Are Indian High Schoolers Manning Your IBM Help Desk? 237
theodp writes "IBM CEO Virginia M. Rometty's Big Blue bio boasts that she led the development of IBM Global Delivery Centers in India. In his latest column, Robert X. Cringely wonders if customers of those centers know what they're getting for their outsourcing buck. 'Right now,' writes Cringely, 'IBM is preparing to launch an internal program with the goal of increasing in 2013 the percentage of university graduates working at its Indian Global Delivery Centers (GDCs) to 50 percent. This means that right now most of IBM's Indian staffers are not college graduates. Did you know that? I didn't. I would be very surprised if IBM customers knew they were being supported mainly by graduates of Indian high schools.'"
Big deal? (Score:5, Interesting)
What's the big deal about that? Tier 1 helpdesk doesn't need a degree. A high-school education (even a US one) is more than enough to understand and speak English at a high-school level and follow a script and checklist. You don't need to be a cordon bleu chef to cook burgers at McDonald's either.
Same as it was here (Score:5, Interesting)
Did you know that 10 years ago, if you called Dell, Gateway, HP, WellsFargo, Netgear, etc etc etc etc, that you spoke to someone making $10.50/hr, who most certainly did not have a college degree, and whom the technical skills test was "here, type this". The only difference now is, those people aren't in the united states, and they don't make anywhere near 10.50$/hr. Then or now, they never had any chance of actually helping you solve a problem.
NDA be damned, Dell had 5 solutions for ANY problem. Is it on. Check. Is it installed correctly. Check. Reformat, does it work now? Check. Does the rest of the computer work without it? Check. Replace it. DONE. This is essentially what all their scripts say. Oh sure, there are minor detailed differences, and some small portion of the people they employ to read the scripts even understand the differences. Most do not, never did and never will. They are paid to go through those scripts AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. They are not paid for your satisfaction, and in fact, you can't commend or condone them in any way, because you don't know if you were talking to 'joe' at Dell's Texas headquarters, 'Joe' at the Beaverton Oregon Call center called Stream, or some other third party call center. You can call to complain, and customer service will no doubt apologize, coddle you and then do absolutely nothing.
One customer always comes to mind when I talk about this issue. She called in over 50 different times. She spoke to as many different people. She went through every script, every troubleshooting guide. Her modem was replaced. 5 times. The motherboard was replaced, twice. The CPU, Memory, hard drive and case were replaced once each. Her ENTIRE computer (include the mouse and cables) was replaced twice. Nothing solved the issue. She called in, and got me. Now, it's 12:30am, I'm quietly handling technical calls for Dell, but I'm in Oregon at STREAM intl. She explains her story, and I look it up. Holly crap, they have done just about everything that can be done... well crap. Tell me what the problem is. "Well, the last tech said..." No lady, I want you to tell me the problem, not what anyone else said it was. "my modem won't stay connected, and often won't connect at all". OK I say... any other issues..."well yeah, I get weird lines on my screen when I try and call out, or if I walk to close while on the phone". Alright, please do something strange for me, just reach down and touch the computer, but watch the screen. "It flashed with snow". OK do you happen to have power lines in your back yard. "yes, how did you know". Lucky guess. I know this isn't reasonable, but I need you to move the whole computer to the opposite side of the house, and call me back at this number xxxxxxxxxxx. She did, and you know what, it fixed the problem. 51+ phone calls, and the problem was outside interference, which isn't on any of the scripts. This isn't a problem of language, or culture, or race, or which country your phone call goes to. It's a problem that "technical support" is neither technical, nor support. Which is why it's mostly called "customer service" now. I think Carlin best described what that means.
Re:No shit sherlock (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't need a college degree to know how to work a phone. I know the HR hysteria in the USA would have you believe otherwise, but trust me! It's not that hard...
But one of the big justifications for outsourcing call centers to India was that you could get college-educated workers for cheap. If you're going to be staffing the call centers with people who have just a high school education, then you might as well do that in the United States and not deal with the language/accent barrier. Workers without a college degree are cheap enough in America as it is. Moreover, it's strongly implied that IBM is misrepresenting the educational level of the employees in these outsourced call centers. Regardless of whether workers in call centers should need a college degree, it's not kosher to say or imply that your workers do when in fact they don't.
Re:Same as it was here (Score:3, Interesting)
Did you know that 10 years ago, if you called Dell, Gateway, HP, WellsFargo, Netgear, etc etc etc etc, that you spoke to someone making $10.50/hr, who most certainly did not have a college degree, and whom the technical skills test was "here, type this".
Oh, yes. In fact, 10 years ago, I was one of those employees without a college degree earning $10.50 an hour taking outsourced calls for Gateway. (Well, actually it was only $9 an hour.) The difference is that they hadn't yet rolled out the dumbass scripts, so I was able to actually help customers most of the time, as long as they weren't asking for something that violated a specific support boundary (e.g. we didn't fix problems with third-party software). It was in about 2003, when I had transitioned to SBC (and fortunately been promoted to Team Lead and therefore taken off the phones) that they started telling techs that they had to follow the flowchart no matter what. At this point, there's no point having human employees at all; you might as well integrate the flowchart into the phone system and only hire tier 2 techs for problems that can't be fixed by doing the simple stuff. For all I know, they may have done this in some places already.
What if college is a distraction? (Score:5, Interesting)
They don't want us to realize that the reason college is so important is because children in the U.S. are deliberately prevented from learning anything valuable in their first 13 years of "education".
My dad had a friend in high school who taught shop class. He helped me about 6 years ago with his shop tools. He was forcibly retired a few years later because the administrators decided that woodworking and metal working aren't important to people who are going to college, which is all that matters in a globalized society.
Apparently that's the feedback loop: Grade school gets you ready for middle school, middle school for high school, high school for college, college for graduate school, graduate school for unemployment.
According to a book from the 1970's I found at a thrift shop years ago ("The Screwing of the Average Man"), College used to be something that the upper class sent their children to, so they'd have a leg up on the un-credentialed proletariat. After WWII Congress passed the GI Bill to pacify all those ex-soldiers, and college became affordable for everyone. I was going to say that college is a waste of money, but the real waste is in K-12 - at least in College you mostly take only the classes you care about.
Re:No shit sherlock (Score:2, Interesting)
So then... Because I-BM finds yet another way to circumvent the labor laws of the US Americans should sit quietly?
I realize they are one of many corps that justify their actions by citing the corporate manifesto of profits over patriotism but that won't stop people like me calling as it is.
Re:No shit sherlock (Score:4, Interesting)
Pay range for entry level agents in India is $200 - $350/month. Where are these cheap Americans that will work for $1.75/hour?
They're in 1971. Where minimum wage was $1.60/hour. $200/month isn't good or bad in and of itself, only relative to the cost of living. Rampant inflation has fucked us up the ass like Jerry Sandusky in the shower with a 10-year-old boy.
Re:Degree Overrated (Score:2, Interesting)
Most of the time it's just quicker to skip level 1. Open an electronic ticket and get a call direct from level 2. If you actually call level 1, all you're doing is having them transcribe the ticket entry for you - and generally are folks that are on the end of a poor quality VOIP connection and quite often poor English skills.
Re:College not needed... (Score:2, Interesting)
This article is bullshit. I am in India, and I work with a large group, which has 3 colleges, and I am a part-time professor in the engineering college.
IBM employs ZERO high school graduates manning their Helpdesk. My nephew finished his engineering degree in Computer Science and worked as a night-shift SAN support engineer at IBM Bangalore. He was earning about $1,200 per month and was very good at it. But he quit because he couldn't put up with night shifts.
IBM normally employs engineering graduates and a bit of Arts and Science graduates (BSc - Computer Science etc.). These freshers work for about 3 years in IBM for a monthly salary of $ 1,000 to $ 1,500 max.
There are other companies which also provide support for IBM desktops etc. Even these companies only hire graduates, not High Schoolers, ever. The 2nd tier companies pay about $500 to $900 per month which is a king's ransom in India.
Please do not believe the bullshit being written in the article.