Banks , health insurance , internet , electricity , even HR in some companies , hospital customer services
It’s almost impossible to hear an American accent when you call customer services in any company that you contracted with in the States .
I always wonder why .
Comments
It’s cheap labor and phones can be directed to be picked up anywhere
Indians will work for far less salary.
Labor is cheaper outside the US.
Companies want to make more money, and outsourcing is cheap.
There’s also plenty in the Philippines.
Because it’s very cheap labor, as in $3 USD an hour
They are not all Indian
should probably ask an indian
Because in a global economy, with international calling virtually free thanks to VOIP technology, and very low costs of labor in India. . .it’s MUCH cheaper to set up a call center in India than in the US, and most places don’t care that their customer service reps speak mangled English with a heavy accent, as long as they more-or-less get the job done.
It’s cheap and they almost speak English
Usually, it’s because the call center where the people work is in India.
Lower wages in India, with a large amount of people who speak English and the fact that phones can be answered from anywhere in the world pretty much instantly.
Cheap labor. Though, I’ve gotten Americans the last few times I’ve called in to my insurance and Internet providers.
Because that’s what the company you are calling decided to do. Mostly because it’s cheaper to base them there.
Customer service is outsourced due to cost and it’s more triage which can be standardized to a point of low skill.
Ever noticed you get transferred if your question isn’t a simple one? Billing department, sales department, etc. you are routed.
I worked at a company that did that and the claim I heard was that the pay in India was only like 25% of the pay rate in America and they didn’t ask for any real benefits in return and were willing to work longer shifts.
More money to the shareholders.
Edit: fixed autocorrect stupidity
While everyone is already talking about how cheap labor is in India, another key aspect is that a huge amount of India speaks english with enough fluency to serve as basic customer support (where they’re mostly reading from a script). There are tens of millions of english speaking people that companies can easily use as incredibly cheap labor, in a time-zone where Americans will be sleeping (so more often these call centers are used when it’s night here in America, but daytime in India).
Because they don’t ask for $15/hour
Cheap labor
Make sure to tell them that they speak pretty good English for a Paki. They love that.
The answer always is $$$. They outsource those jobs to India for cheap labor.
Wages in India are lower, while English is one of the major languages used there. Which means there are literally millions (if not tens or hundreds of millions) of Indians who are fluent in English and willing to work for lower pay than Americans.
Capitalism. Because cheap Indian labor costs a lot less than what Americans are getting paid.
They are Filipino too now.
Because businesses would rather take jobs away from Americans
It was a British colony and many people there still learn English. That plus it’s cheap.
India’s official language is English, labor is cheap and many are highly educated.
Cost
Low wages, relative English fluency.
Not all.
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Because it’s a place with a large supply of cheap labor
As others have said, cheap labor but also the fact that Indian law enforcement can be paid off. They can be made aware of the problem but will turn their heads if paid the right amount of money
I’m finding more and more are either Filipino or Mexican/South American.
The ones I call are all in the Philippines
One billion people, many of whom speak English and will work for far less than other English-speaking people.
I work in a call center in USA. We’re not going to be outsourced because the clientele would shit a brick the first second someone with an accent answers.
I have a really hard time with Indian accents
The average time of day when people want to call customer support happens to align with the time of day when Indians are working.
Cheaper and those countries have spent years building up the infrastructure to support that industry
Or Philippines. Some companies have it all in the US, I’m pretty sure Discover is that way.
They aren’t. A bunch are in the Philippines, too
Because Americans won’t do the work for the same pay that Indians and Filippinos will
Just wait til you hear about the call center “jobs” that are still in the US.
https://filtermag.org/prison-call-center/amp/
They’re cheap, and a coveted job over there, from my understanding.
The average income in India is equal to about 500 a month US. You can pay them a living wage and save thousands of dollars in salary, insurance, workman’s comp etc. For the company and employees it’s a win win
Ask the Indians lol.
Because as much as our conservatives talk about hiring Americans, they’re willfully blind when it comes to US companies sending manufacturing and service jobs overseas because they can pay workers less.
India and the Phillipines, both former colonies of English speaking nations (the UK and the USA respectively) and have a large pool of English Speakers who can be hired for cheap. Thats it.
I’ve called Samsung a few times and I never understand the employee on the other end lol… I have to turn the volume all the way up and really concentrate on what they say. Still hard
Minimum wage. It’s that simple
Because you’re getting scammed
I work in American healthcare billing and I talk to Indian people every day. It’s a mess on both sides.
Minimum wage in India is $2, minimum wage in the US is $7.25. Call centers employ dozens of people at least.
You do the math and tell me which is more cost effective.
Cost.
CHEAP. And most people already know how to speak and read English.
It’s seems quite obvious. Where else are they going to find large numbers of workers who speak English willing to work for the low wages they pay?
2 and a half hours on the line with Comcast, trying to pay my bill….any questions?
I’ve gotten good service and bad service from these centers. Same as onshore call centers. More good than bad though. Even then, the bad service is never as bad as the service as I get at the post office and never has a bullshit entitled attitude with it.
It’s one of the lowest cost countries that speaks English, and has the infrastructure to support large scale call centers.
They speak English and work for a fraction of what Americans work for. With the telecom infrastructure these days those things can be anywhere. One issue is employee well being, they are working in the middle of the night to tell you to log off and log back on again.
Because they might be the cheapest labor that speaks English and they have an abundance of workers. It’s doubtful that it will change either because their population is expanding quickly and they’re still a very young country.
Maybe this question would be more fitting for r/AskIndia
They aren’t, talked to a lady in the Philippines, she was very good, and immediately told me when I asked where she was from. I have hearing loss but could understand her. More recently had difficulty with a call center probably from the sub-continent her phone was cutting in and out lots of background noise and accent was difficult for me, she actually became rude when I kept asking her to repeat.
Because they work for 5 cents an hour.
There are call centers in the US but a number of them will contract and out source for high volume or for web chat.
It’s cheap labor, the population is relatively well educated, and many people there know English.
It’s an English-speaking country with cheap labor.
Amazon customer service centers seem to always be in the Philippines.
If they call me, an tell me “We are on a recorded line.” I start practicing my phone sex.
Don’t tell Trump this, else there will tariffs on 1-800 calls.
I worked for a company that outsourced its call center at $1.25 per hour per unit (they list people as units, which is shocking the first time you see in on an invoice)
For that price they get a 24 hour 365 day call center.
The only real argument you can make against outsourcing a call center is moral, and most shareholders care more about their return on investment
Poor country where everyone speaks English
My bank has Americans working the phone lines so I don’t deal with that much. But I don’t care who picks up as long as the problem is fixed.
Cheap labor force with lots of English speakers. Similar reasons are why they’re sometimes in the Philippines
There’s AI now that’s changing their accents to english in real time
I’ve gotten Americans, Irish, and Canadian. Admittedly I only assumed the Americans were Americans, but Apple uses Ireland for AppleCare support, at least in China, and I don’t remember which company the Canadian was, but the accent is unmistakable and when I asked he told me he was in St Catherines, which is a cool town on the Wellington Canal, which is a cool canal if you’re interested in things like that.
I called a pizza place awhile back, and it directed me to an Indian call center. The guy didn’t know anything about the menu 😭
I work in the call center industry.
Pre-covid, the way it worked is most companies contracted with BPO’s. These are business process outsourcing companies that run call centers and the general customer service apparatus of a company.
At the time, it wasn’t a ton cheaper to do business in India. It was cheaper, but for example in 2015 I was working for a BPO named Sykes that was AT&T Mobile. When you called AT&T for issues with a cell phone bill, there was a 50-50 chance you got us or an Indian. I think we were paid $9/hour then. Remember, these companies generally go into extremely rural, poor areas in the US too. I was and am in Appalachia, we were loaded.
Here’s the thing though. Post COVID the entire industry changed. I work for a fantastic company now that isn’t a BPO, but happens to have call centers. Pre covid we were 100% American. Post covid, a lot of states have raised minimum wage, and wages have come up rapidly in the industry. It’s common to make $20/hour now. We struggle to fill seats even at that pay. Things like gig work has cut into the pool of available agents as well.
So for us, and a lot of other companies, it wasn’t a matter of wanting to cut US staff. We still hire what we can. We just had more work than we could do. Overseas agents let us handle that surge without having to hire and fire American agents.
We’d still be 100% American if we could, but call center work can very easily be miserable and isn’t for everyone in general. Like I say, my company starts at an absolute minimum of $18/hour and is 100% work from home with good benefits. We can’t find people at all.
They aren’t in the US. You’re being directed to a call center in a different country. US does this to bypass labor laws.
What are you talking about, sir? I am John, calling from American Texas. I see here that someone tried to withdraw $10,000 from your citizens bank account. Was this you sir?
They’re not all Indian but Indian call centers stand out because, despite typically speaking English very well, the Indian English accent sounds foreign to a lot of native English speakers. The reason there are so many in India is that there are a lot of well educated English speakers, wages are extremely low and telecommunications infrastructure is good.
The other places with similar characteristics are the Philippines and South Africa. The Philippines actually has more call centers than India but their accent is more similar to an American accent and easier to disguise. Likewise with SA where their native English accent is somewhere between an Australian and English accent and doesn’t really sound obviously foreign to a native English speaker.
The cost of labor is much lower and there’s an enormous workforce due to India being the country with the highest population
They aren’t all Indian but also you can pay the average Indian person about half as much as most ‘western’ people and get similar results. When it comes to US customer service, you also need someone to work night shift.
So they have a reason to mess up your shit. They can blame it on miscommunication
Because american people’s cost of living is higher than companies are willing to pay.
Companies today don’t put money back into the business, they give it all to upper management and shareholders.
Large, English-speaking population that will work for low wages
Maybe because they are in India? I that could be a reason…
One thing I’m not seeing in other posts is that having call centers on the other side of the world in addition to ones in the US helps maintain customer service operations overnight, which a lot of big companies try to do.
Speak for yourself, our call centers are in Poland 😛
Cheap labor, native or near native levels of English proficiency
During the day the call center is Mexican. In the evening it is Pacific Island…
They speak english.
Its hard to find a country that offers dirt cheap labor while at the same time having a population that can be trained to speak english pretty easily and quickly.
Don’t worry. Pretty soon there will just be online chat bots.
They speak English. Ask yourself why that is.
There are a ton of phone centers in central and south America too. Anywhere with cheap labor, few regulations and people who can speak English have them.
Cheaper wages+widespread English proficiency is the reason why.
Cheap English-speaking labor. Not just an American thing. Anytime a company has a need for English-speaking customer support for cheap, they’ll look to India (and the Philippines).