For some reason it has become a journalistic tradition to write these stories in the "humor" genre. But what is starting to happen is something very important and very amazing. Before the invention of the steamship, only light-weight precious goods could be profitably traded across continents. Then, by stages, the set of intercontinentally-tradeable goods has become larger and larger.
Now a very large chunk of what used to be seen as non-tradeable services--white-collar information-based services--have become internationally tradeable. I think the consequences will be enormous.
Posted by DeLong at October 23, 2002 12:44 PM | TrackbackWired News: Say Hello to Sanjeep, Er, Sam ...So overpowering is her strange work routine that Mandakini, who goes by the name Mandy when she's on duty, finds that her work persona often invades her personal life. When she answers the phone at home, for example, her fake American accent sometimes spills out instinctively before she realizes what has happened. Indian call centers have sprung up nationwide in the last few years, as large American firms like American Express and General Electric have sought out the country's inexpensive, highly educated, English-speaking labor force.
As they attempt to cater to an American clientele, the mostly college-educated Indian employees at these back-office establishments are beginning to understand the grand expression, "a clash of civilizations." One young call center employee at TransWorks almost lost his job after telling a customer during a call that was monitored by his supervisor, "You will be intimated soon." Ashish Dehade, a general manager with Transworks said, "The American client who took the issue to the top brass, told us that a word like 'intimate' was unacceptable as it meant something on the lines of intimacy. Since Indians speak English the way Britishers do, we use a few expressions that common Americans normally don't."
Indians are not always the victims of these quaint clashes of culture. Americans, too, suffer from a communication gap. Veer Sagar, CEO of Selectronic, a medical transcription company, says that in his line of work his employees need not speak to Americans but merely listen to voice files of doctors' dictations and type out what they have heard. Despite creating "an American ambience" by feeding his workers Coke and pizzas on weekends and making them watch two Hollywood movies every week, many in his firm cannot fully comprehend what Americans say. Veer remembers a doctor who had said, "the patient's salary is twenty grand." The Indian transcriptionist on the floor typed, "The patient's salary is twenty. Very grand."Another worker wrote that the patient was "a base reporter" when the doctor meant "ace reporter." Similarly, a doctor's analysis, "He is fond of marijuana," became, "He is fond of Mary Yuvane." And "the incident occurred while at Macy's Thanksgiving parade," became "the incident occurred while Macy was giving thanks to the parade."
You write: "Now a very large chunk of what used to be seen as non-tradeable services--white-collar information-based services--have become internationally tradeable. I think the consequences will be enormous."
Yes. White collar workers with their college degrees and their big salaries should realize that, as special as you no doubt are, you are still just labor. And there is a pool of several billion people who would gladly do your job for less money. In the past, that was not much of a threat, because white collar jobs were not very portable, and because a college degree was a rarity (at least in what used to be called "third world" countries). But those days are over.
Posted by: Daryl McCullough on October 23, 2002 01:35 PMAn interesting point to make in this context, is that these services are only tradeable across the English-speaking word, unless there are loads of French- or German-speaking Indians that I don't know about, which I suppose there might be.
Posted by: Daniel Davies on October 23, 2002 11:44 PMNot only telephone support, but computer programming and other high tech jobs are being increasingly farmed out to India and China. White collar workers are being laid off in droves in this country. Look for a major political backlash as the situation gets worse.
I look forward to the day when high-paid right-wing talk show hosts are replaced with Indian labor. On radio, and in print journalism, this should be a no-brainer. TV will be harder but not impossible. Give them pseudonyms and send them off to parrot crap copied from Republican Party press releases--who even needs college for that?
I bet Rush, George Will, Krauthammer, they'll all be singing a new tune on economics when their asses are in slings.
Posted by: Andrew Lazarus on October 24, 2002 01:14 PMA bit over a hundred years ago, Bismarck stated that the most important fact for the 20th century was that Britain and America shared the same language (and I think he was right). Over the last few years I've started to wonder if the most important fact for the 21st century is that America and India share a common language -- although more for economic reasons that politico-military ones.
Of course, given the humorous examples in the excerpt, perhaps we should be thinking more of updating Shaw's quip that "England and America are two countries separated by a common language."
Posted by: Curt Wilson on October 24, 2002 01:37 PMI've been on the short end of this particular stick myself. My former employer, Dell, now has thousands of tech support employees in India.
The reality doesn't match the expectations of whatever Stanford MBA dreamed this up. The Indian techs speak English very poorly (English is a second language for almost all Indians) and with such strong accents that they have real problems communicating with customers (many of whom have strong accents themselves). This is complicated by the fact that many customers don't know or use the proper computer terminology, which it makes it even harder for the Indians to help them.
Many customers would hang up on Indian techs they were having trouble understanding. Some would even hang up as soon as they heard an Indian accent.
Posted by: William Burton on October 24, 2002 09:13 PM'Some would even hang up as soon as they heard an Indian accent.'
Wow, that's disappointing.
Posted by: Jason McCullough on October 25, 2002 12:13 AMHmmm. I'm pretty sure the last technical support line I called was in India. The problem wasn't that they were Indian, the problem was that they were incompetent - on both occasions they did not solve my problem, and in the end I spent hours figuring out how to fix it myself. In both cases they exhibited fundamental ignornace of the application they were supposed to give technical support for. And in both cases while I could understand their english, they had trouble understanding mine. And my english is very close to Standard American TV english - I talk to people all across the United States every working day and almost never have problems.
One of the customer service reps had trouble remembering his own "name".
I was not impressed. And, frankly, I don't like companies that move jobs overseas to save a few dollars. Especially when they do such a bad job of it. And it doesn't matter if they move their call center to Ireland or to India - I don't like it either way. But, bottom line, they should at least do a decent job of it.
Of course almost no one does a good job at customer support - you always get the (accurate) feeling that they are trying to get you off the phone as quickly as possible regardless of whether the problem has been solved or not.
Posted by: Ian Welsh on October 26, 2002 10:28 AM