I am open minded enough to see the benefits of outsourcing. Yes, jobs are being deleted and people are losing their job as a result, but in the long run won't they find another or create a job, possibly something where they can contribute to society in a more efficient manner? Not to sound cold hearted, but my concern is not for the welfare of the the working U.S. citizen. Well, I guess it is, but not as direct as everyone elses'. My concern is for the individual business, that despite outsourcing of some positions, still employ U.S. citizens. Lou Dobbs of CNN, who does not favor outsourcing, brings up the point that not only are we losing jobs here in the U.S., but the quality of service is being forfeited as a result. Here lies my concern. I've experienced a decline in quality service with a company that serves me. It discourages me from wanting to use the service because I can't understand the person that is trying to help me, in part due to their strong accent. In addition, the representative I am speaking with sometimes has no experience with the product I'm using. If quality of service declines, customers will go somewhere else, and revenue will drop for a business, possibly causing more job losses. I think outsourcing may have a more indirect effect than the majority of the public are focusing on. What will happen to the economy if the customer service of businesses have poor quality?
1 comment:
There are three ideas to touch on here. The first is why outsource? The second has to do with diversification. The third with measurement of these things by management.
Firms outsource when they think the productivity they get for wages is better overseas than here. So a firm may be very aware that the quality of their customer service has gone down, but they may be substituting quantity for that. I do not think that managers are dumb enough to go for lower quality customer service without increasing its quantity.
One little talked about advantage of that quality for quantity tradeoff is that it helps diversify a firms offerings. They may actually be able to reduce the risk of a caller getting bad service by having more people to spread that task over: more people allows for more specialization and better performance.
Lastly, there is a big measurement problem in anything involving service. We spend some time in ManEc talking about the econometrics of how you measure demand, and you will not find that stuff easy. It is substantially harder to measure things like service productivity, or the absence of demand because you lose customers from bad service. So, it is entirely possible that a lot of outsourcing is being driven by former ManEc students who didn't get a good handle on their econometrics. ;)>
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