With the economy in a free fall, India's call centers are receiving calls from more than frustrated consumers in America. While down and out Americans are increasingly defaulting on their payments, the businesses responsible to collect these debts are relying on outsourced Indian call centers to do their bidding. But they are not the first industry to venture into these waters.

Americans have grown accustomed to receiving calls from India for insurance claims and credit card sales. But debt collection represents a growing business for outsourcing companies, especially as the American economy slows and its consumers struggle to pay for their purchases. Automated dialing and Internet technology capable of contacting tens of thousands of Americans every hour has put confidential information like Social Security numbers, addresses and credit history at operators’ fingertips.

Debt collectors in India often cost about one-quarter the price of their American counterparts, and are often better at the job, debt collection company executives say. So far just a tiny fraction, maybe 5 percent, of American debt collection is done outside the country, industry executives estimate. There may be new business is in the pipeline. Just over 4.5 percent of all bank credit card accounts were delinquent in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to the Federal Reserve, up from 3.5 percent two years before. Businesses in the United States put $141 billion in delinquent consumer debt up for collection in 2005, according to a Price Waterhouse Coopers survey commissioned by an industry group, and debt collection agencies collected $51 billion that year. They kept nearly a quarter of that in profits.

In recent times, outsourcing as a publicly debated topic seems to revive every four year. Like elections.
While it appearance in the public arena may be cyclical,  for consumers, it is a source of discontent that usually appears every time the need to call for support arises.

Lessons Learned

A  study by Gartner indicates that outsourcing customer service options can cost a company more. Up to 30% more than keeping the staff in house. Research director Alexa Bona pointed out that “the outsourced service is often more efficient, but then outsourcers need to make a profit too.”  The report went on to give a bad outlook on outsourcing, indicating that 80% of companies that outsource to save money will fall short of goals. Additionally, 60% of those that outsource parts of their business that interact with customers will actually lose clients. However, the report did indicate that, if done successfully, companies can save 25 to 30% by outsourcing.

Dell Computers, once outsourced its call center to foreigners, and  have now relinquished them back to local control.
AT&T insists it made the decision to repatriate the jobs after successfully bargaining "competitive" wages with the CWA. But customer pressure to improve service may also have been a factor. Users of AT&T's home DSL service frequently pillory the company on online bulletin boards and blogs.
A poster on DSL reports.com complains that AT&T's "India tech support doesn't know anything." AT&T's spokesman declined to identify the vendor currently handling the company's offshore DSL support.
On Hostjury.com , there are numerous reviews, many of them quite humorous detailing the interaction between customers and service representatives. But a number of companies profiled on Hostjury have  related similar experiences.  
Brent Oxley CEO of HostGator was  asked “If you were to have started HostGator today, would you have done anything differently?  
"There was a very short period of time, years ago when it was just me and I couldn't afford 24/7 support personnel. I worked myself every second I was awake, but in order to cover shifts while I slept I chose to try outsourcing. This was by far one of the costliest mistakes I’ve ever made. The amount of money lost from customers leaving and damaged reputation far exceeded any amount of money saved. If I could go back in time and do it all over I would have found some way to come up with money to pay for in house support." he said

Many of these firms moving towards foreign outsourced services need to pay heed to the lessons learned by the IT industry. Customers of these firms must also be vocal about the need to keep these service local. Or they too, may be expressing their discontent with customer service, if they find themselves in the unfortunate place requiring it

Simply for reading pleasure

For your enjoyment, I have included some satirical views I've encountered, of the teaching methods utilized in call centers, as well as humorous exchanges from call center reps.

Workers were told that understanding Sylvester Stallone's lines was the final frontier in mastering American diction. Others were asked to watch Titanic and Ally McBeal, so they could mimic an acceptable American accent.
But no amount of training prepared them for what was to come.
More than 30,000 employees at Indian call centers, among whom Radhika becomes Ruth and Satish becomes Steve, are told to adopt American names and say they are calling from a U.S. city in order to put their American customers at ease.
Their training includes a smattering of U.S. history and geography, along with speech therapy so that they will sound "American." Some call centers are adorned with American flags to give a cultural feel to the place.
Along the way, these employees are exposed to a way of life that can come into direct conflict with their conservative values and, sometimes, their sanity.
Partho Banerjee, a 24-year-old employee at a call center in Mumbai for TransWorks, a computer outsourcing company, blushes when he recalls a sales pitch that he made to a 45-year-old American woman.
"She asked me to marry her," he said.
On another occasion, Partho let his accent slip and had to confess after being pointedly questioned that he was, in fact, an Indian sitting next to a telephone in Mumbai.
"The man told me, 'You guys blew up the WTC,'" he said. "I tried to explain India had nothing to do with it, but he just banged the phone down."
Another employee at a call center named Maulik Bhansali, 22, spoke to a man who kissed him over the phone many times before apologizing, "Sorry, if you are not gay. Is there anybody else in your company who is?"
Mandakini Pradhan, 21, once dialed an American home in an attempt to sell a caller ID system. The man told her, "Aren't you the girl who lives next door? Can you see me? I am naked."
One young call center employee  almost lost his job after telling a customer during a call that was monitored by his supervisor, "You will be intimated soon."  The American client who took the issue to the top brass, told us that a word like “intimate' was unacceptable as it meant something on the lines of intimacy.  Since Indians speak English the way Britishers do, we use a few expressions that common Americans normally don't.”
Indians are not always the victims of these quaint clashes of culture. Americans, too, suffer from a communication gap.
Veer Sagar, CEO of Selectronic, a medical transcription company, says that in his line of work his employees need not speak to Americans but merely listen to voice files of doctors' dictations and type out what they have heard.
Despite creating "an American ambience" by feeding his workers Coke and pizzas on weekends and making them watch two Hollywood movies every week, many in his firm cannot fully comprehend what Americans say.
Veer remembers a doctor who had said, "the patient's salary is twenty grand." The Indian transcript was typed, "The patient's salary is twenty. Very grand."
Another worker wrote that the patient was "a base reporter" when the doctor meant "ace reporter." Similarly, a doctor's analysis, "He is fond of marijuana," became, "He is fond of Mary Yuvane."
And "the incident occurred while at Macy's Thanksgiving parade," became "the incident occurred while Macy was giving thanks to the parade."