Jobs are Leaving U.S.

The outsourcing of customer service to offshore providers has gotten a lot of bad press in the U.S. recently, with complaints like language problems and the exporting of jobs. But, despite the potential to alienate consumers, this offshoring continues to grow, driven mainly by the lower labor costs overseas. U.S. jobs are more expensive, it’s a lot better taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S.

Following online gambling, customer service is not the only job area in jeopardy of being shipped offshore. Lots of others -- radiologists, accountants, and architects among them -- are discovering to their great unease that overseas residents can do what they do for American customers. Even the world’s largest software companies like Microsoft and IBM have recently announced moving some of their employees offshore. There is an easy way of figuring out whose jobs are vulnerable and whose aren't. If a worker has to be located close to the customer, then the job can't be sent offshore. If the worker can be located far from the customer, the job might qualify for offshoring. After all, if you can serve a customer in Texas from New York, you can probably serve them almost as easily from Philippines or Mumbai.

Another aspect of this issue is the actual client. Are companies that send customer service abroad making a mistake? It's hard to answer that question without knowing offshoring's actual impact on customer satisfaction. Sometimes, because a company wants to protect information about its customers, the customer-service provider isn't given complete customer histories and profiles. Therefore, the provider's authority to resolve complaints is limited. Companies need to weigh their concerns about information security and financial control against the damage that such arrangements can do to customer satisfaction. Companies can also make customer service more effective by taking advantage of the technological innovations that some providers offer, and here there may sometimes be an advantage in offshoring. Some foreign outsourcing providers have offerings their domestic counterparts can't match in terms of technologies that help guide customer service.

But there are ways to make outsourced customer service more palatable to customers or to mitigate its negative effects, and in some respects that may be easier to do with offshoring. And there are offshoring alternatives that can save a company money without damaging its relationship with its customers. An important step companies can take to improve the quality of outsourced customer service is to ensure that the provider has all the information necessary to help the customer and full authority to do so.