not long ago I bought a wireless network adapter for a home PC for $60.00. Let’s assume the retailer bought it for $30, give or take. So, that means $30 for the manufacturer too. But that’s revenue. If it has 50% gross margins (probably a bit generous) that means the manufacturer made just $15 gross profit on each unit sold at retail.
How many minutes of a support call does it take to wipe out every bit of that manufacturer’s profit? Just a few minutes for US based call centers, given fully burdened support center costs; a bit longer for India. And I did have to call, as it turns out.
What’s happening now is that the continued improvements in manufacturing efficiency and offshoring plus retail buying power drives down physical product costs or holds them flat as service and support costs rise. Most washing machines today, for example, are now disposable items–not worth fixing (with warranties down to 90 days in some cases). Soon, it will make no economic sense to repair flat screen televisions.
So, as PCs get down to a few hundred dollars each, as some are now and more will be soon, will consumers spend a third of that price on top to get call-in support? Hard to say. One trip to the computer shop with a problem will be a lot more than that and maybe even more than the machine cost to begin with.
This is just a strange scenario that is here now and will get more upside down, soon. The physical price goes down. The human cost goes up.
Meanwhile, consumers are caught in the middle, with technology stuff that often just doesn’t work right, but having no means to easily get help, and costs to provide the help that can kill the manufacturer. I have no idea what the answer is.
I am intrigued by this approach–does the $99 “premium” service guarantee that my problem will be solved.
I would rather pay $100 and get a guarantee that my problem would be solved in 10-20 minutes irrespective of where the problem solver is located than pay $99 for a chance to speak with a person who shares my accent but doesn’t guarantee me a solution.
I see this as a disaster in the making. I would feel ripped off if I paid an additional $99 per year and still didn’t get a resolution…but then what do I know?….
Let me see if I get this right. I buy a Dell computer. If I have a problem and need tech support I have to pay for someone I understand to solve my problem? If I don’t feel a need to understand that person, then it is for free? Are they saying that understandable tech support doesn’t come with purchase? Perhaps, they should just raise the price of the computer a bit and include domestic tech support? Dell’s logic is bizarre!
The success of a call center, no matter if it is overseas or in the U.S. is the training and personality of the service representative. If a representative must read from a script to solve the problem, they are not adequately trained, no matter what language they speak.
I have experienced very similar frustrations with US and foreign call centers. I call in. Get a tech and start to go over my problem. This tech can’t resolve it so I am transferred to the more experienced rep. Now that tech starts the entire process all over again and it takes ten minutes to get to where the first tech left off. My experience on this one is that the second guy can’t solve it either.
The other frustration I have experienced is when you go through the stepwise process with the tech and get to what he thinks is the end and then tells you the problem is solved, when it isn’t. And, he doesn’t accept the fact that you are looking at your computer and it still not working properly. Should we be working a bit on personality here?
Does poor tech support cost business? There is no doubt in my mind. As technology continues to accelerate, the layman will never be able to keep up with the ability to solve their own problems. People who buy technology products must have comfort that if there is a problem, there is someone who can fix it quickly.
When a shopper buys a product, they are not just buying a box. They are buying everything the name stands for including the company behind it.
This “offer” by Dell is wrong on so many levels. Not only does it de facto show that Dell clearly knows their offshore technical support is viewed as second class by many customers in the US, but it says to American customers that they are now required to pay extra for after-market service in a language they can actually understand. Offshore call centers have been problematic for a long time, both because of the language issue (on both ends of the call) and the script and cue card approach to problem solving which seldom works. As more and more workers in the US face unemployment the need and desirability to go overseas to hire call center workers to serve US consumers is less and less logical. These ARE jobs Americans can and will do!
A friend just took delivery of a new Dell laptop for her personal use. She has recently helped oversee the return of her company’s call center business back to the US after a failed experiment with an Indian call center. I can’t wait to see if she knew about Dell’s plan when she bought her computer.
This article is causing me pain. It is forcing me to recall the experience I had when the motherboard on my Dell computer failed. First let me say this was several years ago, I have not been willing to put myself through this experience again. Locating the problem took a week of repeated phone calls, disconnections, and reloads of software.
For the sake of self preservation, I have forced many of the details out of my mind, but as I recall it I was not able to get resolution until I called first thing in the morning. Instead of getting picked up overseas, I got someone in the United States. Things move quickly from that point and the problem was finally identified and I received the new board and installed it. Problem solved.
On the other hand, as a junior programmer many years ago I supported the installation of new computer systems in company offices where none existed. It can be a very frustrating experience from the help desk trying to get information from a user who does not understand what they are doing. Think about the number of operating systems, hardware accessories, and application software that are involved and the permutations are mind boggling.
The answer is better support technology. Fortunately I have not had to make any calls lately, but users should have a way to protect their data while letting the help desk have remote access to their computers. This way, many of the problems could be solved quickly. This might require special boot disks that would be included with each new computer or could be sent out overnight to the caller. With the disk loaded and conducting self diagnostics along with the remote access, problems should be easily resolved.
Point 1 – we are all assuming that any American hired is going to be sufficiently well-trained and computer-literate to problem solve. It isn’t ALL about language.
Point 2 – I am among those who expect customer service from a competent and well-trained adviser to be part of the package and would enormously resent having to pay extra UNLESS I knew about it upfront and could decide before buying.
Point 3 – having had difficulty understanding people from India who work for all sorts of companies, I resent the fact that being unhappy brands me as racist and/or protectionist. I am hopefully not deluding myself when I deny that that is the case.
Why won’t Dell and other U.S. companies supply flawless speaking assistance domestically as part of “their package”? Because it’s cheaper to do it from India, China or some other far-off place. This reminds me of the auto industry.
In my opinion, that extra $10 David is paying to enjoy his product should really be incorporated in the purchase price not be an extra to the purchaser. That’s so “airline.”
Job transitions across borders are an emotive issue at any time, certainly even more so during times of economic upheaval such as now.
But should the debate be about “offshore vs. onshore” or about management competence?
A management team whose effort isn’t structured well enough to deliver on their customer’s expectation of a good product (service included) could also find many things on which to pin the blame for poor service, including the geographical location of the support engineers, their native language or what they had for breakfast.
(Or, maybe we should reword the old saying, success has many fathers, but failure is the neighbor’s baby.)
My experiences of phone support around the world range from the superlative to the abysmal, sometimes within the same day in the same country. Painting in broad brush strokes and generalizations (“onshore is high quality and prompt, offshore is low quality and frustrating”) totally misses the point.
The best illustration is when you walk into two brick-and-mortar retail stores on the same high street, and receive dramatically different levels of service–in any country.
To my mind, it is senior management that drives service – vision, culture and the processes. Senior management is responsible for creating the environment, and for creating the hiring and training standards. If you are cultured for fantastic service, your location or origin on the globe is immaterial.
Remote servicing is challenging even without differences in time zones, languages, cultures. The lack of technical or any other sort of individual competence should not be added to the mix. And that goes for both (onshore) management and (offshore) support staff.
Lastly–Bernice and other BBC-followers may be the only ones with whom this might ring a bell–Fawlty Towers should be on the must-watch list for anyone who has anything to do with customer service. Especially if they are part of the management.
If Dell made its products more reliable and user-friendly, call center spending would be slashed and customer satisfaction would skyrocket. Shareholder satisfaction would skyrocket, too.
Who knows the value of the sales Dell has lost because they only provide overseas support? I know many people who will not buy from Dell because they know if they have a problem they will not be put in contact with an American call center.
The Indian support center employees that I’ve dealt with are very, very nice but they read off of a script card every time and inevitably you are forced to ask to speak to a supervisor and then possibly a manager anyway. Time spent is a huge consideration.
I also think that especially with the current economic conditions, there could be a backlash against American companies who outsource to foreign countries.
It is plainly (unpleasant) cultural bias to suppose that any one home-based civilization has a monopoly on accurate technology diagnostic expertise and support skills and also just a bit humiliating to watch empty arguments to ‘support’ this position.
I’d rather not wax parental on the matter either, but I lean toward the extra charges to support the worldwide support efforts of the technology company to keep the support organization sharp, able, and making expected cost points so *my* technology budget stays reasonable.