Page 1 of Outsourcing - What`s your opinion on the new money saving venture?

The north and the Midlands have been the victims of out sourcing for years, but now as reported by the BBC it`s now affecting the south, are you worried that your job might be affected by the companies obsession to save every last penny at the cost of your job?

At Asda, we have no IT, as it`s all done over in America, and we have no call centre in the UK as it`s all done over in South Africa. So if you have any complaints it goes to South Africa and then they phone Asda.

I know there are a lot of IT people on here, and I was wondering if you are concerned that your job could go to someone in India?

I used to be a sales clerk selling pipe fittings, and it was cheaper for us to close our factory down and outsource all our materials from Thailand, but then the numbers in our office drastically reduced from over 30 to nine members of staff, but in the end we was forced to close down.

After that I moved up to Leeds and did a few temping number crunching jobs for about six months, as well as doing sales calls, and I noticed that it was cheaper and quicker for the companies to get temporary agency staff in, then when the job was done they could get rid of them without having to go through all the redundancy procedures.

But now it`s cheaper for the companies to out source than to waste money on temporary staff.

So what`s your opinion, do you agree with it all? Do you have any fears that your job could go to somone in India for the fraction of your pay packet?

floyd

Not really, mainly because I`m in a job that isn`t primed for outsourcing. But nothing irks me more than trying to call a helpline and hearing the sometimes unintelligible accent on the other end, which nine times out of 10 hasn`t got a clue about the problem I`m calling about

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My eyes, My beautiful eyes....


My Collection
Writer`s Release

Nobody in India can physically do my job in the UK.

Yes I`m a outsourced self employed IT consultant, on at least double the rate of the permy employee`s employed by the client or by the outsource supply company.

All my travel, accomodation communication & business expenses are met by my company before I get around to pay myself.

Best thing to happen to me was being made redundant & going into the IT contracting game.

Quite how this saves money is another matter, I was charging the agency last year about £800 a week add their % (there was another agency adding their % as well for about 4 years) add the rate the outsource company charged the final client. When I started the difference between my rate & the final billing rate was about £11ph.


I consider myself an optimist, albeit an optimist with cynical tendencies and a dark side that Lucifer himself would find a little creepy. (Perhaps you've noticed.) You don't normally associate cynicism with an upbeat pov. But I have exactly that combination and will defend it.

This item was edited on Wednesday, 7th June 2006, 20:40

Didn`t like the idea 6 months ago.

Then we got taken over, so I now work for the outsourcing company that took us over, do the same thing more or less, in same building, with same ppl. So not as bad as it seems.

In fact there is one big upside, used to have to do a lot of "menial" tasks, like password resets, account creation, but that sort thing will be moved out to the Indians so we can get on with the good stuff!

Saying that, speaking to them about passwords is a real nightmare sometimes, but then that can happen with any accent.

Al

www.admars.co.uk

I have to speak to insurance companies quite a bit as part of my job, and there are a few insurance companies that use Indian callcentres. Some of the UK based centres have some of the most arrogant, obnoxious telephonists I`ve ever come across, while most of the Indians are well trained and courteous. If you just take a little bit of time to understand them, ask them to repeat if need be, they`re fine. The majority know what they`re talking about and are well trained in what they`re doing, I`ve found.


What I`m listening to...

Ever tried communication with Koreans whose second language is German & third is English.

Ohh the hilarity of some of the phone calls & e-mails to C********, in Germany.


I consider myself an optimist, albeit an optimist with cynical tendencies and a dark side that Lucifer himself would find a little creepy. (Perhaps you've noticed.) You don't normally associate cynicism with an upbeat pov. But I have exactly that combination and will defend it.

Outsourcing...

BT are weighed under by complaints about it...

From customers AND STAFF
Worst thing they ever did..............

The amount of mistakes I have to clear up because of our Bangalore buddies......

makes me seethe.

Remember people.. it`s BANGALORE Telecom now......

Quote:
the majority know what they`re talking about and are well trained in what they`re doing, I`ve found


You`ve obviously never called BT Broadband technical help.....



My DVD collection





JamesL

This item was edited on Wednesday, 7th June 2006, 22:53

Last company I worked for had outsourced all their technical support to Mumbai and Cracow, so everything had to go through those desks before anything could be done.

The irony is that the company in question are themselves and IT outsourcing company, and I was working in their IT department. As a contractor I didn`t even have the rights to reset a password, let alone create and delete accounts. I could, by the end, create machine accounts when doing builds etc, but their domain was in a terrible state. Loads of redundant names and no clear naming convention. So, if the person over the partition needed their password reset they couldn`t just ask me to do it, which would take about 30 seconds, they had to phone the helpdesk, get a call, wait for someone to pick it up and call them back, explain it all again and then maybe get a resolution. A lot of people just gave up.

I was there for 8 months and in the end I had to refuse my last extension as work was really getting me down. Totally disorganised, crap team leader and no team spirit. Of course, all of that was caused by the team being decimated when all the IT jobs went overseas. To make matters worse, they`re now trying to get rid of more 2nd line people and have everything go to remote support. That`s all well and good in theory, but sometimes it takes 30 seconds to do something yourself, rather than struggle to deal with some user`s interpretation of a `problem` for an hour.

A lot of people might be afraid of being labelled racist for complaining about jobs going to India etc, but as far as I`m concerned I want English speaking people in British call centres. People who understand my culture, not just the language (and then only barely). I had to call Belkin the other day to ask a really simple question about a device, and the bloke on the other end wouldn`t even talk to me until I gave him name, address, email, phone number, inside leg measurement - wasn`t even for my hardware, I was dong a favour for someone else. Then he was incredibly rude and uncooperative, insisting that there was a version number on the device when there quite clearly wasn`t. I ended up putting the phone down on him.

I shudder whenever Dave or Tiffany from Mumbai call about mobile phones...


The girl is Miri Hanai. Please stop emailing me! ;)

Where I work, we`ve outsourced our site maintenance to a "specialist" company. If we get a small problem, we first have to send an e-mail (or get someone with an account to do so) to a "help" (hinder more like) desk, literally at the other end of the country, detailing the problem. They then e-mail it back down to their man in our office, who will then go and find the person that originated to request and ask them what the problem is, and if you`re lucky, it`ll fall into his area of contractual responsibility and fix the problem >:( .
Prehaps it`s actually a job creation scheme?

LB2

Have you tried switching it on........?

Speaking as a outsource guy.

G5K outsourced their desktop support to CC, then CC took over the running of desktop support creating 2 tiers of SLA (Service Level Agreements) neither of which married up.

CC basically ripped apart the established team at the first chance (assisted by the numbers that took redundancy or went for jobs outside the department rather than be transferred as existing G5K employees to CC ones) & totally destroyed morale with anal e-mails if a call wasn`t looked at or assigned within 45 mins during lunchtime.

More Outsource Hi Jinx......

Helldesk was outsourced to Canada, which resulted in calls comming in as a great big glut between the hours of 3 - 5pm, due to time difference.

As I left on the last day, yet another CC e-mail did the rounds to be met with the response by AN Other "F*** this I`m looking on Jobserve".

Ringing HP for tech support & after waiting gawd knows how long, transferred from team to team, told to redial another number, told by a script monkey in Bangalore that they know more than the people with more than 10 years experience. BTW get this as a service centre we do not fit into the catagory of end user or reseller.

Was told by the Trainline that I couldn`t book a night sleeper service to Reading from Exeter because my party had children, ring this number instead....that number lead to another 3 calls of "No you must ring this number" with a Indian accent, cue a mouthfull of abuse on the last occasion. Just out of interest I tried the same booking without children in the party to be greeted by "You must ring (the same number) as we cannot process overnight sleeper bookings". FFS Why not just say that in the first place.

Looks like the journey will be cheaper by booking it as 2 singles anyway from a railway station.


I consider myself an optimist, albeit an optimist with cynical tendencies and a dark side that Lucifer himself would find a little creepy. (Perhaps you've noticed.) You don't normally associate cynicism with an upbeat pov. But I have exactly that combination and will defend it.

This item was edited on Thursday, 8th June 2006, 00:41