Globalization has its benefits, to be sure. In theory, lower prices, increased sales, introduction of new items and greater understanding through trade are but a few of the positive outcomes of globalization. There are certainly drawbacks to globalization as well, which I'll leave to the economists to sort. From a practical perspective, however, there is one very enervating feature of globalization that goes beyond mere frustration: Outsourcing. Particularly, outsourcing customer service to the Philippines and India. Allow me to explain.
As a general matter, I don't have much against either the country or their peoples. I'm not nearly as interested in their cultures or their lands as others are, but I'm not nearly as opposed to them as I am the Brits; after all, what did they ever do to the Irish?
But I digress.
From what I've been able to ascertain, there are three levels of Dante's Outsourcing Inferno. I draw these conclusions from painful personal experience. In ascending order, they are:
Mawkishly Inefficient: These are the type of people who are almost robotic with their assistance. Their English is the best of the group, but they also have cultural differences that render their assistance frustratingly inefficient. To wit: Most calls begin with a request for the caller, i.e. me, to identify myself. Were it an American asking the question, the question would be, May I ask who's calling? or Can you give me the name on the account? But when we get an outsourced worker, the question becomes, May I ask with whom I have the pleasure of speaking? Seriously? How do you know it's going to be a pleasure?
The next thing they ask for is some identifying information, such as the address on the account, the phone number, the last four digits of my social security number, my blood type and the prospective names of my children (I only kid about the last two). Again, an American would ask, What's the address/ phone number on the account? The outsourced worker is beyond polite: Would it be too much trouble for you to give me the address that is associated with this account? or some such fluff.
Again, none of this is rude. It's just unnecessarily Victorian and therefore inefficient. The last thing an angry customer wants to do is deal with someone still living under the Raj. Yes, it's polite, and an argument can be made that American customer service workers could learn a thing or two about being polite from the outsourced workers. But when you add up all the verbiage they use, outsourced workers extend the phone calls by minutes that only serve to anger further an upset customer.
Clueless Drones: The next class of outsourced worker is the group that has next to no interest in doing the job. Usually, their English isn't as good as that of the Mawkishly Inefficient class. What's more, the caller, who sounds like he was in the Slumdog Millionaire cast, will identify himself by an incongruous name like John Smith (this actually happened yesterday). When they start out with what I am fairly certain that I know is a lie, all bets are off. So when Matt Jones tells me he's calling from Education USA (or whatever the group is) and I can tell his next job is as an extra in a Bollywood production, I tell him my name is Patel, or Rajiv. Since they've already asked for me by my decidedly Anglo-Saxon name, this throws them for a loop. But I don't leave it at that. I then start to mimic their accent.
I know, I'm going to hell. But he lied first.
What started this was one guy blew right by my declaration that my name was Rajiv and asked me if I wanted to further my education. I told the tool that I had a law degree, a master's degree and a double major undergraduate degree and then asked just how much more education he thought I needed. He hung up on me.
I know he's only doing his job, but is it too much to ask that he pay attention? I had also asked one of his coworkers who had called me earlier to remove me from their call list, and since he was calling me again, I figured my earlier request had been ignored. Hence my belligerence.
But that belligerence pales in comparison to what I do to the next class of callers.
Calcutta Collectors: I'm going for alliteration here, for lack of anything better. This group spawns from my experience as an attorney and as Karen's fiancé. And their English is the worst of the lot.
This group isn't really an outsourced worker but someone whose boss bought debt and hopes to collect on his investment.
As an attorney, I had clients calling me months after they'd gotten a bankruptcy discharge from someone claiming that unless they paid up, they (the callers) were going to have the Sheriff come to their place of business to arrest them. Beside the FDCPA violation, this also happens to be a violation of the debtor's discharge. So I took the call and was immediately subjected to epithets and challenges to my licensure. One fool asked me for my bar number, which I immediately rattled off, much to his surprise. His only comeback was to call me more names.
Karen repeatedly gets collection calls for someone named David Williams. When I'm given the number, the bumbling collector gives me the name of some fictitious law firm for which he's working. They use some sort of phone number scrambler that allows them to piggyback on numbers in other area codes to confuse the recipient of the call and make it difficult to track them. The problem for these fools is that they didn't count on me calling every single number they use. I warn them that unless they remove Karen's number I'll keep their lines tied up, but they refuse to believe me. So I call them up, suffer their abuse and force them to stop calling Karen, if only for awhile.
Because they're offshore, there's no legal remedy for these people. They're the lowest of the low. They have no compunction about calling and threatening people. They also don't count on people fighting back, no matter how useless it is.
No matter which class of outsourced worker is calling, it's annoying.
I long for the days when outsourcing meant someone pitching Fiber One bars in television commercials.
(c) 2014 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles
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