India's Call-Center Jobs Go Begging

Source: Time.com


Call centers are symbols of India's economic boom. With Anglicized names and feigned Western accents, Indians handle credit card problems and troubleshoot computers, collect debts and conduct customer satisfaction surveys. Over the past decade or so, relatively high salaries in the call center sector have attracted thousands of applicants across the country. But now the boom is going bust because India's college graduates and young job seekers just don't want to be bothered with the business anymore.

Young people say it is no longer worthwhile going through sleepless nights serving customers halfway around the world. They have better job opportunities in other fields. The work is tiring and stressful and offers few career advancement opportunities, says Dr. A. Sankara Reddy, head of Sri Venkateswara College in New Delhi. In response to students' complaints, Reddy said the college a few months ago banned call center recruiters from campus. At least a handful of other local colleges over the last few years have made the same decision.

The complaints come at a time when the Indian information technology sector, which includes companies that run call centers and do other outsourced work like medical transcription and claims processing, is facing a dearth of skilled labor. Many are opening back offices in other developing countries. India faces a potential shortage of 500,000 professional employees in the information technology sector by 2010, according to the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), a trade group.

Although the country produces hundreds of thousands of graduates each year, many lack the skills — in some cases, fluency in English — to be employed. The industry is also facing "intense competition" for workers from the retail and airline and hospitality sectors, where wages are now closer to what call centers pay, said Kiran Karnik, president of NASSCOM. As India expands its share of more sophisticated outsourcing like financial analysis and product research and development, Karnik said competition for choice employees is also growing. "As recently as four years back, the choice was pretty clear," Karnik said. "Either you got a high-paying, good job at a call center or no job at all. Today, not only are there other options, but they are pretty close to the call centers ."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1671982,00.html?cnn=yes

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It's interesting that this is such a well-paid position in India, yet still more cost-effective for our companies to outsource the jobs there.

The last line of the article is

"When the phone rings years from now, the call center may be in another country entirely."

I'm guessing that country will be another outsourced location, not America.

the line I am so thankful. I tell them so. Besides, the Indian services obviously have orders to do a full 2 minute long apology after every damn sentence I say, so it takes an extra 15 minutes on the phone to figure out whatever it is you're trying to figure out. I love Indian people, and food, and music. But I do not heart Indian call centers.

alas I have to tell them I have no choice, that's where the job got pimped off to

of the line. But I always try and make a personal connection w/ the Indian techs/operators. If the dude tells me his name is Pete and he's obviously more at home with cricket than baseball I'll make a joke or something and get his real name out of him and let the dude know I realize I'm dealing w/ a real live human being on the phone. I've usually gotten pretty good sevice after that. After all, It's not as if it's their life's ambition to sit in some windowless cavern listening to a bunch of spoileds Americsans bitching and moaning about their POS Chinese made something or other falling apart because they wanted to save a couple of bucks instead of getting something of quality that works.

everyone works for the same company...they just know, have come to expect, that service overseas will SUCK - what is hilarious is even the overseas folk call America hoping to get the skeleton crews that fixes all the overseas fuckups

I don't see any relief in the future, in this respect.

...and I can unequivocally state that call centers in China are a non-starter at this point in time.

but I doubt it would ever be the same after this outsourcing fiasco. Six years of contract to contract jobs has sucked ass.

I'm glad it created better opportunities for them, but I don't like what it did to my family. So I have no qualms saying that I hope I never get another email that says:

"Please do the needful for the customer".

/rant off

speak English??? Preferably AN AMERICAN EMPLOYEE

one of the reasons they stick with us over the other airlines is because we are in the US and they can understand us.....but we have to deal with the people from expedia, travelocity, etc. which are located in India and Phillapines(sp?)