AT&T Says "No More" to Customer Service Outsourcing

[OhioChick]

AT&T finds that outsourcing doesn't always pay off


AT&T announced a strategic move last week that might be a win-win for US workers and AT&T home broadband customers. The telecom giant announced that it will do away with its foreign call centers that have long been ridiculed by customers and will instead create 2,000 new unionized jobs in the United States to handle customer support calls.

The new customer support positions will pay $30,000 a year and employees will receive benefits. AT&T will begin filling the new positions in mid-2007 so customers still have another 8 or 9 months to deal with the foreign call centers. Information Week reports:

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 DSLreports.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.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=4297

AT&T stops outsourcing

This story is not so much important on its own as it is for its possible influence:

Have you ever called a technical support line for your phone provider, computer manufacturer, or other piece of technological importance only to have the other end of the line be barely able to understand you, much less diagnose your problems? It's more than a small problem - outsourcing has not only affected countless jobs in many countries, it's also been proven to reduce accurate service, and leaves customers often feeling shortchanged.

Now, one of the world's largest and oldest corporations, AT&T, has decided to fight its growing customer-service issues by stopping its outsourcing. Instead, the company will start up a new unionized shop in the US for its customer service. The positions will pay over $30,000 USD and have benefits. By offering a living-wage salary and benefits, AT&T hopes to attract qualified people and greatly improve its customer satisfaction.

The big question that this raises is, will others follow? Outsourcing has previously been argued to be an important cost-reduction strategy for companies across the globe in the world's richest nations Including the US, UK, and Japan), where labour is expensive. Clearly, a goliath like AT&T choosing to pursue different means illustrates that this supposed cost reduction must be in fact costing the company more money.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/09/25/ATT_stops_outsourcing/

[dazzlerazzle]

1. att outsource stoppage

next offer I get to come back, I may do so...

[Deja Q]

2. I hope it follows.

As a person who's had to deal with offshored "help", it's anything but. They're nothing more than cue card readers who just read scripts and won't be bothered to think about what's going on with the criteria given from an understandably unhappy customer!! And I've heard horror stories of people who get calls at 11PM from tech support in India. It's almost as much temporal shock as it is cultural shock... And their attitudes (who cares what the core reason is) are not often friendly. Especially if it's a billing issue. (Just you try to call up and cancel compuserve... or fix a billing problem that was their fault... it's damn disgusting. And too right they don't give a shit about Americans either. :think: )

Especially as corporate-America has taught its own citizens to believe in "the customer is always right" and "be polite" for its own service-based economy. For corporations to continue doing what's the sheer opposite makes no sense at all and will only hurt their credibility. And they don't want people starting small businesses either and take away "their" customers...)

Besides, would India offshore to the US? Or China to the US? No. They have their own populations and problems and, like any other country is going to be busy with its own populations to give a damn about anybody else. Anybody should try emigrating over there and see what happens. Tribalism is inevitable. And corporate-America is finally fathoming that out too. (this doesn't mean tribalism has to end up in war, but without somebody or something tangible to look up to, people are going to be hurt. And hurt people stop caring. Even about living.)

And to see jobs starting to come back is only an act I can applaud. Not just for what I've already said but for OUR economy too. It's a good thing and all it can do for the US and its citizens are good things. If the trend of inshoring continues, people may even want to study again because they think there is a future after all.

And AT&T has also realized that the sticker cost is not the sole cost. I applaud their inshoring efforts. It's the best thing they can do for America, its citizens, and its economy - which the world can't seem to get away from, like it or not.

[Megahurtz]

3. Good Post. n/t

[aquart]

5. Oh, sure. Now that I've switched to Verizon.

[holboz]

7. YES! I fully agree

Overseas "help" is anything but. I've dealt with AT&T's overseas customer service and Circuit City's overseas customer service in the past 2 months. What a flipping joke! They can't "HELP" you with anything because they're a 3rd party and have no authorization to do anything useful for you to rectify your situation.

We ceased doing business with AT&T as well as Circuit City because of our experience with their horrible customer service call centers.

It's great to see these jobs come back hoome. But I don't want to see the repeat of something Michael Moore reported on in his film "The Big One". He noted that firms like TWA and (I think) AT&T were using prison labor to work their call centers.

[RobinA]

33. While I Agree

that this COULD be a step in the right direction. Does it really matter whether the "customer service" person is stonewalling you in good English or bad English? I've had similar problems myself, but after thinking about the non-help, I have to wonder if the issue is their foreignness, or the companys' unwillingness to put people on the phone who have the power to help. It always seems to me that the first one or two levels of contact when calling customer support are there solely to get the customer off the phone. Once you penetrate to a third or fourth level, there is often a person who clears up the problem. I have to wonder if this is not deliberate.

[sdfernando]

11. Hope others will follow suit

I've had terrible dealings with Dell. You get someone on the line saying their name is Chris or Mary with a thick, obviously Indian accent. I don't mind that so much, but they have absolutely NO flexibility. 100% by the script, no leeway for anything. This is one of the big reasons our company switch from Dell once our leases expired.

[OhioChick]

14. Great Post!

:thumbsup:

[Ohio Joe]

34. Sorry but can't agree here

I see so much misplaced anger here at DU regarding off-shoring it makes me sick. None of the problems you mention are the fault of the people of India, they are company policy. None of them will go away when these jobs return. I've worked with thousands of different people from India, since 1989 (when I got into IT) and they have consistently been a kind, warm and friendly people.

Place your anger where it belongs, with the companies that decide to do the off-shoring, not the people that take the jobs so they can make a living.

[EnviroBat]

35. I can only hope you have to go through the humiliation...

Of TRAINING your off-shore replacement prior to your lay-off! Let me know how your tune changes then... Until then this BS of corporations, in this country trying to save a buck by eliminating American workers doesn't work. I'm glad someone is finally wising up!

[Ohio Joe]

36. ummm

The person you had to train was not at fault. Yes, I have trained the person that was going to take my place so I could be laid off but I was not angry at the person but rather the company that wanted to get rid of me so they could hire cheaper labor.

[Mountainman]

55. I don't agree with you. We can't reach the companies but we can talk to

Indians. They took jobs that use to belong to Americans. They did what was in their best interests and I can't fault them for that but it goes with the territory to be attacked by Americans. I refuse to talk to, an Indian no matter what the situation is. Not because I have anything against them. I have done a lot of work with them also and they are as you say, but I will not support the off shoring of American jobs. Saying we should react against the companies is like saying we should rail against the wind. It does little good.

[Warpy]

4. It's not even the accent half the time

The phone lines in India are AWFUL. Take a guy with a heavy accent and put him on a line that sounds like somebody's frying eggs, lots of them, in his cubicle, and it's no wonder customers are getting frustrated and rude.

I hope this is a sign of things to come.

[Gormy Cuss]

10. Cheap is as cheap does.

Offshoring to the lowest bidder just compounded the problem of language and cultural differences. I've dealt with competent tech and CS based in India, but for each competent person there have been at least a dozen feckless, frustrating events.

If AT&T is responding to customer backlash based on anything but xenophobia I think it's great.

[LisaM]

6. Excellent. And I hope it's a trend

I encourage everyone who doesn't have AT&T (I do) to switch service and tell your other provider why!

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

8. Last Friday...

I had to deal with an Indian AT&T customer support person, to attempt to resolve a DSL tech issue. Not only was this young man utterly clueless, there was the issue of his stupifyingly thick accent. Add that to the fact that the AT&T DSL service, itself, sucks dead donkeys, and I told the customer to drop AT&T and move to another DSL provider. She is.

I hope they fire the asshole who first conceived of this outsourcing. Then draw and quarter him and put his head, on a pike pole, at the entrance to corporate headquarters.

[w4rma]

9. Good. (nt)

[Donnachaidh]

12. this is wonderful news!

I don't know how many times I've called with problems and gotten people who didn't seem to have a firm grasp on English, and were obviously reading instructions from a sheet. I cannot tell you how frustrating that was!

[Skittles]

19. hey, I have to do that ALL NIGHT LONG at my job

supposedly our offshore people are certified as speaking English but too often they are reading a script and if I ask a question they have no idea what I am saying

[Gman]

13. High five to CWA!

:hi:

[4dsc]

30. F*ck the CWA!!

I know they won't be high fiving the CWA in QWEST country!! The CWA has sold the union down the tubes here for $10 jobs!! So I say F*ck them!!

[MadMaddie]

15. Good News....

[skids]

16. Good news, but I bet...

...that the people responsible for leading AT&T down this blind alley still get big fat raises.

[Kagemusha]

17. I don't blame them for wanting to save money but, sacrificing service...

As the last paragraph quoted above mentions, the cost reduction is costing the company in other ways. Money indirectly lost is still lost. Customer disgust is certainly a loss leader.

[sarcasmo]

18. If Dell followed suit, we might consider buying another one.

[mcscajun]

32. It did, two years ago, but only for certain product lines

Tuesday 26th September 2006

Dell admits Indian mistake
Andy McCue
silicon.com
April 01, 2004, 13:00 BST

Dell admits it has "learnt its lesson" after being forced to drop its Indian call centre last year because of customer complaints about the quality of service.

The call-centre operation for the OptiPlex desktops and Latitude laptops was moved back to the US and, in an exclusive interview with silicon.com, Dell CIO Randy Mott said the Bangalore centre was unable to deal satisfactorily with the volume of calls generated by the rapid growth of those product lines.

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/employment/0,39020648,39150648,00.htm

Hope that they'll bring back other call center jobs is misplaced, as the customer complaints it was responding to were Business Customers, not the home users.

[sarcasmo]

37. Thanks for that link.

[harpboy_ak]

54. I wrote Michael Dell a letter

The week before they reversed their outsourcing decision, I got an Indian script reader who wanted to go through a long "diagnostic procedure" when it was obvious I had a failing bearing on a power supply fan on an Optiplex. I refused and asked for a supervisor, who still wanted to read a script. I told her that if she wouldn't simply send a fan I would be calling Texas in the morning, and she agreed to send the fan.

Then I sat down and wrote a letter to Michael Dell the next morning. A week later one of Dell's very high level tech support supervisor was calling to make sure that our problem had been fixed, and to inform me that support would no longer be from India for our Optiplexes and Dell workstations (my boss loves gigabit ethernet).

My latest gripe is Symantec's totally obtuse outsourced "support" for Norton products. If you email, you get someone that apparently can't parse a problem report and can only paste text from some kind of help database. If you talk on the phone, you get someone whose English is insufferable and can't understand that you can't download the product upgrade because there is something wrong with the US web site.

[0007]

41. In a heart beat!!

[Mr_Spock]

20. We had to pull back product from Asia 'cause they couldn't make it

properly. This was AT&T also - when will these morons learn?

[pampango]

44. Not sure what you mean...

"when will these morons learn?" Learn what? That Asians can't make things properly? If that is your point, does it apply as well to Africans, Mexicans, Norwegians (no, wait, they are white), as well?

If you want to keep jobs in America, and out of Asia, that is a fine goal, but don't contend that it has anything to do with the Asian's lack of ability to "make things properly.

[Mr_Spock]

52. The point was it cost more to send over support engineers to fix the issue

and they were losing money left & right. It was cheaper to build the product here where the product & process were designed.

Some engineer got a bonus for shipping this overseas, supposedly saving millions. They didn't take back the bonus after we ended up bringing the product back here.

[pampango]

56. My bad

I mistook your previous post as a shot at Asians not being able to build anything right. If it is cheaper to build this particular product here where it was designed, no problem.

[tuvor]

21. In the meantime, will they still send your info to the NSA?

[gully]

22. Great, lets hope its a trend!

!

[GoddessOfGuinness]

23. It's about effing time somebody realized this...

I hope others follow AT&T's lead.

[countmyvote4real]

24. This deal does not guarantee client privacy.

Just because this company is suddenly "on-shore" does not mean that they are no longer associated with the NSA in domestic spying and evesdropping. If anything, oppositionists to this regime should shun this company altogether. This company is still spying and reporting on you regardless of your alleged terrorist, porn or just plain party affiliations.

DO NOT CONTRACT WITH THIS VOYEAR, FASCIST CORPORATION. They are profiting more by selling you than by selling you their services.

[Red Right and BLUE]

25. A step in the right direction! Nom'd. eom

[Vidar]

26. Good, as far as it goes.

[pinniped]

27. Fuck them, they are still .gov stooges.

This is PR BS.

[MissWaverly]

28. I dropped Norton over this

I just could not stand their poor support, I have 3/4 of a year left on my contract.

[Fierce]

29. But but but...I thought it was a profit thing!

I thought companies couldn't POSSIBLY pay union wages to American employees! That it would eat up wages and make companies unable to compete!

Wait...you mean poor customer service, customers leaving in droves, and a bad reputation eats in to profits more? REALLY? Huh.

[mcscajun]

31. 2,000 new unionized jobs in the United States! Woo-hoo!

WTG, AT&T!!!

[4dsc]

38. at $10 an hour??

Why are you cheering over 1980's wages??

[mcscajun]

40. Where do you get $10 an hour?

The article is talking about jobs paying $30,000 a year, which is damned good money for what is basically an entry-level job, customer service on the phone. These are jobs paying a living wage With Benefits, nothing to sneeze at in this economy, where many cannot find jobs with benefits, or indeed, a full-time job at all.

[rodmant]

39. another perspective, slightly OT

At work and at home it's been a mixed experience. We cut back on outsourcing
our software development, by over 50% (not sure of the true figure). On the other
hand I worked directly w/a developer in Bangalore on a AD domain migration
project (scanning millions of SDs on files and dirs to possibly programatically update
aces); in this case the two of us had a good time and learned much from each other -
communicating via IM, and email.

At home I've had a couple of DSL issues;
one required "equipment reprovisioning" at the central office. This problem
was escalated (starting w/a fairly competent India help desk person). After
escalation (which did require me demonstarting my networking skits), I got
a phone call from a robot indicating the problem was resolved, and do I agree.. I selected
a non-default option the robot offered, in order to
to get word on just what
was done to fix the problem, so it ended up that I talked w/a "John" from India - I thanked him for
his help and said that I worked w/a developer in Banagalore and then asked if
John was his real name - he said yes, and that he was (baptized I think) Christian.
As you know, most have grown up speaking English.

I've also worked w/a couple
of sys admins in Bangalore, and enjoyed it - the problem is that they have too many
job offers and move on, ie there is high turn over- so we had to keep re-training the
new ones.

Honestly, I'm threatened by outsourcing also. Just wanted to share my experience-
I think I now have a friend in Banaglore :->

[GetTheRightVote]

42. Indians from India are not Americans & do not work out when dealing

with our problems. I am a programmer and I have been dealing with Indians for some time and it has been no picnic either. They do not like our country and they act like they are smarter then Americans. In fact, I have been told that to my face by many of them. I was amazed at the fact that they would be speaking to me, an American, that way. I am very good at what I do and there is no doubt in my mind that we do not need them, Indians, here taking jobs away from us. Some of them are nice, there is no doubt, but this does not keep them from looking down on us because guess what, we are not as smart as them of course, we can not do the jobs so they must come here all the way from India to take care of them for us. I am so sick, very sick of hearing it and of seeing it, I could just puke every where I go and every time I hear an American I knew or know in this field telling me that they can not get a position and do not know what they are going to do about it while people form other places are staying employed because they undermine the salaries that Americans must make to pay the rent and eat. I could go on and on and on about it but I believe I have run on long enough. But please do not tell me or my American friends that we should move over for individuals from somewhere else because they are so nice.........argggggggggggggggggggggggg. By the way I am from the midwest as well........ Americans need to start standing up for each other instead of laying down or taking it in the back.

:kick:

[annabanana]

43. AT&T is STILL not shy about turning over our records

wholesale to the NSA. I will not be going back. The other companies are at least trying to deny their involvement.

[bleedingheart]

45. Our company has found that outsourcing isn't the "winner" it was supposed

to be...

In fact it has cost more money and more headaches.

[OhioChick]

46. That's refreshing news! n/t

[Amonester]

47. So who R the twits who took the decision to out-source in the...

first place?

Some irresponsible VEE-PEEs who think they know everything without having to really think about it?

I'd be ready to bet they've been promoted... :grr:

[bleedingheart]

48. deep down I think a lot of outsourcing was done to fix books

and I am not joking.

[Bacchus39]

49. wow, my provider. that's good news

n/t

[lonestarnot]

50. Oh so now all of a sudden they're concerned about their customers?

:rofl: WTF! What, they want some? Or they want more records to give up to homeland security? Tee hee.

[MissMillie]

51. I hope this move brings them lots of business

There actually are some of us out there that will spend our money where we think the company is doing the right thing.

I hope they get lots of business and that it prompts other companies to follow suit.

[vixengrl]

53. I am a phone center service rep, and I think this is good thinking

on the part of AT&T, because outsourcing may save payroll $$$, but it won't make up for lost customer $$$. I know from experience that what a caller wants is to be quickly understood and served and they do not have time for someone to dither about asking the same questions over and over or to spend time on hold whilst a supervisor is being consulted--the customer wants to deal with a well-trained, knowledgeable, and personable rep. And if they can not get that, they will be justifiable angry, because they will feel a) frustrated (because they haven't gotten what they need b)cheated (because they pay money and expect service and c)like giving bad word-of-mouth about the company they've dealt with, and for a service business, bad word- of-mouth can be like death--it just undoes any advertising.

[OhioChick]

57. Interesting.........

I just came across this article related to AT&T. So much for AT&T keeping the jobs here... :mad:

September 28, 2006
AT&T To Cut Hundreds Of U.S. Tech Jobs, Sources Say
By Paul McDougall

Company insiders claim AT&T is set to dramatically increase its use of India-based labor.
AT&T last week proudly trumpeted the fact that it would end arrangements under which it outsources certain customer service functions to low-cost, offshore providers. But company insiders claim the telecom company is shipping out significantly more U.S. jobs than it's bringing back and is set to dramatically increase its use of India-based labor.
AT&T is expanding its relationship with Indian outsourcer Tech Mahindra, which is partly owned by British Telecom, according to sources with knowledge of the company's plans. AT&T plans to drastically reduce the number of U.S.-based contract employees it uses for internal software development, they say. "AT&T is sending out far more jobs than it's bringing back," says an insider in the company's customer operations department. The source requested anonymity, as did another source with knowledge of AT&T's intentions.

An AT&T spokesman confirms the Orlando job cuts, but claims they're not part of a wider offshoring push at AT&T. "We evaluate project by project. If we determine that Tech Mahindra provides an advantage for us in terms of a specific project, then we'll look at that," the spokesman says.

The plan was unveiled to middle management earlier this month by AT&T senior executives. It calls for the company to slash the number of IT contractors in use throughout the United States and send the work to Tech Mahindra's Indian operations. For instance, at least 24 software developers at AT&T's Orlando billing center will be laid off by March as their work is gradually outsourced. The workers' current role is to write the software that lets AT&T customers pay their bills over the Internet.

~snip~ They will be replaced with 24 Tech Mahindra workers, 12 of whom will move temporarily to Orlando for training.

http://ddj.com/dept/debug/193100354?cid=RSSfeed_DDJ_debugging

[laugle]

58. Yeah....and I just got my phone bill from them and they added a $6.00

charge for a; SERVICE FEE.....what the fuck is that?? I hate that company....2000 jobs.....big deal!! They are just using a public relations ploy. They are a huge company and that is not alot of jobs!!